Man-animal conflict, or the conflict between man's increasing demands with the passage of time and the bare needs of wildlife to survive, was the subject matter of a submission in the Assembly from I.C. Balakrishnan, MLA, on Monday.
The District Collector of Chamarajanagar in Karnataka banned the movement of all vehicles during the night hours along National Highway 67 and 212 passing through the Bandipur Tiger Reserve on June 3, 2009, on the ground that the traffic was disturbing the wildlife in the reserve.
Vehicular traffic has been growing at a high rate in recent years along the stretches of the highways through the reserve, linking towns in Kerala's Wayanad district and those in south interior Karnataka. Mr. Balakrishnan's submission was intended to highlight the difficulties of the people on either side of the inter-State border because of the ban.
In his reply, Transport Minister V.S. Sivakumar described the reasons for the ban and said the Kerala government was making all efforts to have the highways open round the clock. The District Collector of Chamarajanagar lifted the ban on June 10, 2009, following complaints from the affected people in both States. However, the High Court of Karnataka restored the ban on March 9, 2010, through an order in a writ petition on the subject.
More than 100 luxury coaches and hundreds of other heavy vehicles and cars and motorbikes used to ply these roads each night before the ban. With the coming of the ban, transportation of vegetables, milk, poultry and eggs between Gundlupet in Karnataka and Sultan Bathery in Kerala was adversely affected. Also, it led to daytime traffic snarls along the routes.
Mr. Sivakumar said the Kerala government had filed a petition in the Supreme Court against the order of the High Court of Karnataka restoring the ban on vehicular movement along the Bandipur forests and this case was still going on.
He said an all party delegation led by the Chief Minister had met the Prime Minister on May 5, 2010 urging the Union government to realise the problems of the people of two States. The delegation asked the Union government to implead itself as a party in the case, adopting a stand that recognised the difficulties of the people.
The ban on vehicular movement along the roads in Bandipur Tiger Reserve was initially from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., but now it is from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., following an order issued by the State government of Karnataka.
“The Union Ministry of Environment and Forests issued a draft notification on September 21, 2011 for declaring Bandipur as a region of great ecological importance. There is provision in this draft notification to restrict vehicular traffic in the night through the ‘zone one' in such areas….This notification may adversely affect our efforts to get the ban lifted,” the Minister said.
