Environment issues of Northeast forests and wildlife

My 'recommendation' in the Lonely Planet : Best Escapes – East and Northeast India published in April 2014.

Many thanks to Lonely Planet.

Environment issues of Northeast forests and Wildlife

Two factors make the forests of the northeastern India special: a majority of them are owned by local people and its varied wildlife is not restricted to the limits of national parks and sanctuaries. But these rich, gift-laden forests face issues on multiple fronts.

Plantations: Mono-culture cropping is fast replacing the earlier biodiversity-rich natural vegetation and local cultivation. This results in loss of habitat for wildlife. Rubber and palm are currently the main culprits; Mizoram, unfortunately, is the latter’s poster-child.

Mining: Rat-hole mining for coal and limestone is literally destroying the hills and the forests that carpet them. Meghalaya is infamous for these and boasts of uranium presence too!

Dams: A series of dams are planned in the region and their reservoirs would drown large tracts of forested land. The aggregate (negative) impact of these dams would be mind-boggling, especially in Arunachal Pradesh.

Youth disconnect: Youngsters from the region are growing up with an education that has no link to their environment and with a lack of job opportunities, are moving out in large numbers. Combined with shifts in the socio-cultural milieu this has led to significant evaporation of the ‘connect’ people earlier had with their land and, as a corollary, forests.

Hunting: Easy availability of guns, erosion of values (like seasonal bans) and hunting not just for food but for recreation, status and for trade have hugely added to the threat to wildlife in the region.