Chief Secretary Bijay Kumar Patnaik on Tuesday asked the concerned offiials to specify sensitive zones for each sanctuary with proper verification of actual filed situation. He was presiding over a high-level meeting at the State Secretariat.
Patnaik advised Secretary, Forest & Environment Raj Kumar Sharma to involve the concerned departments, more specifically Revenue & Disaster Management, Housing & Urban Development and Steel & Mines, in this exercise. These departments were also asked to have direct involvement and active participation in defining the ecosensitive zones.
The Chief Secretary made it clear that it is a very important and significant exercise and should be performed with all sincere commitments in interest of the developmental intervention needed for people, protection of wildlife and preservation of forest.
The issues relating to determination of distance between sanctuary and mining area were also discussed at the meeting. It was revealed that meanwhile the DGPS surveys of the major mining areas have already been completed. The available data show the ORSAC has completed DGPS surveys of 220 mining lease areas.
The State’s major sanctuaries include the Chilika bird sanctuary, the Similipal National Park, the Satkosia Tiger Reserve, the wildlife sanctuaries at Kothgarh, Sunabedha, Debrigarh, Balukhand, Bhitarkanika, Badrama, Kuldiha, Baisiapalli, Karlapat, Khalasuni, Hadgarh, Unshakothi, Chandka-Dampada, Nandankanan and Kapilash.
The Forest Department has completed GPS surveys of all the sanctuary areas. The Chief Secretary directed ORSAC experts to integrate these two sets of data in the GIS domain and find out the distance. The PCCF was also advised to take up DGPS surveys of all reserve forest areas.