Identify geo-heritage sites, ensure conservation: Odisha Minister

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 Minister Ashok Chandra Panda speaking at the workshop
Bhubaneswar, Sep 14: A
workshop on geo-heritage and geo-tourism potential of Odisha was organised by
Society of Geoscientists and Allied Technologists (SGAT) in association with
Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH).
Inaugurating the
workshop Tourism and Culture Minister Ashok Chandra Panda laid emphasis on
steps for identifying different geo-heritage sites of Odisha and suggested SGAT
to submit an action plan for identification and conservation of such sites.
INTACH convenor AB
Tripathy highlighted the importance of geo-heritage sites to match with
cultural heritage sites.
INTACH advisor Dr
Rajshekhar Reddy described the geo-heritage and geo-park sites with the
historical background in national and international level with a special reference
to Odisha.
Geo-heritage is
defined as those components of geo-diversity with its importance on human
purposes other than resource exploitation and themes which we would wish to
protect for present and future generation. Main component of geo-heritage will
be geo-diversity, geo-culture, geo-tourism and education.
“This workshop was
meant to bring to light various natural geoheritage sites in the state of Odisha. Odisha is endowed with numbers of interesting geological features
manifested by unique exposures or rock, landscape, spring etc. Those are
created by natural geological processes over last 4600 million years. Out of 29
such heritage features located in different parts of the country only one
monument is located in Nomira in Keonjhar district in Odisha exposing pillow
lava structures. However there must be numbers of such natural heritage sites
in odisha which need to be identified,preserved and declared as national
monuments. This would naturally be considered as geotourism sites,” said Reddy.

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