Now, new trails at Panchkula

Those who love to take a trail sanctuary and like watching birds and know more about wildlife, then here is some good news. The Panchkula Wildlife Department has started two forest trails to access Machan in Berwala Bird Safari forest in Morni Hills. This is a part of Khol-Hai Raitan wildlife sanctuary.  By starting this trail now the forest officials are expecting more people visiting the sanctuary. The forest has wildlife like sambhar, nilgai and birdlife.  All this while the sanctuary had fewer visitors as the department would not promote the sanctuary. Now, the forest officials are planning small trails, which help to attract visitors.    As published in Indian Express an official informed, “The need for a trail was noticed when some of our senior officers went to the forest two months ago. They wanted to observe if there were any animals around the man-made waterbodies. They were walking towards the waterbodies but as they approached these ponds, the sound of their footfall warned the animals, and all they could see was the animals running away.”  The 25-foot-high Machan is located on top of a hill and provides a view of the waterbodies and of the whole safari area. This trail which is recently started is 1.5 km long and starts at Berwala Wildlife check post.   “The trail was constructed for promoting bird watching and field observation of wild animals from the specific height. A watchtower on the nearby hills of Berwala Bird Sanctuary has constructed two years ago but a trail was missing for a long time. Work is on to construct a trail to connect this with the two machans situated in Ber Shikargah Wildlife Sanctuary,” Inspector (wildlife) Jaiveer Kumar said. Lt Gen (retd) Baljit Singh, an avid birder who is a long-time resident of Chandigarh’s Sector 16 informed the trails were supposed to have been made back in 2003 or 2004. He added, “We (including then forest and wildlife officers) had great plans for the safari and I remember we had chalked out a detailed plan for the two-sided trail up the hill from the link road for observing birds and other wild creatures. Later, the plans were dumped as some staff members were transferred and some of them retired.” Singh believes that this area has good potential as bird watching site and therefore it would be one of the best options for nature lovers to spend their time.