G. Prabhakaran
Twentyfive years after Kerala’s Silent Valley was saved by environmentalists.
Rainforests
have been under extreme pressure all across the earth for more than a
century now, and they now cover only an estimated 3 per cent of the
earth’s land surface. In India, they are now distributed mainly in the
Western Ghats and in the northeastern region. Even here, they are
shrinking in area.
Rainforests are repositories of
biodiversity, especially the unexplored and wild kind. The antiquity of
the rainforest ecosystem and its fine-tuned physico-chemical conditions
have led to a very high degree of endemism of the species found there.
Hence, the destruction of rainforests is opening up the floodgates of
species extinction. Of late, the linkage between rainforests and climate
change has also become an issue that has caught the attention of
scientists and governments the world over.
The
struggle in the 1970s and 1980s to protect the unique Silent Valley
rainforests in the Western Ghats system in Palakkad district of Kerala
was something of a watershed event. It helped focus attention worldwide
on the need to protect the few remaining patches of rainforests in the
country.
The Nilgiri Hills occupy a pivotal position
in the southern peninsula because of its location at the junction of the
Western Ghats, the Eastern Ghats, the Carnatic Plains and the Malabar
Coastal Strip.
The Silent Valley is a small plateau
located on the southwestern corner of the Nilgiri Hills, a part of the
Western Ghats hill chain in southern peninsular India. This forested
plateau is the point of origin of the Kunthi river which joins the
west-flowing Bharathapuzha. The Silent Valley also forms the core area
of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve.
The ‘Save Silent
Valley movement’ resulted in the creation of the Silent Valley National
Park following the intervention of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984.
It was the culmination of an environmental saga and a milestone in the
environment movement in the country, said M.K. Prasad, who was then
president of the Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad. He was himself a key
figure who led the struggle.
The environmentalists
who had battled then to conserve the forests and the ecology had another
creditable victory when Union Minister for Environment and Forest
Jairam Ramesh and Kerala Forest Minister Binoy Viswam declared, while
inaugurating the silver jubilee celebration of the Park in Palakkad on
November 21, that the buffer zone of the Park would be made an integral
part of it in order to ensure better protection of the area.
Silent
Valley symbolises hope for all the people who stand up for nature, and
remains a beacon for rainforests everywhere. Thus it is no longer merely
the name of a place but part of a universal vocabulary as a word that
indicates an untrammeled wilderness that would last beyond human greed
and wilful destruction, and protected through the efforts of the people
sustained by hope.
A national seminar organised by
Kerala Forest Department and the Wild Life Department as part of the
silver jubilee celebrations of the Silent Valley National Park at Mundur
in Palakkad district on November 21 on the theme of ‘Rainforest and
Climate Change’ highlighted some of the imperatives in this context.
The
conservation of entire Silent Valley forest area is vital to ensure the
perennial flow of water through the Bharathapuzha, the Bhavani and the
Cauvery providing water to Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. The
Kunthipuzha, which originates from the Silent Valley National Park area,
is the main source of water for Bharathapuzha, Kerala’s longest river.
It provides drinking and irrigation water to the districts of Palakkad,
Malappuram and Thrissur. A tributary of the Bhavani that originates on
the eastern side of the Silent Valley forest area is the perennial
source of water for this major inter-State river. Its protection is
vital for drinking water and irrigation water projects in a couple of
districts of Tamil Nadu. It later empties into the Cauvery.
Thus
the protection of the Silent Valley and its adjacent forests that form
the core area of the Nilgiri Biosphere is vital for the peaceful sharing
of the water sources of three major rivers by the three neighboring
States. This major benefit to the people of three States is the best
justification for the struggle for the protection of the Silent Valley
and its adjoining buffer zone covering an area of 237.52 sq km, said Dr.
Satheeshchandran Nair, a well-known field biologist.
The
Park comprises essentially two parallel south-sloping valleys. The
western Kunthi valley is part of the basin of the west-draining
Bharathapuzha. The eastern, Bhavani Valley is part of the basin of the
east-flowing Cauvery.
In the
estimation of scientists such as M.S. Swaminathan, the Silent Valley
evergreen rainforest is more than 50 million years old. It is perhaps
the only remaining undisturbed tropical rainforest in peninsular India.
The flora and fauna here are quite unique. The Silent Valley’s dark and
cool ambience, vibrating with life, has been described as “the richest
expression of life on earth” and a “cradle of evolution.”
Ornithologist
Dr. Salim Ali observed that the “Silent Valley is not just an evergreen
forest, it is a very fine example of one of the richest, most
threatened and least studied habitats on earth.” Thus, it is the “sacred
grove” for the world, and a gene pool of rare flora and fauna.
The
Silent Valley receives the second highest rate of rainfall in the
country after the Mawsynram-Cheerapunji belt in the Khasi Hills of the
Himalayan ranges in Meghalaya, known as the world’s wettest place. Some
areas of the Valley like Valakkad received a record annual rainfall of
9,569 mm in 2006. In 2005 the area received 9,347 mm of rainfall and in
2004 it had 8,465 mm. In 2007, Valakkad received 7532 mm of rainfall. In
2008, the Puchipara area received a rainfall of 7,639 mm.
Malayalam
poet Sugathakumari, a key figure in the struggle to save the Silent
Valley, said that the biggest justification for the protection of the
Valley is that it gives the second highest rainfall in the country.
Recalling her three-decade-long efforts to save the Silent Valley, she
said that this precious chunk of dense forest is perhaps India’s last,
largest and oldest tropical rainforest remaining undisturbed,
undisturbed because of its relative inaccessibility, oldest because its
age is estimated to be 50 million years.
The echoes
of the campaign to save the Silent Valley have served to ignite other
campaigns in the region over the last 25 years, and conservation
initiatives were made in the Nelliampathy Hills of Palakkad, the
Vembanad lake, Kochi-Mangalavanam, Athirappally, Sabaramala-Pampa and so
on, although some of these have had only mixed results.
But the gains that have been made ought to be consolidated and taken forward.
