Indian forests and wildlife battle for survival

Ravaged ridge: Only a cockscomb remains of a clear-cut forest in Mizoram. A Supreme Court ban on sawmills in forest areas hopes to stem such commercial assaults.Calcutta port is like a clogged commode. It's silted, and needs a flushing. But a cistern needs a handle and a tank. West Bengal Government engineers found the handle 270 km to the north, the Farakka barrage. Even further north they found a tank. The Sankosh dam in neighbouring Bhutan can pump a rush of water to Farakka through a canal 200 m wide and 160 km long. Simple.Calcutta port, the Sankosh canal will slice through the heart of Buxa Tiger Reserve, two wildlife sanctuaries and sundry forests. A host of endangered animals tigers, the last populations of the Bengal rhino, golden langurs will be pushed further towards extinction. "The canal will devastate north Bengal," warns P.K. Sen, director of Project Tiger, the faltering, 28-year-old Central government effort to save the Indian tiger. There are many grandiose proposals like the Sankosh Project, which hasn't yet been cleared.If allowed, they foreshadow doom for India's last frontiers: the forests and the protected-area network of 532 national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, an area of nearly 1.5 lakh sq km, much larger than the whole of Greece. Like so many which have succeeded cement plants, mines, highways and dams the new entrants hope to grab a stake in the great Indian wilderness, spaces already struggling against a surging human tide to preserve a dazzling bank of wildlife in some of the world's richest, most diverse forests.Victim of progress: This endangered fishing cat was cut in half by a train passing through Dudhwa National Park, where tigers and elephants die similarlyThe portents are grim. Apart from the elephant, the tiger and the rhino, a host of other animals, unheralded and unknown, might simply slip into oblivion. In the space of two years since 1995, India has completely lost about 5,500 sq km of forest and, ominously, nearly 40,000 sq km of forests have been further invaded and degraded, reveals a Forest Survey of India study released by Environment and Forests Minister Saifuddin Soz in February. "I am very perturbed by the report," says Soz, admitting to the unceasing trend of vanishing forests.Stung by criticism and Supreme Court intervention, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) is becoming parsimonious with permission states own their forests but projects on forest land need a Central okay to clear forests. After two decades of releasing forest land for all kinds of development and industrial use, 1996 saw a drastic decline. Things are so bad that on January 13, the Supreme Court confirmed the cancellation of licences to thousands of sawmills and timber industries operating in reserved forest areas.Whether by design or deception, the use of general forest areas for commercial needs and to improve life for the human multitudes, seems unavoidable. "We have a flood of proposals for mineral extraction and diversion of forest land," admits Soz. But most damaging is the fact that the once inviolate network of protected areas (national parks do not allow even grazing or human settlements) is under siege. State governments have been in the forefront of grabbing land from forests and protected areas. "It is a nightmare unfolding every way, every day," says Valmik Thapar, an adviser on official committees, who has documented scores of violations and deceptions by state governments trying to divert land in tiger reserves.Forest? What Forest?How states grab and clear forest landDeath on the beach: A crucible of life turns into a mass graveyard. More than 7,000 Olive Ridley turtles have died from illegal trawling in Orissa since last November.Denotification. It's the legal term for undoing a protected area and opening it up for development. Environmentalists simply look at it as a land grab often that's exactly what happens. A protected area can be opened to development only after approval from the state legislature. But ever since the free market economy of the '90s, State governments blatantly ignore the law to favour industries.Last year, the Maharashtra Government shrank the Kalsubai-Harishchandragadh Sanctuary to find place for a pumping station and reservoir. The Government told the local collector there was no need to refer the denotification to the state legislature. No one's challenged the illegal order yet.In 1995, the Gujarat government wiped out 322 sq km of the Narayan Sarovar Sanctuary to find place for a cement plant belonging to the Sanghi group of industries. When the Supreme Court struck down the denotification as illegal, the government used its majority in the state Assembly to ram the denotification through. The Himachal Pradesh Government went one better. It simply wiped an entire sanctuary (all 6.2 sq km of Darlaghat) off the map to accommodate a cement plant.Perturbed by such duplicity, the Supreme Court finally said last year that the state legislature's assent wasn't enough. Every denotification now has to be cleared by the Indian Board of Wildlife, an advisory body of experts, forest officials and NGOs. "The message is that our state governments (who own and administer forest land), just cannot be trusted," says Bittu Sahgal, member of the board and editor, Sanctuary magazine. States get away with this assault on the forests because many forest officials either conspire with companies or follow the diktats of local politicians. There is no other conclusion possible when you examine documentation required to release forest land:In the Panna Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh, the operation of white sandstone mines was described as "removal of materials".In building an irrigation project near the Sitanadi Sanctuary (tiger habitat and last refuge of the central Indian wild buffalo) in Madhya Pradesh, the state Government flatly denied that protected-area land was being used; a site visit revealed that 30 sq km of the land sought was part of the sanctuary.After approving the felling of 40,000 trees for a dam and nuclear plant in the tropical forests of Karwar, Karnataka, the chief wildlife warden, when asked if the area had significant wildlife, had this to say: "No, but tiger, panther, Malabar squirrel are present in the area."On the BrinkIndian Wild Ass: Less than 1,000 in Kutch, where the salt industry is expanding.Gangetic Dolphin: Never enters the sea. Dams, pollution and hunting taking it to the edge.Sangai: About 50 survive precariously in 16 sq km of Keibul Lamjao National Park.Dugong: The slow-moving sea cow could be finished by industries in coastal Gujarat.Hispid Hare: Devastated by grassland fires and now industrial development.Swamp Deer: Vanishing grassland habitats and competition from domestic animals.Protected areas are monitored by the Central Government; state forests are often open game. The Centre, especially in this age of federalism, cannot keep track of every violation of the Forest (Conservation) Act, and so the forests recede.There will be no let up in grand visions, like the 191-km steamer route to Bangladesh planned through the mangrove forests of the Sunderbans. The 0.6 million cubic metres of mud dredged each year will be piled on the forests alongside. The project's own environment impact assessment warns of extensive ecological and health fallout. The MoEF is now examining 121 proposals for dams, industries, railroads and highways through forests and protected areas. Unless they are carefully examined and controlled, many Indian wildlife icons face extermination.Tragedies of the WildMany species are hurtling to extinctionThe air is heavy with the overpowering stench of rotting flesh. This is Gahirmatha beach, the world's largest nesting site of the Olive Ridley turtles-and now the largest graveyard. For three months since November 1996, more than 7,000 Ridleys which come to nest at four sites in Orissa after an epic ocean journey have been found dead, the largest toll ever. Their odyssey is fatally cut short when they get entangled in the nets of illegal trawlers. Some drown in the giant nets, others are clubbed to death.The Ridleys perish because of a relentless competition for land and livelihood in the mangrove forests sheltered by the Bhitarkanika Sanctuary. There are 190 villages here with 40,000 people. The tide went out of control this decade: about 90 per cent of these are suspected to be Bangladeshi immigrants, encouraged to settle in Bhitarkanika by local politicians. Mangroves are being cleared and offshore, the number of trawlers risesceaselessly to defy the coast guard and trawl in the no-fishing zones off the nesting sites. "The needs of men are more important than mute mangroves and turtles," retorts Srikanta Mohapatra, a local politician.The carnage of the Ridleys is visible evidence of a growing man-animal conflict. But elsewhere in wild India, an invisible tragedy is unfolding. Many exotic but virtually unknown and understudied animals and birds face a silent end as their habitats and precarious ecological niches disappear. .preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}Even our most protected animals are now in deep peril. They die from poaching and poisoning; on railroads and highways cutting through their ever-shrinking habitats. Despite 23 tiger reserves, India's tiger population plummeted from 4,300 in 1989 to some 2,500 now, according to the latest census figures.Click here to EnlargeThere may be 27,000 elephants but the Indian tusker is in as grave a danger as the tiger. In Periyar, there are now 122 females for every male, as opposed to six females to a male in the '70s, says the Asian Elephant Conservation Centre in Bangalore. Similarly, the great one-horned rhino is being decimated by poaching: there are only 1,500 left, most of them in Assam's Kaziranga and Manas (a world heritage site now devastated by Bodo rebels) national parks.Insurgency, rebels and Naxalites take their toll. "Some reserves like Manas, Palamau (Bihar), Srisailam (Andhra Pradesh) and Indravati (Madhya Pradesh) are totally out of control," confesses Sen. In Sariska, Rajasthan, tigers and leopards are run over by trucks barrelling along a highway that cuts through the reserve. In Dudhwa, trains crushed a tiger, an endangered fishing cat and an elephant in January alone. A time of reckoning is near.Painful ChoicesSacrificing land to preserve the forests"The tiger is our anna (elder brother)," says Kishtappa. He's a Chenchu, member of one of India's most primitive tribes, a people who still hunt with bows and arrows. Many Chenchu families living deep in the deciduous forest of Andhra Pradesh's Rajiv Tiger Reserve India's largest subsist on meat left over by the tiger. Kishtappa cannot fathom why anyone would harm a tiger.Traditional hunter-gatherers like the Chenchu whose lives are intertwined with the forests-are supposed to be the only humans allowed to live in national parks. But times have moved on for the large majority of protected area inhabitants, some three million of them, who want to see a changing, prospering nation outside their world. "This is the 20th century," notes Sen. "How can they not have aspirations?"Sentinels: Only stumps remain of a savaged Sunderbans mangrove forestSo policy makers, scientists and environmentalists are deeply divided about how to deal with pressure from expanding, prospering forest communities. Should they still be denied roads and electricity? If they want these facilities, should they be moved out of a national park?The Government and NGOs are trying eco-development sustainable living that entails everything from getting people to use degraded land for fodder and solar cookers to replace their fuel wood needs but the success ismixed. "Coordination (between departments) is the major problem," says Kishore Rao, deputy inspectorgeneral (wildlife) in the MoEF. There are no clear answers to the problem, but it's clear that prospering forest communities cannot be converted into regular urban towns. Areas that are critical to wildlife and flora have to be clearly identified, demarcated and then sealed off from human habitation.Right now, there's confusion about the status of many protected areas because of a legal requirement that many states didn't bother to fulfil- often deliberately. After every protected area is first established and the boundaries drawn, state governments are supposed to invite objections, settle access rights to people already living there and then finally redraw the boundaries through a final notification. That order, in many cases, was never passed, often for 20 or 30 years, time enough for whole towns to spring up. So now when prioritisation is inevitable, states are well placed to shrink protected areas massively. Reducing the area is the easy way out: no compensation money needs to be paid and politically everyone is happy. "This whole exercise is fraught with danger because forest areas that rank low in priority may simply be denotified," says Asad Rahmani, director of the Bombay Natural History Society.It's already happening. In Rajasthan's Desert National Park, only 120 sq km of the 3,162 sq km grandly set aside for the park in 1980 is in the hands of the Forest Department. In the park live 12,000 people in 12 villages. In 18 years, no final notification was ever passed, a door deliberately left open for the powerful mining industry. "They (bureaucrats) were apprehensive of issuing any such notification, which could hamper mining," says V.D. Sharma, Rajasthan's former chief wildlife warden. The Fire Within: States routinely divert money for conservation, and so money doesn't reach the parks in time. One result is fires, like this one in Karnataka.Sure enough, the northern tip of the park is being set aside for limestone mines; the Government says it intends to shrink its area by 90 per cent. But there are genuine problems caused by careless initial notifications. Environmentalists often demand removal of industries from protected areas, but many were there much before a spate of protected areas were notified in the '70s.It is unlikely that anyone can simply uproot an iron ore plant. The pressure on living space is so intense that the task of prioritisation must begin immediately to see what can be saved, even what can be sacrificed. This doesn't mean all parks must shrink. More than half our tigers, for instance, live in forests outside protected areas. So some protected areas need to be increased. What is left must be defended to the hilt. Otherwise India's forests and wildlife could move from crisis to catastrophe and that is already unfolding.- with Ruben Banerjee, Rohit Parihar and Amarnath K. MenonPublished By: AtMigration Published On: Mar 9, 1998--- ENDS ---

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Indian forests and wildlife battle for survival

Pushed to the brink by industrial demands, duplicity of state governments and a surging human tide, Indian forests and wildlife battle for survival.

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