Chhejung Lachungpa- A Passionate Forester

TR POUDYAL
Last week, I missed attending the funeral of my closest colleague and a great forester, Shri Chhejung Lachungpa, who was snatched by the cruel hands of the destiny on 20 April, 2011. He left all of us untimely, prematurely and at a time when his services were most required in the Department and by the Government.
He was greener than anybody else, if I may be permitted to say so without, of course, compromising the contributions of other officers in the Department. Both as a human soul and as a forester, he deserves to be described in the superlative. Firm, committed, dynamic, resourceful, active, alert, agile, he pushed through his daily forestry agenda with ease, confidence, dexterity and always without being confrontational like a CEO of the corporate sector. His equipments were his comprehensive knowledge base, his passion for forestry and wildlife and his unbound love for this tiny Himalayan State. He did not act for compartmentalized forestry or environment sectors alone, but rose above them to love and work for the entire Sikkimese landscape.
He had the years, the foundation, the scope and the ability to rise to the highest level in the hierarchy, not by virtue of his seniority and experience but by dint of his hard work, passion and obsession to the cause of conservation. He had the cerebral sanctity for forestry, his feet always in search of rarer wildlife species like the Sikkim Stag for which he toiled hard and spent week after week to rediscover it when he was preparing the base-line data for the Pangolakha Wildlife Sanctuary several years back.
On reaching the headquarters and meeting us during presentation, he used to express childlike happiness, used to be ecstatic on having been successful in finding traces of its presence. He never groaned or grumbled on account of hard outdoor field life, but took it as the first priority of a forester; qualities and traits which the present band of foresters need to reorient themselves to. Field is where a forester should be mostly spending his time, energy and research which forest officers like Chhejung have shown us.
I can vouchsafe that he was the only member in the forest fraternity who held most comprehensive data on the movement of tigers in Sikkim. I have sourced a great deal of information from his typed and handwritten papers on tigers and following appearances of these precious information in local papers, the young and dynamic Karma Legshey, DFO Wildlife, made a recce about three years back in East Sikkim and was able to confirm the seasonal presence of tigers in Sikkim.
A warm-hearted, amiable and a humanist to the core, he treated his seniors, colleagues and co-workers with respect, love and equality in that order. No head of the department from Shri KC Pradhan, to Shri ST Lachungpa, have ever muttered any complains on this Officer for any deviation or dereliction; on the other hand, Chhejung was the most sought-after Officer to handle any difficult situation or meet an emergent Official programme.
Notwithstanding his evolved efficiency in all that matters in forestry and environment, his first love was, to me, wildlife. He did a nine-month course on wildlife from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, in addition to his post graduation from the State Forest Service, Burnihat, after which he became a professional wild-lifer. He did quite a long spell in shaping the present Himalayan Zoological Park at Bulbuley, proposed and surveyed several key areas in Sikkim which needed to be declared either as sanctuaries or National Parks, undertook several search and survey expeditions to remote, inhospitable and treacherous terrains with resultant bruises and burns from the adverse impact of the high altitude weather. He so suffered but shined.
Loved and liked by the forest fraternity, he was immensely popular both within and outside the periphery of the Department. Not only has the Lachung valley, of which he was the dearest son, but the whole of Sikkim has lost an eminent forestry personality. The retired Forest Officers who had the opportunity to see this young Officer growing and evolving as a promising future apex power epicenter in the Department, express their deepest condolences and pray for his soul to rest in peace.
[The writer is a former PCCF-cum-Secretary, Forest Department, and currently serving as the Chairman, State Pollution Control Board, Sikkim]