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Banni grasslands

UPSC CURRENT AFFAIRS | RESTORING BANNI GRASSLANDS, GUJARAT BATTLES INVASIVE TREE SPECIES | 06TH JULY | INDIAN EXPRESS

/ July, 2022, UPSC Daily Current Affairs

SYLLABUS SECTION: GS III (ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY)

WHY IN THE NEWS?

The Gujrat Forest department will restore 10,000 hectares of the Banni grasslands in the coming year,

and they come every year in the coming decade.

  • The Banni grassland was also flag by Prime Minister Narendra Modi,
  • In his keynote speech at the United Nations High Level Dialogue on Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought last year.

MORE DETAILS:

  • Gujrat is planning to restore at least 76,000 hectares of this (banni grassland) 2,497 sq. km grassland.
  • It has already restore 10,000 hectares over the past couple of years.
  • This grassland is a high-biodiversity area.

A. The mainstay of the restoration project is, therefore, the removal of this alien species, which incidentally was introduce to the area by the forest departmentinthe1960s to stop the ingress of the salt flats

B. He second part of the project envisions the production and storing of fodder for local farming and pastoral communities that live here.

C. There exists a huge gap in demand and supply of fodder, making the livelihood of locals very difficult especially in droughts, which are a frequent occurrence in the area.

BANNI GRASSLANDS

  • Over the years, the landscape of Banni has shown drastic changes with the deterioration of the grassland taking place because of:
  • Heavy uncontroll grazing
  • Widespread ingress of Prosopis Juliflora (a harmful exotic tree species)
  • Dams constructed on rivers flowing towards Banni
  • Periodic occurrence of droughts
  • Continuous increase in soil salinity.
  • In the year 1989, the area was dominating with grasslands covering 54.57% of the area followed by saline areas devoid of vegetation or sparsely distribution vegetation covering 27.30% and Prosopis Juliflora, an alien invasive species, covering only 15.72% of the area.
  • Recent Land Use Land Cover (LULC) assessment of the grassland has reveales that grassland areas over the period gradually reducing.
  • In the same period Prosopis Juliflora dominant area increased encroached to more than 30% of the land.

BANNI GRASSLAND

  • The Banni region emerged from the sea as a result of tectonic activities, received soils from the rivers flown from Bhuj mainland and ends in Greater Rann of Kutch.
  • Banni is the largest grassland of Asia situated near the Great Rann of Kutch in Gujarat.
  • It is spread over 2,618 kilometres and accounts for almost 45% of the pastures in Gujarat.
  • Banni is situated in Arid climate, with high temperature in most of time which reached maximum up to 48°C -50°C during May June and winter temperature goes down to 5°C – 8°C during December January.

Read more: UPSC CURRENT AFFAIRS

SOURCE: INDAIN EXPRESS