Meeting held to mitigate flood in Kaziranga National Park

June 2: With a view to mitigating flood in the Kaziranga National Park and other issues concerning the park, a high level meeting was held between the Environment and Forest, Water Resources and Agriculture and Veterinary departments here on Wednesday. In this connection, a meeting was held at the office conference room of Agriculture and Veterinary Minister at the Janata Bhavan.

As a follow up of the flood preparedness meeting chaired by Chief Minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma at Kaziranga, Minister for Environment and Forest, Parimal Suklabaidya, Minister for Agriculture and Veterinary, Atul Bora and Minister for Water Resources, Piyush Hazarika met together along with senior officials of concerned departments to formulate short and long term plans to mitigate the problem of erosion and excessive flooding in the national park.

After being briefed by Minister Suklabaidya and officials of concerned department, Minister for Water Resources, Hazarika said concrete steps would be taken to prevent erosion at Agartoli on the eastern range of the Kaziranga National Park covering a stretch of around two km. “Necessary flood protection measures will be taken up to protect Kaziranga National Park, our pride and glory,” said Hazarika, adding that dredging will be carried out on the outer fringe of the park to prevent excessive flooding. Minister Hazarika asked the Forest officials to submit plan and estimate for necessary action.

As flash flood takes place due to release of water from Doyang, Rongamati and Bhutan dams, the meeting decided to take up the matter with the concerned authorities so that water is not released simultaneously. Hazarika said as one of the dams concern Bhutan it would be placed before the Chief Minister for taking up the matter at appropriate level. Moreover, Commissioner and Secretary, Environment and Forest cum CEO, ASDMA, Gyanendra Dev Tripathi informed that modelling is being done with coordinated protocols to streamline the release of water from dams within a month. In this context, he said that a number of initiatives have been taken by the Environment and Forest department for disaster risk reduction.

Minister Suklabaidya directed the forest officials to share information regarding release of water from dams with the Water Resources department. Following threadbare discussion, the meeting resolved to build highlands vis-a-vis flood proofing structures, especially at Borbeel on the fringe of the park to provide shelter to the flood affected people.

The meeting also discussed setting up of helipads on the periphery of the national park for rescue operation of man-animals as well as for tourists. Building a spacious guest house on a sprawling area close to the helipad also figured in the meeting. It was decided to upgrade the veterinary sub centre at Kohora to a hospital under SoPD funds for better treatment of animals. Providing green fodder to the livestock living on the fringes of the park cropped up in the meeting.

Veterinary officials informed that vaccination of livestock is going on which would help to prevent wild animals from being infected. The meeting was attended by Additional PCCF (Wildlife), MK Yadava, Chief Wildlife Warden, Amit Sahay and PCCF (Hoff) AM Singh.