Guwahati: The only domain of feral horses in South Asia is now the Dibru-Saikhowa National Park situated in the eastern end of Assam.
It is also arguably the only island wildlife preserve.
However, the park’s status as an island – formed by the river Brahmaputra and its branch-off Dibru – has come at a price; it has lost 97 sq km area in 15 years mainly due to erosion. Human habitations in its core area have also been a factor.
Vaibhav C Mathur, DFO of Tinsukia wildlife division said a survey result reveals that Dibru-Saikhowa’s area shrunk from the original 340 sq km to 242.7 sq km as on 30 January this year. The figure was arrived at after analyzing retrospective satellite imagery of the past 15 years obtained from the National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad.
“While the original perimeter of the park was 155km, it is just 99.3km now. And this is just a part of the picture; effective habitat availability for wildlife is even lower, as out of the 242.7 sq km available, 48.2 square km of the core area is occupied by two villages that are continually expanding,” said Mathur.
Wildlife enthusiasts are alarmed by Mathur’s revelation, as the national park is considered a rich wildlife habitat and biodiversity hotspot. Apart from the feral horses and elephants, it boasts of at least 380 species of endemic and migratory birds of both wetland and grassland varieties.
According to green activist Nakul Khound, the shrinkage in area would translate into very low crude density and an even lower ecological density of wildlife, as large parts of the available habitat were degraded because of grazing by livestock from the two villages.
Some 2,000 families reside in the two villages, and as such working out a rehabilitation and relocation package would be an uphill task. Officials allege that residents of these two villages fell trees inside the park and aid poaching directly or indirectly, taking advantage of the abysmally low number of forest personnel protecting the area.
When people were allowed to settle there by the government in the 1950s, the area allotted to them was just 3.73 sq km. But now, they are occupying 20 per cent of the land left after erosion. Moreover, from the original figure of 165 families settled, the population has swollen to 2165 families today. (NNN)