Ooty: In a fresh initiative to mitigate man-animal conflicts in Nilgiris, the State Horticulture department has taken steps to construct compound walls around boundaries of the famed Sim's Park at Coonoor, at the Government Botanical Garden (GBG) and the Government Rose Garden (GRG) in Ooty town to check the intrusion of the Indian wild gaurs, popularly known as the Indian bison.
This is in the backdrop of them having emerged as a big threat to the lives of tourists in recent times in the hills here. A wild gaur attacked a Chennai-based tourist couple in October last year at Sim's Park in Coonoor. With government giving its nod to the proposal to construct such compound walls as well as chain-linked fences around the gardens, the works are underway, in the first phase, along the boundary of Sim's Park in Coonoor.
Horticulture department sources said that a seven-ft high compound wall is being constructed in Sim's Park along with a chain-linked fence at a few select points. Similar walls and chain-link fences will also come up along the boundaries of the GBG and GRG in Ooty, sources added.
Welcoming this initiative, Mr. Rajesh Kumar James, secretary of the Citizens' Forum of Coonoor, opined that some kind of monitoring mechanism with cyber era technology in place, besides the construction of walls, will do better to manage the gaur-garden conflict.
