OSAI

The Vellingiri Mountains, a part of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, is situated at the western border of Coimbatore District and comes under the Bolampatty range in Coimbatore Forest Division. On the top of the Vellingiri Mountains, a Shiva temple - Velliangiri Andavar is situated. Devotees from Coimbatore, neighboring districts and states come to this temple especially during the month of April for the auspicious Chithra Pournami.

An average of 4 lakh pilgrims climbs the mountain every year. Due to the huge influx of the pilgrims, polythene and other non environment friendly materials were a threat to the reserved forest along with the threat of accidental forest fires set up by matches and cigarettes from the public. If each pilgrim carries three polythene cover with them more than 10 lakh such covers would be dumped in the up hills which cannot be cleaned easily. Hence, considering the eco sensitivity of the region and the flora and fauna diversity resent here, the District Forest Officer, Mr.V.Thirunavukarasu,IFS, and Mr. Parthiban, Range Officer, Boluvampatty, decided to curb this influx of non eco friendly materials into the reserve forest this year.

As a result, the forest staff along with members of OSAI (Kalidasan, Ganesh, Srinivasa Rao, Sashee Kumar, Uganathan, Mahesh Prasanna, Ramesh, Upendran, Senthil Kumar, Kathir, Prabakar, Hari Prasad, Advocate Mahesh and friends and NSS students of Krishna College of Arts and Science)set up checking points at the foothills of the mountain at the Poondy temple for monitoring from 11th April to 16th April, 2011.

Devotees were advised not to carry non eco friendly items into the reserved forest and items like polythene covers, plastic, cigarettes, tobacco products, supari packets etc were not allowed into the reserved forest and were collected at the entry itself. Also pamphlets were given to the devotees mentioning the same and banners for put up for the public to understand. Even biscuit packets and other packed food items were allowed only after the removal of plastic covers.

Cloth bags and water bottles were sold by forest department at very minimal price as replacements for polythene covers and water packets. Devotees were requested to bring back water bottles, other belongings along with them when returning. Understanding that the devotees will be arriving round the clock, the above operation continued 24 hours a day last week, with a mix of forest department staff and volunteers taking turns in the monitoring operation.

This initiation got good support and cooperation from the pilgrims also. In future the Vellingiri Hills which is a catchment area of our Siruvani water will be protected from non eco friendly materials during the festival season.

A separate operation is also considered to clean the trek route in the reserve forest from non eco friendly items, if any, once the pilgrimage season comes to an end.