250 Hectares Cleared, 4,000 Tonnes Waste: Heavy Ecological Cost of Medaram Jatara
Streams have turned murky and trails into trash heaps as devotees camp for advance darshan.
Hyderabad: Even before the biennial Medaram Sammakka-Saralamma Jatara begins on January 28 – 31, lakhs of pilgrims have descended on the Eturnagaram wildlife sanctuary, leaving behind more than 4,000 tonnes of plastic waste and trampling forest cover around the sacred 'Gaddelu'.
Streams have turned murky and trails into trash heaps as devotees camp for advance darshan. The forest cover surrounding the deities, revered as Vana Devatalu, is shrinking rapidly under the surge of human activity.
Reports suggest 200–250 hectares have been cleared for stalls, parking, and roads, with trees felled for firewood. High-tech upgrades such as crowd-detection gadgets, CCTV cameras, luxury tents, and food courts for affluent visitors have added further strain.
The Eturnagaram sanctuary has already lost nearly 15,000 hectares to shifting cultivation since 2005. Jatara-related footfall has claimed hundreds more through unauthorised paths and development.
Alarmed by forest depletion and plastic build-up, groups including Vande Bharat Foundation, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and Sri Ramachandra Sena have launched awareness campaigns, clean-up drives, and tree-planting initiatives.
Vande Bharat Foundation members D. Chandrasekhar and Srikant said they had mobilised 2,000 volunteers to educate devotees against the use of plastic and to promote sanitation. “We plan to engage 5,000 more during and after the Jatara for waste collection and sapling plantation,” they noted.
The duo added they previously assisted 200 panchayat and pollution control teams in digging 20-foot pits along sanctuary edges, trucking non-biodegradable waste to dumps, and installing specialised bins. Chandrasekhar warned of alarming plastic levels in streams, with E. coli spikes detected in their studies.
Tribal elder P. Buchamma lamented: “Forests thick until the 1980s are down 30 per cent around the Medaram fair.”
Hyderabad devotee S. Lakshmi, volunteering with Sri Ramachandra Sena, recalled her shock at plastic-littered trails a month ago. She urged colleges, universities, and NGOs to join in large numbers to educate pilgrims on shunning plastic and safeguarding forest deities.
Last year, 200 sanitation teams worked for weeks to clear 12,000 tonnes of waste. With the state government spending ₹251 crore on Medaram infrastructure, Chandrasekhar appealed for eco-focused measures to ban plastic, protect nature, and revive teak groves alive with birdsong and clear streams.
