Tourist season at Dudhwa ends; official claims loss of several lakh rupees due to COVID-19

Tourist season at the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur Kheri district officially ended on Monday, with the field director claiming loss of several lakh of rupees as the park was closed since March due to the coronavirus lockdown.

Tourist season at the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur Kheri district officially ended on Monday, with the field director claiming loss of several lakh of rupees as the park was closed since March due to the coronavirus lockdown. Every year, the nearly seven-month long tourist season in the national park commences on November 15 and concludes on June 15 ahead of monsoon, when the jungle area gets flooded and roads and corridors are almost inaccessible.

In normal days, Dudhwa attracts tourists, research scholars, environmentalists, ornithologists and wildlife enthusiasts from all across the globe, owing to its rich flora and fauna, undisturbed natural habitats, rich population of carnivorous, herbivorous, avian and aquatic life, grasslands and wetlands. "But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dudhwa was closed since March and it incurred loss of several lakh of rupees in terms of tourism revenue," field director Sanjay Kumar Pathak told PTI.

Pathak said the national park is home to all five species of deer, swamp deer (barasingha), spotted deer, hog deer, sambhar deer and barking deer, royal bengal tigers, wild bear, crocodiles etc. The world's most successful rhino rehabilitation programme can be witnessed in Dudhwa, where rhinos were populated in 'terai' land after a gap of one-and-a-half century. The success of the programme can be gauged from the fact that last year, a second rhino area was populated here to accommodate growing rhino population and to encourage gene diversity, the official added..