Environmentalists, academicians, activists and students on Saturday demanded constitution of a National Council of Trusteeship, a dedicated body, to work towards conservation of Eastern Ghats, discontinuous ranges of mountains, which are getting degraded owing to nonharmonious development.
Environmentalists and academicians, who gathered at a two-day-long national conference on ‘Conservation of Eastern Ghats’ that got underway at Utkal University from Saturday, expressed concerns over degradation of the mountain ranges due to heavy anthropogenic pressure.
Starting down the West Bengal, Eastern Ghats runs about 1700 km through the States of Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Four major rivers such as Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna and Kavery travel through the region which covers about 2.50 lakh square km with an average width of 220 km in the north and 100 km in the south. Odisha has 25 per cent, Andhra Pradesh (45 per cent), Tamil Nadu (25 per cent) and Telengana (3 per cent) and Karnataka (2 per cent) of the hill ranges.
“It is imperative that we protect, manage and regenerate lands in the Eastern Ghats as biologically rich, diverse and natural landscape. We have reached a threshold from which we cannot slip further,” said S. C. Jamir, Governor of Odisha, inaugurating the event.
Mr. Jamir said, “it is true that the Eastern Ghats has not received its long-pending due. The efforts will surely be a path finder to highlight Eastern Ghats to a great extent. The alliance is an important initiative.”
Speaking on the occasion, Dileep Reddy, Chairperson of Greens’ Alliance for Conservation of Easternghats (GrACE), said “we should take up the issue of conservation of Eastern Ghats with Government of India in such a way that National Council of Trusteeship, which will supervise protection of environmentally rich region, could take a shape.”
