In the search for marble, excavators have literally blasted their way
into Sariska, driving away cheetah, leopard, sambar and wild boar. But the
tigers are most at risk. The population dropped from 45 in 1988 to 19 a
year later. Their present numbers are not known because a fire ravaged 75
square kilometres of the heavily forested core of the reserve in May, while
the tigers were being counted.

Quarrying is confined to a 125-square-kilometre buffer zone, which encircles
the park’s core. But debris from the excavations is being thrown into the
patchy woodland within the buffer zone. This, and the continual movement
of trucks and workers, has degraded areas of the hill terrain, leaving gaping
holes and ugly scars.

A powerful group of contractors and state politicians has thwarted efforts
by the national environment ministry to ban mining and quarrying in the
park. Successive chief ministers of Rajasthan have thrown their weight behind
the contractors, making it extremely difficult for the state forest department
to take legal action against the state mining department.

The mining department earns about £1.1 million a year from licensed
workings. During the past six years, it has issued more than 300 licences
within the park, in violation of the national Forest Conservation Act. A
senior official from the national environment ministry said that central
government was powerless to help. ‘We can’t do anything unless the state
government cooperates,’ he said.

The Rajasthan government now plans to sell land within the reserve.
Hundreds of people who were moved out of the park and paid compensation
have returned. Reports of poaching and removal of forest produce from large
areas of the forest are widespread.

New roads have opened up the once inaccessible forest of the Gangotri
basin to thousands of tourists and pilgrims. An estimated 150 000 trekkers
and 100 000 pilgrims visit the area each year, and it is now one of the
worst polluted regions in the Himalayas.

Once abundant natural resources – wood for fuel and clean water – are
growing scarce. And the loss of so many trees from the hillsides has been
followed by erosion and floods of silt washing into the river. Added to
this is the problem of raw sewage, which is entering the river in increasing
quantities.

The Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests has drawn up an elaborate
action plan to restore the ecological balance in the basin. Voluntary organisations
and some conscientious industrialists concerned at the growing deterioration
have independently set up a Save Gangotri Project to clean up litter along
the valley.

The ministry’s seven-point plan aims to regulate the flow of tourists
and establish a national park and wildlife sanctuary in the region. Overseeing
the plan is a new Specified Area Development Authority. As a first step,
the authority has banned all construction in the region.

Tackling the problems of sewage is the next step. Soak pits on the banks
of the river are no longer permitted. Disposal of solid waste and rubbish
into Bhagirathi, a tributary of the Ganges, has also been banned, and small
treatment plants are to be set up all along the river in the Gangotri basin.

The action plan includes schemes to reduce people’s reliance on wood
for fuel by introducing subsidies on cooking gas, kerosene and solar appliances.
The environment ministry has asked the Ministry of Defence to provide armed
guards at the forestry department’s checkpoints to prevent illegal removal
of trees.

A more difficult problem to solve is the presence in the proposed sanctuary
and national park of army bases and border posts occupied by forces policing
the border with Tibet. These have been responsible for much of the illegal
felling in the area.

One of the country’s leading entomologists, Kailash Narain Mehrotra,
of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi, wants the government
to pass a law restricting the spraying of cotton with pyrethroid insecticides.
He argues that the insect’s growing immunity to pyrethroids is being caused
by indiscriminate use. Meanwhile, the Indian Council of Agriculture (ICAR)
has drawn up a battle plan to control the pest by biological means, using
its natural enemies.

The bollworm is not new to India, but its status as a pest has grown
enormously. It has eaten its way south to Tamil Nadu and west to the Punjab.
The bollworm is the larva of a small moth. It damages the boll, or fruit,
of the cotton plant. However, it also feeds on other plants in India, such
as chick pea, pigeon pea, sunflower, sorghum and maize.

Mehrotra is alarmed by how fast the insect has become immune to pyrethroids,
first reported in 1988. He says resistance has multiplied at least 100-fold
over the past two years. One pyrethroid pesticide, cypermethrin, failed
to control the pest in an area of Andhra Pradesh 200 kilometres by 75 kilometres.
Resistance has now been reported in the Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Maharashtra.

At present, farmers spray more than a dozen times in the north and nearly
two dozen times in the south each year. Mehrotra wants pyrethroids restricted
for much of the year and for farmers to use more potent agents, such as
endosulphan, instead.

The ICAR, meanwhile, has started mass production of natural enemies
of the bollworm. These include nuclear polyhedrosis virus (NPV), and parasitic
wasps of the Trichogramma family, which feed on the insect.

The council claims that in gram, which is widely grown in India, biological
agents such as NPV were ‘quite successful’ against the bollworm last year.
‘Gram production has gone up by 10 per cent,’ according to a senior official.
But it remains to be seen whether the biological agents will be effective
in cotton.

‘To ensure adequate and timely supply of the bio-agents to farmers,
as many as 30 mass multiplication units in 11 states have been set up,’
said Rajendra Singh Paroda, deputy director-general of crops, at the ICAR.
The council has identified areas where the bollworm is most active and it
has prepared management packages for various crops.

Paroda agrees that indiscriminate and excessive use of pyrethroids has
boosted the fortunes of the bollworm and elevated minor pests such as aphids
and termites, which have also grown resistant, to the level of major pests.

The ICAR and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid
Tropics in Hyderabad have both boosted their research into the insect and
its habits. The international institute has found that the insect’s wide
choice of food allows it to travel easily over great distances and to survive
from one crop season to another.