(Times of India)
Clean Ganges project underway to up dolphin population
TNN, Dec 28, 2010, 03.29am IST
MAMALLAPURAM (Kancheepuram): The ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) is planning to roll up its sleeves and get down to cleaning the Ganges river in order to revive the river's freshwater dolphin population, announced Union minister for environment and forests, Jairam Ramesh, on Monday, during a visit to the crocodile bank on the East Coast road outside Chennai. "Currently, the breeding grounds and habitats of the dolphins have been affected by the pollutants in the river, leading to a decline in their numbers. With this cleansing, we plan to revive the population," he said.
The Ganges river dolphins, which now enjoy the status of the national aquatic animal is one of the four species of freshwater dolphins to be found in the world. But poaching, excessive pollution and dam building has greatly reduced their numbers. As a consequence, the dolphin conservation plan was formulated this year. According to Dr Sandeep Behera, a member of the dolphin conservation committee under MoEF and a senior coordinator in World Wildlife Fund (WWF-India), the plan to clean the river which forms a part of both the Dolphin Action Plan and the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) is already under implementation. "The plan envisages drastically reducing the flow of pollutants into the river. The government proposes to direct all industries along the banks of the river and its tributaries to stop the discharge of effluents by recycling their waste water. Already, the central pollution control board has closed down 56 tanneries along the river," he said.
But, effluent discharge is only one of the pollutants, he pointed out. "There are a lot of rotting carcasses in the river as there is limited number of burning ghats along the river banks," he said. "Since the GAP also includes provision of burning ghats, the ministry has been aggressively pushing for it."
A third cause for dwindling numbers of dolphins is less outflow of water downstream due to dams. "In this case, the dams will be asked to periodically release specific volume of water according to the level required to maintain the habitat," said Dr Behera.
Focus would be on the stretch of the river near Hardwar, Garmukteshwar, Kanpur and Allahabad which have been the primary sources of pollutants in the river. "Currently the dolphin population is down to 1,800 and it has seen an annual decline of 10%, which is less than the tiger population in India" he said. "With this plan, we are hoping to bring the population back to its levels in 1982, which was 5000. However, while the plan is a 10-year plan, I personally think it will take atleast 15-20 years to bring things back to a sustainable level."
Inset: With the latest version of the draft of the CRZ notification 2010 due in two weeks time, Union minister Jairam Ramesh emphatically declared that the new plan will not regularise existing violations of CRZ along the coast. "Existing violations will be tried under the old CRZ notification of 1991. He also announced the setting aside of Rs 8 crores for implementing the national ghariyal conservation plan, where a sanctuary spanning 1,500 square kilometers across Rajasthan, MP and UP will be set up.
THE TIMES OF INDIA
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