Midweek Musings 43, 7.10.26 Leaving wildlife habitat inviolate is in the interest of securing Human Beings’ future # UNCBD COP 17

 Leaving wildlife habitat inviolate is in the interest of securing Human Beings’ future

By Malini Shankar

Digital Discourse

The Government of Karnataka has rejected the CEC (Central Empowered Committee) statute to protect the buffer of Bannerghatta Biological Park, is politically expedient, and detrimental to future generations. The Central Empowered Committee’s recommendations to conserve a 100 square kilometre circumference of the Biological Park is based on ecological imperatives. But it’s a gold standard that ought not to be compromised… in the interest of sustaining food security, water security of future generations. The forest comprises of deciduous and moist deciduous forest types. Together with rocky outcrops, terrain, micro climate, moisture content and biota it makes a crucial catchment area for North-East Monsoons on which Bangalore is heavily dependent. The terrain works perfectly to drain out the heavy rain. But the unplanned Anthropocene development is stifling and choking the drainage. That should sound the warning. Don’t blame Climate Change for flash floods.  The drainage is clogged by cement concrete in the name of human development.

The nomenclature of Bannerghatta Biological Park may conform to the conservation administration but it has critical conservation value. Bannerghatta Biological Park is critically located barely 25 kilometres south-east of Bangalore. This location complements Bangalore's weather perfectly. The CEC recommendation of conservation of a buffer zone tantamounts to 5 kilometres northward and 5 kilometres southward, similarly 5 Km eastward and 5 Km westward – that works out to a 100 Sq. Km buffer for the Biological Park. Failure to do this will exacerbate Human Wildlife conflict, and decimate the fragile green cover, the submontane weather of beloved Bangalore.It is Bangalore's beautiful weather that attracts outsiders and the ubiquitous software Industry that so wishes to colonise and destroy Bangalore. 

It is to contain the unmitigated human footprint on tiger terrain that conservation of the remaining 3.7% of India's landmass with forest cover has to be conserved at all costs.

The Zoo Authority of Karnataka also operates a wildlife safari for visitors in Bannerghatta National Park. The Central Zoo Authority, offers “lifetime care for rescued animals such as tigers, lions, and bears formerly used in circuses or other illegal performances. They also serve as temporary housing for injured or abandoned urban wildlife, giving them a second chance to return to their natural habitats. The daily functioning of all sections aligns with the objectives of the National Zoo Policy (1998), focusing on education, conservation breeding, research, rescue, and rehabilitation, thereby contributing to the nation’s ex-situ conservation efforts” according to the official website of the Biological Park.

There is a circus animals rehab area, a bear rescue centre, and a notified Biological Park, a butterfly park, an insect museum, and a wildlife corridor. A dry deciduous forest habitat that hosts a wide variety of ecosystems and biodiversity characterises these forests.. The forest patch south of the Biological Park marks a wide expanse of forest area that is a migrating corridor to Asian Elephants. It connects the Eastern Ghats to the Western Ghats.  At the end of winter each year, Asian Elephants migrate in thousands from Eastern to Western Ghats. Thus conserving this migrating corridor is of highly critical value indeed; an ecological imperative. Apart from migrating elephants the natural forest has a healthy and viable population of tigers, leopards, wild dogs, mongoose, otters, a wide but colourful tapestry of birds, reptiles, (including cobra, vipers, kraits, king cobra, python, and other Boas, and crocodiles, crabs apes, bovine species, like Gaur, wild dogs,,  all these creatures will get into the cross hairs of human habitation if unplanned growth is not curtailed and green cover is left fragile - in the absence of implementing CEC recommendations of increase the eco sensitive zone as a buffer for Bannerghatta National / Biological Park. 

Leopards have been sighted and documented in Anjanapura a Bangalore Development Authority extension; cobras and mongoose are often seen fighting for survival in Anjanapura, peafowl are heard issuing alarm calls ever so often, just a few kilometres from Bannerghatta. Elephants, wild dogs and jackals have been seen in Kodigehalli, Kengeri. Barely 10 days ago an elephant trampled a farmer to death on the SW outskirts of Bangalore early morning in the 4th week of September 2026. It only means human footprint is impinging on tiger terrain. Givn such a fraught situation, not proteting a mandated buffer zone, is reeking of political expediency and populism, that s only fraught with danger of increasing human wildlife conflict. The need of the hour is to plan the human footprint sustainable to manage the fragile environment. 

Not conserving the guffer areas is guaranteed to increase Human wildlife conflict… who in the current or future governments can take responsibility for crop raiding elephants, loss of cattle to carnivores, or spread of veterinary diseases in wildlife? Its not an issue that can be brushed off with a chin lift by some upstart politician.  

Whittling down conservation to justify unsustainable human growth is short sighted and politically opportunistic. Without planned human and economic growth the ecological price to pay will only be amplified by the stripping of the Planning Commission. Bangalore South MP’s advocacy of increase / widening of public transport is a sustainable option. Each citizen does not need 3 luxury private vehicles 2 pieces of real estate that defines a successful Bangalorean today. Indeed that is the root of this anthropocentric but deleterious to Bangalore. Traffic snarls in any city is only eating up green buffers. The demand on food and water is relegated to the background given the skewed importance put on private transport.

Without planned growth tax payer is deprived of common property resources and is detrimental to the very sustainability of infinitely popular Bangalore... seems like the taxes are invested in private resources … which is a double whammy to the tax payer.