Wildlife board accepts panel's report on Kolleru

Story/Place-Hyderabad,
Mir Ayoob Ali Khan, Apr 29, 2011,
HYDERABAD: In a swift move, the National Board for Wildlife accepted the Azeez Committee recommendations on retaining the Kolleru Wildlife Sanctuary area at plus five feet contour. The move comes as a blow to the State Wildlife Board as it is learnt that it was planning to meet, discuss and reject the proposal.

According to sources, the state government perturbed over the committee report had wanted to call for a meeting of the SWLB and declare that the recommendations, if accepted, would go against the interests of the aqua farmers in the area.

Meanwhile, unaware of the state government thinking, the NBW which met earlier this week decided to accept the committee recommendations.

The NBW had set up the seven-member committee headed by Dr Azeez of Coimbatore on April 29, 2010 to study the conditions related to Kolleru lake and recommend whether its contours could be reduced to plus three feet from the existing plus five feet. The committee which visited the lake, conducted interviews with a large cross-section of the population, studied material available on the subject and submitted its report last week.

The committee concluded that the villages around the lake are facing frequent floods owing to human intervention that is interfering with the hydrological regimes and flow pattern.
Kolleru, the largest fresh water lake in India, falls in the West Godavari and Krishna districts. The lake is formed on two large conjoined elliptical sub basins and flows in to the Bay of Bengal through the meandering channel called Upputeru, which is about 65 km long. The channel is under strong tidal influence and turns brackish especially towards its downstream stretch.

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