India Tourism Delhi hosts influencers at ‘Titli Tyar’ in Corbett landscape
Corbett National Park in the terai belt of Uttarakhand has long been all about tigers and to some extent wild elephants. The tiger sighting craze of wildlife tourism has lot to do with exploitation of our jungles. Besides, national parks and landscapes like Corbett have long faced the brunt of all negative trends because of their proximity to northern cities, where all travel hungry, party crazy city dwellers will ‘love’ to spend their weekends.
There have been many wrongs, and now some serious efforts are being done to turn few of them right. Need was to shift focus on other aspects of nature in and around the national park. Titli Tyar is one of them. But it is a job not possible for any one singlehandedly and hence all stakeholders needed to join in. After organising a bird festival sometime back, now it was the time for butterflies.
Why butterflies?
Butterflies signify everything beautiful in our nature. One of the most delicate living beings is also one of the strongest indicators of health of our surrounding ecosystem. So the common motive was to spread awareness about habitat creation for Butterflies in Corbett. The festival aimed to share the knowledge, clear many myths and create a lot of love about their importance with the common travellers and tourists from all age groups.
This is actually the second butterfly festival ‘Titli Tyar 2021’ being held at Kyari village near Ramnagar in the Corbett landscape. Inaugurated on September 17, festival will continue till October 2.
Last year Tyar Foundation and Kalptaru along with various stakeholders organised the inaugural edition and despite the pandemic effect it had an encouraging response. With situations slightly better this year, the scale is increased. Many others have pitched in. Besides India Tourism and Uttarakhand Tourism the festival is also supported by Alaya Resorts and Spa as the Hospitality partner. A team of butterfly experts from Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) is also there to tell people about butterflies and take them to field trips to see the winged angels at work. Even the children from various schools in Kyari village as well as Ramnagar are being made aware of the issue by involving them in various interactive activities.
India Tourism Delhi was also there with a team of influencers to take the issue forward and spread the word through social media.
Speaking about it, Anil Oraw, Regional Director (North), India Tourism Delhi, Ministry of Tourism said, “We at India Tourism Delhi always endeavour to bring something new for our travelers. Our country has the most amazing and diverse tourism products, and our northern states have many products which our travelers are not aware of yet. Through this Influencers outreach, we have made an effort to bring forth the unexplored.
“The Ramnagar belt and especially the Kyari region has a rich variety of flora and fauna and hence a wide variety of butterflies and birds are found here. It is a way to sensitise our travellers towards a completely new product where tourists can spend time inside the jungle area seeing beautiful butterflies, moths and other birds. In times where people are spending maximum time within the confines of their city homes, spending few days amidst lush green jungle is a much welcome change and all should try visiting these areas.”
Santosh Pant, Forest Officer at the Bela Padav range of the Ramnagar forest division highlighted the need of involving more and more local people as well as forest department personnel to bridge the gap between travelers and the stakeholders. He said, it is important to make all those people aware of these focus areas and scientific knowledge about them, who are working on ground with the nature, the wildlife and the tourists almost round the clock.
Nice writeup, very informative.