A herd of elephants, a young calf in tow, lumbers out of a fire-ravaged thicket in a reserve forest along the Manjoor-Mulli-Karamadai road near Ooty (Udhagamandalam). The animals charge at a motorcyclist who stops, paralysed with fear. They then make their way down the side of a hill, and disappear into the forests.
Other motorists rush to help the man, who is a tourist from Kerala on his way to the Geddai Dam in Nilgiris district. “I was sure I would be trampled,” he says, as locals chide him for not noticing the elephants in time.
This is not the first commuter to have lately had a close shave with elephants on this largely unused road to Ooty.
Until recently, the forests surrounding the Geddai Dam were off the tourist trail, and one of the last few areas in these mountains still untouched by tourism. But ever since the Tamil Nadu government began work on a ‘third route’ to Ooty — an alternative to the two established ones via Coonoor and Kotagiri — going through the Nilgiris, this corner of the mountains has begun to change, says Raman Senthil, a local. And not necessarily for the better, since it brings people and wild animals closer than ever before.
Costly expansion
Earthmovers and trucks carrying soil now lumber through the once-deserted 15 km road, which passes through Coimbatore and Nilgiris districts. While some sections are being tarred, others in the Nilgiris district are being expanded from the existing 11 ft to 18 ft. An official from the State highways department says the road will be expanded with ‘minimum’ felling of trees. But the impact is already palpable.
Early last month, people of Onikandi village in the outskirts of Manjoor town watched in bewilderment as a herd of elephants raided a banana plantation before forest department personnel chased them back into the forest. The elephants’ arrival, says Nilgiris-based conservationist, N. Mohanraj, is symbolic of the impact of the roadwork on wildlife.
There is also a long-pending proposal to widen the Manjoor-Karamadai stretch in Coimbatore district. Conservationists, however, worry that any road expansion here will destroy 61 acres of reserve forest, prime habitat for a staggering diversity of wildlife.
Malabar pied hornbills. Photo: Wiki Commons
In a paper published this year, researchers from the Government Arts College in Ooty documented 12 nesting pairs of the near-threatened Malabar pied hornbill and found that the birds preferred nesting in the cavities of five tree species found in the Pillur valley, through which the road passes.
Shola-grassland ecosystems
The landscape is also habitat to one of the largest populations of the great Indian hornbill in the Nilgiris, and represents some of the last remaining Shola-grassland ecosystems along the upper slopes of Geddai and Manjoor.
Godwin Vasanth Bosco, a restoration ecologist working in the Nilgiris, believes that if the road is widened it will not only eat into forests that house rare native flora such as the flowering Euphorbia, but that the consequent traffic could also introduce invasive plants such as lantana that is already gaining a foothold.
Elephant access
A new, improved and wider road will also grant elephants easier access to the Nilgiris’ upper slopes, potentially exacerbating human-elephant conflict, says Mohanraj. “The road will act as a highway for wildlife to move up the slopes,” he says. The Geddai area and the Pillur valley form an integral corridor connecting the Nilgiris to the Silent Valley National Park. “As elephant populations venture out from other forests, either because of an increase in their numbers or because they are pushed out due to human activities, they move into new habitats such as Geddai.”
Meanwhile, citizens’ groups are questioning the very rationale of a third route into the Nilgiris. Shobana Chandrasekar, founder of Namma Nilgiris, a citizens’ collective working towards a sustainable model of tourism, says the number of tourists coming through the two existing routes is already too high. Another road would bring in more hotels and resorts, threatening the ecosystem.
The forest through which the road passes. Photo: M. Sathyamoorthy
The State highways department is confident the road expansion will eventually become a reality, but forest department officials say no permissions have been given so far. “In the Nilgiris, permission has been given only to repair and relay the road in the already existing dimensions,” says Nilgiris district collector J. Innocent Divya.
“There is a formal application process, which has not been undertaken thus far, so there is no question of us granting permission for clearing any reserve forest,” says Debasis Jana, Conservator of Forests, Coimbatore Circle.
Local activists are meanwhile planning to resist the third road. It is not too late to convince the government to stop the project, they believe. As Chandrasekhar says, “I think it’s a terrible development, one which will lead to the gradual destruction of the fragile landscape.”
rohan.prem@thehindu.co.in
