Churna (Satpura Tiger Reserve): Close to the forest resthouse at Churna in the Satpura Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh are rock shelters having hundreds of paintings dating back 3,000 to around 10,000 years. There are similar sites in Pachmarhi and Bori and senior state forest officers, who have served in this area, are of the strong view that these can be protected by declaring Satpura Tiger Reserve, comprising the Satpura National Park, Bori Wildlife Sanctuary and Pachmarhi Wildlife Sanctuary, as a World Heritage site.
Satpura Tigher Reserve field director R.P. Singh said that there is no other area in the country which is so rich in flora, fauna and biodiversity. The entire area is a treasure for geologists and botanists. There exist hundreds of rock-shelters with paintings dating back thousands of years, he said adding, in order to save them from vandalism, there is urgent need to convince the villagers to shift outside. According to him, of the 38 villages that remain to shifted from their present location along the Denwa River and also near the Tawa reservoir in the Bori Sanctuary, at least 30 should be shifted on priority.
Earlier on Tuesday, inaugurating the second conservation awareness camp jointly organised by CREW, a Bhopal-based NGO, and the wildlife wing of the state forest department, chief conservator of forest, Bhopal S.S. Rajput also focused attention on the need to declare Satpura Tiger Reserve as a Unesco World Heritage site. He described it as a botanists’ paradise and said it is a future hotspot due to floristic diversity, gene pool and endemic species. On Thursday morning, along with a group of participants attending the conservation awareness camp, this correspondent started from the Churna forest resthouse and took a winding dirt track cutting through thick dense forest by a four-wheel drive petrol vehicle to reach the foothill of a hill with precipitous slopes at some places. Once the vehicle came to a halt, the guide, who was a local villager working for the newly-introduced eco-tourism development society network, announced that from here one would have to trek or climb the steep flight of stairs till one reaches the top where the grandeur of the ancient rock paintings would unfold.
For most of us, carrying heavy cameras and other equipment, the climb could have been a big challenge, but what came to the rescue was the chill in the air and halfway through the climb everyone had started wondering why they did not leave behind their heavy winter jackets. When only a few metres remained to be climbed, the rock-cut stairs leading to the rock paintings became precariously steep and one had to find one’s way through the debris of huge rocky boulders lying scattered due to rock-slides. Once on top, the rock paintings gave a glimpse of the life and culture of people who lived in this part of the world thousands of years ago.