Accessibility to the Tropical Butterfly Conservatory on the Cauvery river bank in Srirangam is set to improve as the Public Works department will soon strengthen and develop the bund along the river from Mukkombu (Upper Anicut) to the conservatory to make it a motorable stretch.
Development of the seven-km-long stretch is expected to give a thrust to tourism development in the region as visitors to the conservatory can now have easy and direct access to Mukkombu and vice versa. While Mukkombu has been serving as a picnic spot for long in the district, the Butterfly Park has emerged a major attraction in recent years.
The stretch along the Cauvery from Mukkombu has not been accessible to the general public hitherto as it is full of bushes and wild growth.
“The bund between Mukkombu and the Butterfly Conservatory will be strengthened and developed as motorable road. The work will be taken up as part of construction of a new barrage across the Kollidam at Mukkombu,” a senior officer of the PWD told The Hindu .
The entire stretch of about 7 km will be blacktopped. The road will be about five metres in width, just about enough to accommodate two vehicles, he added.
The new barrage is being built across the Kollidam at Mukkombu (Upper Anicut) at a cost of ₹387.60 crore. It was sanctioned following the collapse of a portion of the old barrage in August last.
The Butterfly Conservatory, spread over a 25-acre reserve forest land between the Cauvery and the Coleroon rivers, now houses 102 species of butterfly. It was opened in November 2015 and so far attracted more than nine lakh visitors. The Forest department, which maintains it, has planned to strengthen infrastructure at the park by establishing an interpretation centre and other facilities.
The PWD had recently black-topped the access road to the Butterfly Park from Srirangam via Melur at a cost of nearly ₹2 crore.
However, public transport to the park remains poor and there have been demands for operating bus services from Srirangam.
