Anti-Enroachment Drive: 343 families evicted from Assam’s Orang National Park

Forest officials on Wednesday evicted 343 families and cleared about 2.35 sq km of area from the grip of encroachers in the Orang National Park. (Source: Google maps)

Forest officials on Wednesday evicted 343 families and cleared about 2.35 sq km of area from the grip of encroachers in the Orang National Park, with the authorities saying this would also help check poaching. In Goalpara district on the other hand, authorities evicted 32 families from a reserve forest two days after encroachers had attacked forest officials while trying to stop illegal felling of trees. “About 2.35 sq km on the eastern side of Orang National Park was cleared in a joint operation we launched with the help of the police and civil administration. Over 2,000 people who had been encroaching upon the National Park land for decades were evicted,” Mangaldaoi Wildlife Division DFO Sunny Deo Choudhary, who is also in charge of Orang National Park, said. The 78.8 sq km Orang National Park, which is also one among four tiger reserves in Assam, has been under tremendous pressure of encroachment and poaching, with DFO Choudhary pointing out that poachers suspected to be from among the encroachers, had killed two rhinos in the current year. In 2016 poachers had killed one rhino there.

While the Gauhati High Court had directed the forest department to evict the encroachers from Orang way back in 2014, it was only after the BJP-led government of Sarbananda Sonowal took over in May 2016 that eviction drives have been intensified. In September last year, the government had evicted over 330 families and cleared 24,00 bighas of land adjoining Kaziranga National Park. Orang, which was upgraded to a National Park in 1999 after it was declared as a wildlife sanctuary in 1985, had registered 100 rhinos during the last census carried out in 2012, while the last tiger census showed 24 tigers in 2013, DFO Choudhary said. About 150 km east of Guwahati, Orang is also home to elephants, hog deer, covet cats, porcupines and Gangetic dolphins, apart from over 222 species of resident and migratory bird species.

Eviction in Goalpara 

The forest department on Wednesday also carried out an eviction drive in Goalpara district in western Assam, with officials saying 94 houses were demolished inside the 308 sq km Kheropara reserved forest. “We evicted over 30 families, which had set up hutments and temporary structures, by clearing a sizeable portion of the Kheropara reserved forest in the past four of five years. It was Sunday that these encroachers had attacked a team of forest officials when it had tried to stop illegal felling of trees in the same forest,” Goalpara DFO MM Goswami said.

At least ten forest officials including the Range Officer and a lady Forester were injured, a couple of them seriously, when a group of over 50 people armed with machetes and other sharp weapons attacked the forest team that had gone there to stop illegal felling of trees on Sunday. This prompted Assam Forest Minister Pramila Rani Brahma to rush to the spot and order immediate eviction of the encroachers. Over 3.30 lakh hectares forest land in Assam is currently under encroachment.