Saving Bannerghatta National Park from the city’s garbage

Officials say the garbage is being dumped by people on the periphery of the park.

Officials say the garbage is being dumped by people on the periphery of the park.  

Volunteers and park staff pick up a staggering 11 truck loads of waste

Some time last week, scores of volunteers, at the behest of the Bannerghatta National Park (BNP) officials, assembled at Kalkere Range, which marks the boundary of the park and the city. Their task was to remove garbage piled up at the edge of the park.

A 3.5-km-long wall separates the two contrasting landscapes. The park is marked with green while the city marks its presence with an abundance of garbage.

Within the park, along the wall, 60 volunteers and around 35 forest officials spent most of the morning knee-deep in the garbage. In the end, they could clean up a stretch of only around 1 km.

The haul? A staggering 11 truck loads of garbage. This would translate to over 33 tonnes of urban waste.

The shock of seeing garbage pile up along the edges of the sprawling national park has resulted in extension of the cleanup drive.

“It looks like residents nearby have been dumping garbage over the compound wall for years. We have decided to gather every second Saturday of the month and continue the cleanup drive for another six months,” said V.P. Krishna from the K.R. Puram Constituency Association Welfare Federation, who is coordinating the initiative.

The initiative will be accompanied by an awareness campaign in the neighbourhood. For nearly 5 km, the park is surrounded by dense residential and commercial areas, with areas such as Kalkere, Pillaganahalli and Gollahalli within a stone’s throw from the edge of the park.

Double trouble

For park officials, the mounting garbage not only poses a risk to wildlife in the area, but can also lead to fires when locals set garbage heaps ablaze.

“We got a shock when we saw plastic bits in elephant dung. The area is home to beautiful diversity, with even honey badgers seen in camera traps,” said V. Ganesh, Range Forest Officer (Kalkere Range).

Officials have, in the past, tried talking to residents but with little success. However, the sight of seeing volunteers clean their mess seems to have had an impact. “The amount of garbage being dumped has gone down by around 50%,” he said.