Biodiversity & Environment
Nagarahole National Park: Karnataka
- 04 Jul 2020
- 3 min read
Why in News
Recently, the Karnataka Forest Department has decided to put in place a traffic monitoring mechanism along the roads adjacent to Nagarahole National Park.
Key Points
- Time-stamped Card System:
- The forest department will introduce a time-stamped card system for vehicles passing through the roads, adjacent to Nagarahole National Park, which have high traffic density 24x7.
- The time stamped card will have complete details on the speed limit to be maintained and the exit time at the next check post.
- Such a system is already in place on the road cutting through Nagarahole Tiger Reserve.
- Issues Involved:
- Pollution: In the absence of any monitoring mechanism, littering along the road is high as many motorists stop midway on the road adjacent to the forests for lunch break and leave behind plastic water bottles and liquor bottles.
- Road Kills: The heavy vehicle movement along the stretch also causes road kills some of which come to light if the animal dies on the road. But in most cases the injured animals tend to drag themselves into the forests and their subsequent deaths do not come to light.
- Man-made Forest Fires: The forests adjacent to the highway also witness forest fires and illegal tree felling.
- Benefit of Road Monitoring
- It will help ensure that motorists don’t stop midway and litter the area or cause disturbance to wildlife.
- It will also ensure better compliance of forest laws by motorists and will also minimise road kills.
Nagarhole National Park
- It is also known as ‘Rajiv Gandhi National Park.
- It was established as a wildlife sanctuary in 1955 and was upgraded into a national park in 1988. It was declared as the 37th Tiger reserve under Project Tiger in 1999.
- The Park lies in the Western Ghats and is a part of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve.
- The Nagarahole River flows through the park, which joins the Kabini River which also is a boundary between Nagarahole and Bandipur Ntional Park.
- Flora: The vegetation consists mainly of moist deciduous forests with predominating trees of teak and rosewood.
- Fauna: Asian elephants, chital (spotted deer), Indian mouse deer, gaur, stripe-necked and ruddy mongooses, grey langur, bonnet macaque, Asian wild dog, leopard, tiger, sloth bear among others.
