CHANGLANG, 10 Apr: Seventeen airguns were surrendered by villagers of Changlang district during an ‘airgun surrender abhiyan’ organized by the Changlang social forestry division at the divisional forest office here on Saturday.
Launching the campaign, Environment & Forests Minister Mama Natung commended the villagers for their concern for wildlife, and for the support they showed towards the drive.
Natung appealed to the public to support the campaign in the greater interest of the state, and requested the PRI leaders to create awareness among the villagers to stop hunting.
“People need to understand the importance of animals and birds in human life. The extinction of wildlife will create ecological imbalance, which will have a grave impact on us. We should spread the abhiyan to the grassroots level before it is too late to save Mother Nature,” he said.
Natung, who also holds the portfolio of the water resource department (WRD), inaugurated the temporary office of the WRD executive engineer in Yatdam circle near here, and assured to have a permanent office built, for which he laid the foundation stone on Saturday itself.
Thanking the minister for his prompt response to the request for construction of the WRD office in Changlang, Deputy Speaker Tesam Pongte said that “the people of the district have faced lots of problems due to its earlier office location at Bordumsa.”
“With the establishment of the office here, it will not only ease the travel but also lead to better official communication. Now that we have the office in the district, we also expect more development in the district under Chief Minister Pema Khandu and his cabinet ministers,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Natung also inaugurated a 10 mtr indoor shooting range at the government higher secondary school (GHSS) here and the district futsal ground, and accompanied Education Minister Taba Tedir in the inauguration of eight classrooms and a science laboratory at the GHSS, and the Rangfrah guesthouse near here.
