Rainforest Club Tamenglong, a wildlife and environment conservation organization based in Manipur’s Tamenglong district headquarter expressed serious concern over the felling down of many trees in and around the Gadai hill range in the district in recent past.
“We’ve been conserving the forest of the Gadai hill range considering its importance to the people of our district as it helps in providing water sources,” says a key functionary of Rainforest Club Tamenglong.
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“So everyone should promote conservation of forest for the future.”
Many trees mostly the pine trees were cut down for timber and firewood purposes in and around Gadai hill range where the State Forest Department and the District Administration in association with the local bodies initiated conservation works at the hill range in an attempt to save the forest by planting trees since the last few years.
They even marked out many trees for conservation.
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The illegal human activities in the Gadai hill range was detected when Deputy Commissioner Armstrong Pame of Tamenglong district along with Wildlife Warden Dr Chambo Gonmei in association with Tamenglong Police, the Rainforest Club Tamenglong inspected the hill range in the district on Wednesday.
The team was surprised and dismayed to find many illegal human activities/encroachment on the hill.
They also found that most of the marked trees were cut down for timber and firewood by the villagers. The team also found a manual saw-mill which was used to cut the timber for planks despite the restriction by the district authority.
“We’ve also discovered a stone quarry where some local residents had cleared some part of the jungle to mint stone for sale,” the Rainforest Club functionary added.
The team also found some buffaloes being tied to trees although animal rearing is banned in this area. Some workers who were hired to cut the timbers were taken to the Tamenglong Police Station for investigation.
The Deputy Commissioner of the district has issued strict order to ban illegal encroachments and activities in the area, reports from the hill district headquarters added.
Tamenglong is one of the districts which has a large area of dense forest out of the state’s total 16,900 sq km forest coverage area.