Blue hills gets back its green

No elk in Elk hill', ‘No glen in Glendale', ‘No fern in Fern hill' and ‘No love in Lovedale'… was the lament in the Nilgiris, among locals and visitors alike.

This was in the 1980s, when the region's placid hills were under siege. The influx of migrants following the resettlement of Sri Lankan refugees; the unrest in Kashmir that turned the tide of mass tourism to the Nilgiris; shifting land use to tea cultivation overriding forests and farmlands; the opening of a public-sector industrial unit on the outskirts… it was getting increasingly difficult for Ooty to reign as the ‘Queen of Hill Stations'.

Deforestation coupled with exotic monoculture, particularly eucalyptus, choked up water sources. Residents were supplied water through tankers.

The hill stations of Ooty, Coonoor and Gudalur turned nightmarish, with discerning visitors vowing never to return.

More disquietingly, the hills had become fragile.

“What a detestable place this Ootacamund is during the rains…” wrote the international explorer Richard Burton in 1851. October-November is when the second inter-monsoon sets in and cyclonic storms batter the eastern parts of the Nilgiris and the Coonoor ghat. Since the late 1970s, a dreadful new dimension has been added. Floods followed by landslides wreak brutal damage.

The Geological Survey of India, which investigated the unprecedented landslides of 1978 and 1979, concluded grimly: “the stage of preventing environmental degradation in Nilgiri district has been crossed over. The harm has been done. The present stage is one repairing the damage”.

Even as the administration looked on helplessly, the people rose up with a spontaneous call to ‘save Nilgiris' in 1986. The Save Nilgiris Campaign (SNC) first appealed to the then Vice-President R. Venkataraman to not allow one great human tragedy (repatriation of Tamils from Sri Lanka) compound another (environmental degradation of the Nilgiri hills).

In Chennai, Eco-Focus on Nilgiris called for a separate development authority for the conservation of the hills. Thousands participated in a ‘save Nilgiris' run in Ooty, including the then Tamil Nadu Governor, Dr P.C. Alexander, who expressed pain at the sight of the “bare mountains and encroachments on steep slopes” and declared that “Nilgiris should, and will be saved”.

Environmental activists trekked through the hamlets and villages, explaining the dangers of excessive dependence on tea and other monocultures like eucalyptus. Chipko leader Sunderlal Bahuguna, who led the marchers on the last day, called for “conservation of the remaining natural forests and the conversion of monoculture forests into mixed forests of food, fodder and fibre.”

The campaign succeeded in halting work on an electroplating unit near a major water source. Following the devastating landslides of 1993, SNC independently assessed the man-made causes.

It suggested changes to the Hill Area Development Programme and persuaded the administration to modify the design of an upcoming sports stadium to minimise its impact on the surroundings, including the hill-station's famed Botanical Garden.

The first positive response was in 1990, when the Hill Area Conservation Authority (HACA) was constituted. However, a decisive action to save the Nilgiris was taken after J. Jayalalithaa became the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu in 1991. After a visit to the region, she declared a freeze on all construction in the hill-station pending the introduction of a Master Plan. An entry toll for vehicles was introduced to help maintain roads. Land assignment was banned to halt encroachments, a ‘green belt' declared to preserve the Mudumalai sanctuary, and the felling of endangered rosewood trees was completely banned.

In a rare instance of prompt government action, work on the Kallarpallam Small Hydro Electric Project near the picturesque Catherine waterfalls at Kotagiri, Nilgiris, was halted in 1995 after the SNC brought to the Chief Minister's notice the undesirability of the project. Today those very forests are a vital corridor for elephant movement.

In 2000, when a tea industry crisis affected the 60,000-odd small growers in the district, the government introduced electronic auctions and launched a Nilgiri brand tea as a long-term solution.

The Blue Mountains are healing today. Forest cover, which had declined to 43 per cent in the 1980s, has increased to 56 per cent. Eucalyptus planting has been halted and existing plantations are being reclaimed as grasslands. HACA and the Master Plan are keeping construction activities under reasonable check. Water tankers are a rare sight these days. In Kotagiri, a Longwood Shola, which supplied drinking water to several villages, has been beautifully restored with public support.

Mudumalai has been declared a Tiger reserve and a separate corridor earmarked for elephant movement.

Some 2.5 million visit the Nilgiris at present, with the numbers growing. Hotels and homestays are doing roaring business. Ecotourism is catching on well.

Economic dependence on tea is declining. With people emigrating for jobs, the population has declined to 7.3 lakh (2011 census), compared to 7.6 lakh in 2001. The Nilgiris await a new future.

Rio+20, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, will be held on June 4-6, 2012, twenty years after the Earth Summit brought environment to the centre stage of global development discussion. Rio+20 will attempt to bring out a policy framework to usher in a common future and a green economy. The Nilgiris may be a fit case to be presented at the conference.

The author is founder-coordinator of Save Nilgiris Campaign and Honorary Director of Nilgiri Documentation Centre.

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