450 families evicted from reserve forest

Guwahati: The state forest department has taken a crucial step towards safeguarding a critical natural elephant habitat and reducing human-elephant conflicts in the Goalpara district by clearing over 55 hectares of land encroached by illegal settlers in the Bandormatha reserve forest on Tuesday.
According to Goalpara DFO Tejas Mariswamy, the district is one of the high-intensity man-elephant conflict zones in the country, with an average of at least 25 human deaths reported every year.This year alone, 12 human and three elephant deaths have already been reported in the district.
Out of the 12 reserve forests in Goalpara that have been under encroachment, five, including the Bandormatha reserve forest, have already been cleared out. The forest department demolished around 450 housing structures in the encroached 55 hectares of land, which is part of the total 118 hectares in the reserve forest located under the Lakhipur forest range in Goalpara.
The DFO informed TOI that the settlers have been living inside the forest area for the last couple of decades, obstructing the elephant habitat. “As they have been encroaching the jumbo habitat, it had been giving rise to the man-elephant conflicts in the district. Earlier court has also directed to free the reserve forest from encroachment to lower conflicts, and the forest department acted on it. Although around 250 police personnel and 10 bulldozers were employed to carry out the eviction, it was done without using any force. Most of the families have voluntarily vacated their lands,” he added.
The DFO stated that extensive plantation drives will be undertaken in the area now that it is free from encroachment, to create a suitable elephant habitat, “so that jumbos can get a breathing space and it helps in lowering conflicts.”
In a related development, the Kamrup (Metro) district administration also carried out the second phase of the eviction drive at the tribal belt area of Sonapur on the outskirts of Guwahati on Tuesday. The Sonapur circle officer said, “Last week, a survey was carried out to verify the land documents in possession of the settlers, in most cases invalid documents were found. Around 400-500 families will be evicted.”