Animesh announces an environment friendly blue-print of action for the coming days

By Our Correspondent

Agartala, June 11, 2024

Former leader of the opposition and incumbent minister for forest Animesh Debbarma has announced a ten-point environment friendly blue-print of action to stem the tide of rapid degradation of the environment in Tripura. Making his announcement in an interactive session with the media Animesh said that the largest flower garden in the entire northeastern region will be established at Pirba Takchaya ADC village under Tulasikhar forest range in Khowai subdivision. Besides, five lakh trees will be planted in five minutes on the day of 5th July on the occasion of the ‘Vanmahotsav’ day-2024. Many institutions like various schools, colleges, NGOs and line departments will be involved in the mega programme, said Animesh.

All along the newly built national highways a special programme of launching road-side avenue plantations with fruit-bearing trees and flower tree species will be taken up in the state and a multi-utililty hall will be built in the Barmura eco park in Khowai subdivision. Animesh said that tree seedlings will be distributed free of cost among students of all classes, security forces and NGO activists for planting in public premises. The tree seedlings will be sold at the rate of Rs 2.5 per seedling to people from forest nurseries for planting on private land during the month of July.

Animesh said that the forest department will take a special initiative to ward off human-animal conflict in Gomati and Khowai districts and special fund under the project elephant will be sought for this and, in addition , Sepahijala wild life sanctuary and zoological park will be modernized at a cost of Rs 6 crores from the special capital assistance and state plan. Apart from this the forest department will take a special initiative to promote eco-tourism in Atharomura and Jampui hills on priority basis. In order to promote livelihood activities various schemes under the externally aided projects will be taken up with a financial involvement of Rs 300 crores. Despite being a service-oriented department the forest department has collected a revenue of Rs 17 crore in the last financial year and contributed to the state exchequer.

Making an important announcement Animesh said that fifty volunteers will be engaged in Khowai subdivision with good pay so that they can work to forestall elephant-human conflict in various parts of Khowai subdivision.In addition, elephant proof trenches in areas prone to attacks from elephants and five anti-depredation camps will be established to ward off attacks from wild elephants.Two hactres of forest land will be identified in Teliamura subdivision to confine the movement of the wild elephants with trenches all around. He said that three spots have been identified along the national highway-08 (Ambassa-Mungiakami stretch) and two more spots in the Mungiakami-Chakmaghat stretch for development of under-passes to restrict the movement of elephants for public safety. This will lead to the ultimate creation of an elephant corridor. Anti-depredations squads will be strengthened with manpower from forest protection forces and elephant scaring instruments will be procured for anti-depredation squads, added Animesh.