March 9, 1998

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

By Samar Halarnkar with Ruben Banerjee, Rohit Parihar and Amarnath K. Menon

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.

Except that on its way to flushing 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.

The 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 (see graph). 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 land

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."

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.

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