ASRAMAM ADVENTURE PARK-PLEA TO DECLARE ABIODIVERSITY SITE
A
group of senior environmental activists of the city gathered at the Asramam
adventure park on Wednesday30th May,2012, and called upon the State government
to declare the park and adjoining areas a biodiversity heritage site. They said
the whole area was a biodiversity hotspot of the Ashtamudi Lake.Till the 1980s,
the Asramam banks of Ashtamudi Lake bordering the Government Guest House
complex were a major mangrove forest belt of the State. Several species of
mangroves and mangrove associates thrived there. The belt had all the
characteristics of a coastal rainforest and was habitat to several species of
wild animals and diversified flora. The mangrove forest was also an important
spawning ground for many marine species, most of them edible, they said.But
towards the mid-1980s, a systematic destruction of the mangroves was launched
through a tourism development programme of the State government. It paved way
for the creation of the Asramam adventure park and the adjacent Kerala Tourism
Development Corporation's hotel complex.As
trees adapted to survive in adverse conditions, some of the mangroves survived
the tourism development exercise and they included even the rare Syzygium
travancoricum species of mangroves. Environmental activist and retired Botany
professor N. Ravi said that there were only 300 trees of this species left in
the world as per estimates and thirteen of them were surviving at the adventure
park belt. So it was important to protect them.Moreover, even though much of
the mangroves had been destroyed, the area was still serving as a major study
centre for nature enthusiasts and students as a typical coastal rainforest, he
said. Therefore, a demand was raised to protect and preserve it as a
biodiversity heritage site. Prof. Ravi had earlier submitted such a proposal to
the Kerala State Biodiversity Board (KSBB).
The
five environmentalists met at the park under the banner of the environment
sub-committee of the Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad (KSSP). V.K.
Madhusudhanan, convener of the sub-committee, said the Asramam mangrove belt
had a good number of mature sandalwood trees. But with the launch of the
development programme, all of them were poached.But some very old flora still
survived there and it included a 250-year-old Hopea. Environmental activist and
a former scientist attached to the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute,
K.K. Appukuttan, said they would again petition the KSBB to declare the park a
biodiversity heritage site. The other activists who attended Wednesday's meeting
are K.K. Karukakaran and K.V. Vijayan.
Prof.
John Kurakar
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