Waste management inside the Wangchuck Centennial National Park’s territory in Chhoekhor Gewog, Bumthang is increasingly becoming a challenge for the park managers over the years. With the rise in the number of cordycep collectors, tourists, and local visitors, trash is becoming a common sight along its trekking trails and campsites. To mitigate wastes, the park and the gewog administration recently conducted a ten-day cleaning campaign along the Dhur Tshachu trail.
The 25 member team who are all locals of Dhur village collected about a ton of wastes. The cleaning exercise ended on Thursday. The wastes were segregated and dumped at the Dzongkhag’s landfill site at Kekela. The campaign was supported by the Asia High Mountain (AHM) project, which is one of the many projects under the World Wildlife Fund’s office in Bhutan.
“With wastes scattered everywhere, it’s like an eyesore for the tourists visiting the park. With this cleaning campaign, the place has become much cleaner,” said Chhoekhor Gup, Pema Doengyel. “If we get financial support in the future as well, we are planning to conduct similar cleaning campaigns so that the park becomes litter-free in future.”
Park officials said the clean-up campaign was held in line with the Department of Forest and Park Services’ mandate to ensure all parks are environmentally clean.
“The cleaning campaign was organised basically to create awareness among local communities on waste management and also to let them shoulder responsibilities on waste management,” said Park Ranger of the Wangchuck Centennial National Park, Yonten Jamtsho.
This is the second time the park organised such cleaning campaign involving communities along the high altitude areas. Earlier this year, the park conducted a similar initiative along some parts of the Snowmen Trek at Saephu Gewog in Wangdue Phodrang. The park also has a waste management strategy called the “Garbage In Garbage Out” or GIGO which was started in 2013.
“All visitors including the cordycep collectors have to declare all the products they take inside the park which includes plastic wrappers and all the products that are made out of plastic such as cans and bottles,” added Park Ranger. “They also have to declare wastes which have been produced out of those products while they exit from the park.”
The Wangchuck Centennial National Park has plans to organise similar cleaning programmes in the future along the Gangkar Phuensum trek.
