Smugglers tighten grip over Attappady sandalwood

Despite its recently gained status as Kerala’s second sandalwood reserve, forestland spread over 9,000 acres of eastern Attappady is now witnessing a spurt in sandalwood smuggling, largely owing to severe staff shortage. In the past 12 months, the region that accounts for over 60% of natural regeneration of sandalwood trees in the State has witnessed 63 registered cases of smuggling. In the past four years, the number of sandalwood smuggling cases reported from the region is 343. Officials say most cases go unreported because of staff shortage.

Interstate smuggling is rampant in border areas like Mulli and Sholayur, where illegally laid forests roads to Tamil Nadu are controlled by the smuggling mafia. Through these secret paths, sandalwood is smuggled to the neighbouring State by avoiding border check-posts operated by the police and forest departments. In some areas, tribal youngsters are lured by the mafia to smuggle the precious wood through the dry beds of the Bhavani river. Environmentalists are now demanding a permanent mechanism in Attappady, on the lines of the one at Marayur in Idukki, to prevent smuggling. Marayur is the State’s first sandalwood reserve.

The Mannarkkad Divisional Forest Office has submitted a detailed project report to the department seeking special protective mechanism for the sandalwood forests of Attappady. Electric fencing modelled on Marayur gets top priority in the project report along with large scale recruitment of tribal youngsters as protective staff.

‘Better than Marayur’

A proposed participatory sandalwood tree management programme involving tribespeople is yet to take off in Attappady. Officials say Attappady now has more trees than Marayur. The rain shadow region is most conducive to natural regeneration of the tree than Marayur.

As per a survey conducted last year by the Kerala Agricultural University, eastern Attappady has over 2 lakh sandal trees. There are only 65,792 trees with girth above 30 cm in the Marayur reserve. Attappady used to produce the largest stock of sandalwood trees in the State in the early 20th century. But large-scale deforestation in the 1970s hit the trend adversely. The now-defunct Attappady Hill Area Development Society and its social forestry project had made an initial effort to revive the reserve.

Officials say most of the natural regeneration happens in areas such as Marappalam, Goolikkadavu, Mallikathottam, Mulli, Moolakombu, Cheerakkadavu, and Thiruvizhamkunnu. Since the sandalwood available in Attappady has high oil content, it fetches more price after processing.