Dehradun, Nov. 9 -- As it marks 25 years of its formation, Uttarakhand finds itself at a critical juncture - striving to balance between development and its ecological fragility. With 71% of its geographical area under forest cover, it remains one of India's ecologically fragile states and among the few where a significant number of people live in close proximity to rivers, forests and mountains. But this closeness, coupled with climate shifts, population pressure and rising pilgrim and tourist influx, has created deep and complex challenges. Here are six of the most pressing issues confronting the hill state today. From 1.2 million people visiting Char Dham shrines in 2000, to over 5 million this year, the rush of pilgrims in higher Himalayan valleys has significantly increased over the years, with experts stressing that the state government needs to fix a carrying capacity for these shrines and implement it on the ground level. These huge numbers are creating their own set of problems, especially in the context of piles of waste littering the slopes in higher Himalayan valleys and affecting the local ecologies. Along both Kedarnath and Badrinath routes, one can find plastic bottles and wrappers strewn along the roads and slopes, most sliding downwards into the Alaknanda, Bhagirathi and Ganga rivers. The increasing number of pilgrim vehicles on Char Dham all-weather road, especially in Rudraprayag and Chamoli districts, where the Kedarnath and Badrinath shrines are located, is also an area of concern as on both these roads, construction debris or fallen rocks on the roads, create traffic bottlenecks, increasing the chances of traffic mishaps. Experts say that it is clear that the load of pilgrims in the Himalayan valleys that contain the Char Dham shrines, all above 10,000 feet and all vulnerable to sudden changes in weather, makes the area increasingly susceptible to the kind of tragedies that have already been seen in Kedarnath in 2013, where nearly 5000 people were killed, and in Chamoli in 2021, when a glacial burst claimed 204 lives. According to state government commissioned report prepared the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Rohtak and submitted to the state government , Kedarnath Dham, most visited among the four revered shrines, can only accommodate 17,894 pilgrims each day, Badrinath Dham 15,088, Gangotri Dham 9,016, and Yamunotri Dham 7,871. Migration of people from villages is one of the major issues faced by the Himalayan state, with roots in economic disparities, declining agriculture, low rural incomes and a stressed rural economy. Uttarakhand government constituted the rural development and migration Commission in August 2017 to examine all aspects of the problem, evolve a vision for the focused development of the rural areas of the state and submit recommendations to the government on how to stop migration. The commission had submitted its first state-wide report on migration in 2018. The report revealed that 700 villages in the state had been deserted, and over 3.83 lakh people had left their villages in the 10 years prior to 2018, with half of them leaving in search of livelihood. Around 3,50 lakh people returned to the state during the first wave of Covid-19 in 2020, and 1.15 lakh returned during the second wave in 2021. But around 85% to 90% of the people who had returned to their native places in the state during the first and second waves of Covid-19 have since gone back, according to Commission officials . Overburdening of hill towns and implementing carrying capacity studies: The geological instability in Joshimath, with over 4500 structures on its slopes, had raised questions over questions whether the carrying capacity of Joshimath and other hill towns in state, especially Nainital and Mussoorie, has been breached and how it has impacted the environments. Though chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami had announced that the state government will conduct studies on the carrying capacity of Joshimath and other hill towns in the state, experts are warning that overcrowding in hill towns can be problematic for people and the environment alike. According to experts, anthropogenic activities are stressing hill terrains of many hill towns like Karanprayag (where houses have developed cracks), Gopeshwar, Guptkashi, Mussoorie, Srinagar, Tehri, Almora, Pithoragarh, Munsiyari and so on. The absence of carrying capacity restricting the number of pilgrims in the Char Dham shrines was also raised by NGT in July and November last year, prompting the state government to direct the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) Dehradun in December to assess the carrying capacity of pilgrims at Kedarnath Dham andGangotri Dham. One of the major challenges is to understand the overall impact of climate change on environment , agriculture, weather patterns, wildlife and agricultural practices in the Himalayan state. According to climate change experts, rainy days are reducing, dry spells are increasing, cold waves are reducing. and overall, India is warming equally. And this is having its impact on the Himalayas as well, especially on the melting of the glaciers and changes in vegetation and the life of animals and birds. The increase in the frequency of extreme climate events due to climate change has led to tragedies like the Kedarnath floods in June 2013, in which over 3000 are still missing and bodies of over 700 people have been recovered so far. Uttarakhand has over 1000 glaciers. And these glaciers, coupled with extreme local weather events and changes in terrain, can lead to lake outbursts, or lake formation due to the rockfall or landslides in the valley or slopes. Anoop Nautiyal, founder of founder of Social Development for Communities Foundation (SDC) said, "The state now stares at an array of challenges; led by disasters, climate change and widening social and economic divides. Rampant road cutting, unplanned tourism, reckless hydropower expansion, illegal mining and growth have placed enormous stress on its ecology....