A CORRESPONDENT
DHUBRI: It is really a painful sight to see nearly 3,000 common langurs of Mahamaya Reserve Forest under Parbatjawar subdivision of BTAD starving these days. The prevailing pandemic and closure of temples for devotees have further left the langurs starving for food. Director of Kalpataru, a nature-based NGO, Suchibrata Singha Choudhury said that since last year's pandemic situation, activists of the organization have been visiting the temples area every other day and feeding the langurs as much as possible.
"Common langur habitat stretching from Guma Reserve Forest to Bahalpur, covering a stretch of 120 km forest area, mostly comes under Parbatjawar and Kokrajhar Forest Divisions. But common langurs of Maa Mahamaya and Maa Mahamaya Snanghat Temples have been living here for over a century and have become partially domestic in nature while the rest of the langurs are still wild, like the langurs of Rupsi Airport area," Choudhury added.
Choudhury said that since food was available in both the temples (Ma Mahamaya and Ma Mahamaya Snanghat) in the form of prasad offered by thousands of devotees every day, the langurs were well fed. But this food offering was completely stopped due to closure of temples for devotees during the first and second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and food scarcity hit hard these langurs living in the vicinity of all the temples, he added.
Apart from these, semi-domestic langurs are also found in the century-old Alokjhari Mother Goddess Temple and Tamarhat area of Dhubri district. Kalpataru has not only feeding the starving langurs but also dedicatedly planting seedlings and saplings round the year almost on every occasion, and this World Environment Day on Saturday, was not an exception to it. Activists of Kalpataru observed World Environment Day by planting seedlings and saplings in the premises of Dhubri River Port, participated by Dhubri Divisional Forest Officer, Vijay Palve.