Plastic menace running wild in Borivali national park

MUMBAI: Plastic is the bane of modern society, and even the creatures of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) are not immune from it. Chital foraging in heaps of rubbish is becoming an increasingly common sight. What's worse, the skittish spotted deer can also be seen quenching their thirst from an open sewer tank near the forest staff quarters in the Krishnagiri range.

Visitors throw plastic wrappers of food items that attract deer for their salt content. Encroachers offer chapati to the deer, making them come back for leftovers thrown into the bushes in plastic bags. While the park authorities have put up messages urging visitors to keep the park plastic free, plastic bottles and thermocol plates make their way in without being checked at the entrance. Bottled water is also sold inside the park by fruit sellers even though there are enough drinking water fountains inside.

Vikas Gupta (chief conservator of forests for SGNP) put the onus on visitors. “Our expectation is that they will declare the plastic they are carrying in side, and deposit some amount which can be refunded later,” he told TOI.

“The prime responsibility of the forest guards is to protect the forest and not to regulate tourism activity. A dedicated team should be appointed by the forest department to ensure that all ecologically damaging items such as plastic, match boxes, knives and aluminium foil are confiscated at the entrance of SGNP. There are enough funds with SGNP to institutionalize this,” said Anish Andheria, president of the Wildlife Conservation Trust (WCT).

While plastic waste can fatally clog the digestive tracts of animals, human food offered to wild animals can trigger health and behavioural problems. The practice also makes animals lose fear of humans and causes conflicts, said Krishna Tiwari, wildlife activist and founder of Forest & Wildlife Conservation Society. “After being fed by tourists for so many years, the macaques near Kanheri caves have become aggressive. Many are also suffering from patchy hair loss, which is caused by consumption of human food,” he pointed out.

“Several species of wild herbivores including gaur, sambar, spotted deer, nilgai and even elephants, have died a silent but agonising death due to blockage of the stomach/intestine resulting from the consumption of plastic litter,” lamented Andheria.

In December 2015, the death by plastic of a sambar deer in Sabarimala had raised an alarm. The post mortem report revealed that the deer had consumed 4.7kg of plastic waste. One hopes that the SGNP authorities act before such a tragedy occurs in Mumbai's living forest.

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