Villagers do not want acacia plantations

TIRTHAHALLI: Expressing their opposition to acacia plantations coming up in the area, villagers in the Western Ghat region urged the state government to replace all the acacia plantations with indigenous plant varieties.Participating in a seminar on acacia plantations held here on Thursday, the farmers coming from all the districts around the Western Ghat region, condemned the afforestation programmes of the Forest Department and the Mysore Paper Mills through which “the two agencies had converted the important biological heritage site of the Western Ghat into a valley of acacia”.The seminar was held jointly by Purushottam Organic Farming group, Purushottama Rao Agricultural Research Foundation and Malnad Jagritha Vedika.‘Aranya Jnanada Hathyakaanda’, a book on acacia plantations written by wellknown writer and environmentalist Shivananda Kalave was released on the occasion.Alleging that development of acacia plantations was directly related to globalisation, environmentalist and economist Prof B M Kumaraswamy said monoculture in forestry was part of market-driven financial policy imposed by the superpowers.About the argument by some forest officers that people like acacia as an useful wood, he said people accepted it because there was no alternative wood.Terming the circular issued by the state banning acacia in the region a farce, Shivananda Kalave said they were planting acacia even now felling the natural forests.Village Forest Committees were lured with high income being generated by these plantations, he said.He said a scandal as big as the mining scam was behind acacia plantations.Chief of Malnad Jagritha Vedike K G Sridhara, who waged a legal battle for 14 years against acacia plantations, said due to court intervention, 3,812 hectares of Gomal and 4,665 hectares of wildlife sanctuary areas were spared of acacia plantations.According to an agreement, Mysore Paper Mills should have planted 40 sandalwood saplings in each hectare of land. Since it failed to honour the agreement, the state suffered a revenue loss of Rs10,000 crore, he added.Releasing Kalave’s book, chairman of the Western Ghat Task Force Anantha Hegde Ashisara said all steps would be taken to ban acacia.Schools and social organisations would be encouraged to plant indigenous varieties in social forests, he added.