Today’s gen should know the importance of Western Ghats: Eshwar Khandre

Bengaluru: Minister for Forests, Ecology and Environment Eshwar B Khandre has opined that it is necessary to make the importance of the Western Ghats, a place of amazing biodiversity and the source of many important rivers, known to the younger generation.

Speaking at the Chitrakala Parishad, where he released the Kannada version of Prof. Madhav Gadgil’s autobiography ‘A Walk up the Hill’, he said that the Dr. Kasturi Rangan Committee report identified 20,668 sq km of the Western Ghats region of Karnataka as environmentally sensitive.

‘The state has already protected 16,114 sq km, which is 83 percent of the area mentioned in the Kasturi Rangan report. The remaining 4,000 sq km, or 17% of the area, consists of about 1,449 villages in 39 taluks, where there are schools, hospitals, Anganwadis, residential areas. Thus, life, livelihood and environmental protection are all being taken care of in a balanced manner’, he said.

‘Today, the entire world is facing challenges like global warming and climate change. There has been a huge change in the seasons. The rain that should have fallen in a month is falling in a week, the rain that falls in a week is falling in a day or an hour. Such anomalies are due to human greed. Deforestation, human cruelty on nature and environment are

the reasons’, he said. Keeping this in mind, a target of planting five crore saplings in 2023-24 was set to increase the green cover of the state. However, the target was exceeded and 5 crore 48 lakh saplings have been planted. 3 crore saplings have been planted in 2024-25. He said that an audit has also been conducted to know how many of these have survived, and this information has been uploaded on the website of the Forest Department.

‘Our ancestors used the natural resources given by nature in a beneficial way. They used to give priority to recycling. But today the entire world is using natural resources at will. This land, the water on this land, the forest, the hills, the mountains, the rivers, none of these are our ancestral property inherited from our ancestors. Rather, they are a loan given to us by our future generations. It is the responsibility of everyone to protect it and hand it over to the next generation’, he said.

‘We all usually limit ourselves to the environment, that is, trees, plants, forests, meadows, and wildlife. But Prof. Gadgil, as an environmental scientist, has a different perspective on the environment’ the Minister informed. He said that he studied the environment from the rocky soil, mountains, hills, all the living things growing on this land, plant species, bird species, insect species, microorganisms, river sources, forest dwellers, and civilization, expanding his scope.

That is why the United Nations has honored him with the Champions of the Earth Award. The report on the Western Ghats by the Madhav Gadgil-led committee on 31 August 2011, and the study undertaken by all of them, have played a significant role in the conservation of the Western Ghats.

The report may not have been fully implemented. But I think it has been helpful in UNESCO declaring the Western Ghats as a protected area in July 2012, he said.

In the last 20 months, 117 acres of forest land worth crores of rupees have been cleared in Bangalore city alone. Encroachments on 5,000 acres of land have been cleared across the state, and a ditch has been dug to mark the boundary and trees have been planted in all the cleared forest land. Forest Minister Eshwar Khandre said that caution has also been advised to prevent further encroachment. He congratulated journalist and environmentalist Nagesh Hegde and Sharada Gopal, who translated Prof. Gadgil’s autobiography into Kannada, and Akriti Ashaya Publication, which published this book. The meeting, chaired by educationist Prof. K. E. Radhakrishna, was attended by journalist Nagesh Hegde, environmentalist Dr. Narendra Rai Derla, Captain G. R. Gopinath, RPE Society Secretary Nataraj Sagarnahalli, Kallur Nagesh of Akriti Ashaya Publication and others.