Kolkata: The din created by rowdy picnickers playing loud music on banks of Murti river is disturbing animals at Gorumara National Park in north Bengal.Not only is the cacophony scaring off elephants and gaur that come down to the river to drink water, it is also affecting the sleep of nocturnal animals like leopard cat that rest during the day.Suvrajyoti Chatterjee, who was witness to the invasion of Murti river by picnickers, said revellers streamed in from early morning, arriving in buses and trucks. “Some vehicles were parked in open spaces beside the river while others crossed the river and carried the picnickers to the bank that borders Gorumara National Park. All the groups carried huge sound systems and the first thing they did after getting down from the vehicles was to begin playing music aloud.
At one point, there were about a dozen groups of picnickers in a small area, each blaring its choice of music in full volume,” he recounted.By evening, the entire river bank is littered with plastic glasses and thermocol plates as the revellers dump the waste directly into the river. With no cleaning operations by either a civic body or the forest department, the non-biodegradable waste is carried into the forest by the river and could well end up inside the gut of animals. The waste also attracts scavengers like crows that drive away forest and water birds.”Picnickers rampaging on the river bed disturbs river-dependent endangered birds like river lapwing and great thick-knee categorized as near threatened in the red list of species maintained by International Union for Conservation of Nature,” said birder and wildlife enthusiast Meghna Banerjee.Gorumara National Park is home to numerous endangered species, including Indian elephant, Indian rhinoceros, Indian gaur, leopard cat, fishing cat, leopard, Chinese pangolin, ferret badger, python, king cobra, water monitor lizard, yellow monitor lizard, Bengal monitor lizard, Indian soft shelled turtle, baza, hornbills, peregrine falcon and osprey.