Woman behind Valley of Flowers

The World Heritage Site (WHS) status for the Valley of Flowers in Chamoli has come after years of hard work by the forest officials. The val...

The World Heritage Site (WHS) status for the Valley of Flowers in Chamoli has come after years of hard work by the forest officials.

The valley was discovered in the 1930s by an Englishman but it was a woman Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer from the North-east, Jyotsna Sitling, who rescued it. First, she worked tirelessly with the locals to clear the 87-tonne garbage from the buffer zone of the Nanda Devi Biosphere near the valley. This led to regeneration of some flowers which were considered extinct.

After this, she worked with the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) and submitted the valley’s claim to the WHS status, in January 2004. Her work was recognised when a screening committee of International Conservation Union (ICU) visited the valley in October 2004. The committee went back impressed.

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“I am relieved that the dream which we shared with the local community of Nanda Devi Reserve (NDR) has been fulfilled,” said Jyotsna, a former director of the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve who now works as the project director of Livelihood Improvement Project for the Himalayas.

“The new heritage status would put the valley on the world tourist map and help Uttaranchal attract tourists from around the globe,” Uttaranchal Chief Wildlife Warden S.K. Chandola said.

Out of six natural World Heritage Sites in India, Uttaranchal now has two — the second being Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve of which the Valley of Flowers is a part.

The valley had remained unknown to the outside world till 1938. An English traveller, Frank Smith, discovered it 1931 during his attempt to scale Mount Kamet.

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Situated in the upper Himalayan ridges at a height of 3,200 to 6,675m over 87.5 sqkm in Chamoli, it has 521 varieties of flowering plants. Of these, six are not found anywhere else.

Six more valleys

The forest officials are buoyed by the discovery of other valleys with diverse flora and fauna. “We have identified six more valleys of flowers in the region,” A.K. Banerjee, a former deputy director of the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, said. The state government is cataloguing the plants in these valleys.