Experts miffed over forest project nods
During the last fortnight, India’s foremost wildlife experts have dashed off three consecutive letters to environment minister Jayanti Natarajan questioning the entire process of giving clearance to forest projects.
Conservationists Pravee-n Bhargava, Belinda Wright and Shekar Dattari, have in their letters demanded that pristine forest land should not be allowed to get fragmented.
Their letter dated September 28 stated, “Destructive projects are (being) allowed in pristine blocks of forests while isolated parcels of land are identified for compensatory afforestation.”
A second letter, dated September 25, written by non-official member of the Prime Minister-headed National Board of Wildlife (NBWL), including Biswajit Mohanty from the Wildlife Society of Orissa, Asad Rahmani of the Bombay Natural History Society, T.R. Shankar Raman of the Nature Conservation Foundation, Bivabh Talukdar of Aranyaak, Divyabhanus-inh Chavda, Brijendra Singh, Valmik Thapar, Prerna Bindra, Bittu Sehgal, Mitali Kakkar and Uma Ramakrishnan, have noted that during former forest minister Jairam Ramesh’s tenure, they were forced — within a matter of two hours — to clear most of the 59 proposals to start projects in wildlife sanctuaries and national parks.
These forest experts also pointed out that in the same meeting, “39 clearance proposals were received only two days prior to the meeting leaving little time and no working day for the members to even glance through the proposals.”
The NBWL members have demanded that every proposal for clearance must be present with the Environment Impact Analysis Report, the forest clearance details and the project report.
A third letter, written by Mahesh Rangarajan, director of Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Ulhas Karanth, tiger expert, and Amita Baviskar, associate professor at the Institute of Economic Growth have accused forest officials of fudging data and deliberately overlooking violations in order to clear projects that are detrimental to forests.
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