27-Slaying the beauty of Naini Lake - A geographical and environmental perspective

Abstract

NainiTal the tourist paradise represents the Kumaun hill environment in all its richness and diversity- physical, social, economic and cultural and with all the attending characteristics like the pride of the hill people in being Kumaunies the wide gamut of hill fauna and flora as also the natural calamities associated with Himalaya, the young mountain of the world. This popular hill resort of Northern India is the source of attraction due to its natural Naini Lake unfortunately its condition is deteriorating every day. The economic and social activities of this area has increased tremendously.NainiTal has been developed mainly as an Administrative town instead of a major tourist center which it really deserves. Owing to these activities at NainiTal proper natural environmental balance of the area got disrupted. There is no denying of the fact that Naini Lake is fallen victim to human greed, as a result of which the entire ecosystem is rapidly changing. With the increase in the tourist influx a large number of residential buildings and hotels have come up along the lake front.NainiTal lake is the only source of drinking water for the local people. Investigations carried out in the lake area reported that the water quality is harmful for human as well as animal consumption. A number of human activities such as land reclamation,encrochments,growth of authorized ,unauthorized and disorderly human habitation and construction of restaurants and guest houses for tourists around the lake periphery have contributed to its pollution and resulted further deterioration of the lake water quality. The thermal behavior of the lake water is also get modified with the raising of the lake bottom. Development of urban activities on the slope and surrounding arca have increased the sedimentation rate and lake is under accelerated silting and eutrophication. If this state of affairs continues the lake may reduce to half of its present status, which is not- too distant future. This is not an easy task to assess the present stress from Urbanization, so called developmental activities and human interferences in the lake area. An attempt has, therefore, been made in the present paper to record the environmental degradation in and around the lake region. The paper also focuses certain geographical aspects of the NainiTal and geomorphological evolution of the Naini lake in brief. The situation today is alarming and calls for immediate adoption of an integrated approach to solve the lake problems, so that Natural Beauty may remain truly natural.