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Kovai's Singanallur Lake is now urban biodiversity conservation zone
Singanallur Lake in Coimbatore City has been declared as an ‘Urban Biodiversity Conservation Zone’ (UBCZ). As a first of its kind, it was dedicated to the region by the municipal administration minister SP Velumani. He unveiled a plaque on the banks of the lake on Sunday.
Coimbatore
“The 288 acre sprawling lake was created by the Cholas in the 16th century,” the minister said and added that the lake is special among the 19 lakes and tanks in Coimbatore Corporation limits. “It has a host of salient features which include the environment, green cover, multicultural aspects and ecology,” elaborated the minister.
It is said that efforts are on to preserve and promote the ecology of the lake. A lot of work swill be jointly undertaken by the Centre for Urban Biodiversity Conservation and Education (CUBE), which is functioning with Coimbatore Corporation Commissioner as its president and NGOs working on environmental conservation as stakeholders.
Environmental research scholar Vinny R Peter who has been studying the lake for 10 years and who is also a part of the team that has taken up conservation of the biodiversity there has documented a total of 720 species in the lake’s environment. She said this includes 160 species of birds, of which 58 breed in the lake.
Other species recorded in the lake include 396 plants of which around 200 are medicinal, 62 butterflies, 22 mammals, 24 reptiles, 3 amphibians, 12 fishes and 21 dragonflies and damselflies in addition to 20 other common life forms. She said that the urban biodiversity here has been neglected for long as there is an assumption that only forests can have biodiversity and should be protected.
From 2016, a lot of efforts have been taken to give a facelift to the lake’s ecology. It includes planting of four patches of Miyawaki forests and planting of nearly 1,000 palm saplings in order to strengthen the bunds.
A palm tree nursery has also been established. A nursery, with numerous fruit bearing varieties of trees, shady and flowering saplings, has been raised in order to attract more species of birds and insects around the lake
CUBE members M Ramesh and B Nagarajan said that Article 243W (a) ii and (b) – Twelfth Schedule 8 of The Constitution (Seventy Fourth Amendment) Act, 1992, has a clear mention of urban forestry, protection of the environment and promotion of ecological aspects. They pressed for the need for the other urban local bodies too to establish such UBCZs.
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