Hyderabad: The Telangana Forest department will be more protective of KBR National Park from now.
The park sees thousands of morning walkers every day, most of whom are from the city’s upmarket areas.
But annual entry passes for the national park have been a bone of contention for newcomers, thanks to the loyal walkers who have been coming here for decades.
A walker from Banjara Hills who started coming recently to KBR National Park said, “The park has a cap of around 3,000 annual passes and more than 2,000 of them are usually old pass holders who get their passes renewed ever year, leaving little scope for newcomers like me to get a pass.”
While people rue the cap on annual passes, the forest department is not ready to budge, for the sake of environment.
A senior forest department official said, “The passes are limited because the national park has a Carrying Capacity (CC) of around 2,500 people, a figure derived by forest officials about six years back with help from Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun. From now we will be ensuring that at anytime not more than 2500 people are in the park. The new biometric cards and bar coded tickets will help keep count of how many are entering the national park.”
CC refers to the maximum number of humans that can be allowed in a protected area as part of ecotourism without disturbing the habitat of wildlife, their breeding, movement and other activities.
The forest official further added, “With increase in the popularity of the KBR National Park as a morning walk destination, people are considering it to be just another park. However, it is a national park meant for protection of wildlife and is governed by central laws.”
