IWN Daily Digest — Monday, 24 August 2026
Hundreds of residents and environmentalists gathered on Madayippara, a laterite plateau in Kerala’s Kannur district, on Saturday evening. They came to demand stronger protection for a 600-to-700-acre landscape that’s quietly being worn down by the crowds who come to admire it.
Madayippara sits above the Kuppam river near Pazhayangadi, where Kerala’s coastal plains rise towards the Western Ghats. The plateau holds nearly 700 flowering plant species, more than 160 butterflies, 269 recorded bird species and several plants found nowhere else, including Nymphoides krishnakesara and Justicia ekakusuma.
Under pressure
The plateau’s own popularity is the problem. Local conservationists estimate that 500 to 600 vehicles can arrive on a single peak holiday, many driven straight onto the open ground, where cooking fires, parked cars and foot traffic wear down vegetation the shallow laterite soil struggles to recover.
An amusement-cum-eco park has operated nearby since 31 July, and it has become the focus of the protest. Activists have questioned its permissions and argue that calling a commercial venture an “eco-park” doesn’t automatically make it good for the ecosystem beside it, especially one already absorbing hundreds of vehicles a day.
Conservation activist N Subrahmanyan, based in nearby Payyannur, says the change happened quickly. Better roads, social media and tourism promotion turned a spot once visited mainly by pilgrims and researchers into a mass day-trip destination. Fellow activists T P Padmanabhan and V C Balakrishnan point to the same worry, that the plateau’s laterite, soil, water and rock support species with nowhere else to go if the habitat disappears.
Observational studies cited by the protesters put Madayippara’s water storage at around 320 crore litres a year, drawn from rain that filters through the porous laterite into streams and groundwater below. A parking lot or a sealed access road might look harmless on its own. Madayippara is absorbing several such projects at once, not one big one.
The demand from Saturday’s rally was simple. Stop treating the plateau as spare land, and assess the cumulative impact of new development before the damage is done, not after.
Sources: Down To Earth
India Wildlife News aggregates wildlife stories from across Indian media to bring the latest from the field to enthusiasts, conservationists, and curious readers — all in one place. Full credit and links to original sources are provided. We encourage readers to visit and support the original publishers.