CASE STUDIES

(A) There has been a lot of attention on the tiger of late after it
vanished from Sariska. Greater awareness of wildlife ecology and the
growing conflict between animals and humans in and around
reserves, and involving people to protect these areas are all needed.
In the Kerala'a Periyar Tiger Reserve, for instance, such moves have
converted hardline poachers into protectors of wildlife.

(B) & (C) One evocative path from the past is how our forefathers
declared some areas as sacred groves. Hundreds of years ago, they
had the vision of how important species of plants and animals would
be destroyed if they did not devise some ingenious way. So, they
declared such areas rich in habitat as sacred groves. As it had a
spiritual value, it got cared for and protected. Naturally, the groves
strengthened the ecological needs of the area. Over a hundred years
ago, D Brandis, the first Inspector General of Forests in India, who
traveled into various sacred groves, remarked that these sacred
forests were never touched by the axe and it saw an axe only when
wood was required for religious buildings.

(D) A substantial number of farmers are seeing the logic of returning

to organic farming.
They see it as the only way to get health and productivity back into
their fields as the chemicals have destroyed both land and their
health.
R Murali, secretary of MARI Modern Architects of Rural India in
Warangal says that they are now getting farmers to use traditional
seeds as it is more pest resistant. "We encourage diverse crops so that
pests of one crop do not survive when the next cycle comes up. We
get them to use bio-pesticides which they make by grinding different
seeds, using cow urine and neem." Murali expresses satisfaction with

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Sr. Lecturer - SFIMAR
the results and says it is encouraging to see that "we have created
models of how farming can become pesticide free."

The Deccan Development Society has also set an example. DDS has
trained women into storing and distributing diverse crop seeds from
seed banks. The best thing to do is to allow rural communities that
have tremendous traditional knowledge to protect biodiversity.
"Women, for instance, know all about seeds and how to preserve
them. They must be assisted to do so and we must give them the
space and freedom they deserve if our biological wealth has to be
preserved. Women have to be got into the middle of biodiversity
protection."

(E) The forest guards at the Silent Valley in Kerala which is a

protected rainforest watch visitors with an eagle eye so that they do
not steal any herbs or plants. They know the wealth the forest holds.
As there was a public campaign in the late seventies to save the Silent
Valley from being cut down for a hydro project, people are even now
staving off government efforts that promise them more electricity.
Public protests have underlined that they would rather live with
power cuts as they want the unique eco-system to be protected.
Ujjwal Kumar, a policy analyst with Gene Campaign in New Delhi,
feels that communities developed their knowledge system to use
bioresources as raw materials to make useful products while also
conserving biodiversity as they were so dependent on it.
Ashish Kothari of Kalpavriksh, an environmental activist group, says
that one way to preserve biodiversity is to give communities the right
to look after it. He feels that they need to be made stakeholders where
they stand to benefit in terms of livelihood and recognition. Their
knowledge needs to be updated and they should be sensitised into
protecting it from being stolen by outsiders for commercial purposes.

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Sr. Lecturer - SFIMAR
(F) The proposed project would violate a series of national and state
laws, the note, by KSBB has cautioned the chief minister. These
include the Coastal Regulation Zone notification, Kerala
Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act 2008, National
Environment Policy, 2006, Kerala Forest Policy 2008 and the National
Wetland Conservation Programme.
The note to the chief minister points out that the project if given the
green signal, will be in violation of the Kerala State Land Reforms
Act, 1963, apart from going against the Kerala State Biodiversity
Strategy and Action Plan, and the Ramsar Convention.
“Valanthakad is part of the Vembanad backwater, which is one of the
Ramsar sites and any such activities as has been proposed will be a
gross violation and would lead to disastrous consequences,” pointed
out Purushan Eloor, an environmental activist and a member of the
Environmental Protection Group (Paristhithi Samrakshana
Koottayma) which had filed a PIL against the project in 2007. The
case has hardly made any progress because of prevarication by the
government, alleges Eloor, who is in his mid-forties. The court had
issued notices to the state government and the state industries
department. But the government has been delaying further progress
by citing various excuses like ‘the final project report is not yet ready’
etc.

The report says in no uncertain terms that the destruction will be

irreversible. “It is just impossible to recreate the mangrove system
elsewhere; biological science has not yet grown for such a feat.” The
KSBB notes that “the biodiversity of the area is quite rich and it is a
traditional waterfowl area attracting a large number of migratory
species.” The report goes on to say that the people of the area would
lose the indirect benefits worth Rs. 77.28 crores annually. Dr V S
Vijayan, chairman of the KSSB, clarified that this is the gross value of

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Sr. Lecturer - SFIMAR
14 eco-system services, like regulation of groundwater, that are
invisible, but very much assessable.

(G) KPCL’s plan to harvest power from the Gundia river that runs
through the Hassan and Dakshin Kannada districts has been
criticised by environmentalists, local farmers and even the Union
Minister of State for Environment, Jairam Ramesh.

Before proceeding, the project must be submitted to the scrutiny of

the MoEF’s Expert Appraisal Committee for River Valley and
Hydroelectric Projects (EAC), for environmental clearance. As a mega
dam, GHEP falls under Category ‘A’ project (greater than 50 MW).
According to the EIA Notification (2006) Category ‘A’ projects must
be go through scoping; the process by which the EAC will determine
detailed terms of reference addressing all relevant environmental
concerns that will form the basis of the Environment Impact
Assessment (EIA) that the project proponents prepare.
The EAC however appears to have had no role in shaping the EIA
report produced by the Institute for Catchment Studies and
Environment Management (ICSEM), Bangalore for the first phase of
the project. “We haven’t come across any documents that list out the
terms of reference set by the Expert Committee for the EIA report,”
says Niren Jain, Coordinator of the Kudremukh Wildlife Foundation
(KWF). The EIA report came out in 2008, and it first went to the EAC
for consideration on the 21st November that year.
In a letter to the Deputy Commissioner of Dakshina Kannada district,
and a memorandum to the EAC, Jain contends that this lapse in
procedure makes the EIA null and void.
EIA report full of holes
Even if the report is deemed legal, its contents according to Jain
cannot be validated. The report states the need for 993.26 ha of land
of which 774.26 ha is forestland— 456.04 ha to be submerged and 285

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Sr. Lecturer - SFIMAR
ha for ‘sitting of the construction equipment, storage of construction
material, rock disposal, widening of existing roads and construction
of new project roads.’ At the 31st meeting of the EAC held in October
this year in New Delhi, KPCL’s Jaamdhar claimed that the report had
a few errors. He revised the land figures submitted in it.
The required land increased to 1041.64 ha, but inexplicably the total
forest area was reduced to 275.56 ha. Of this, according to the
amended numbers, only 50.54 ha of forestland would be submerged
along with 235.75 ha of private lands and 447.35 ha of revenue land.
The minutes of the meeting indicate that KPCL could not explain
how the required land for the project was reclassified or the exact
state of the revenue lands.
However on a visit to the project site on December 5, 2009, a sub -
committee of the EAC, headed by Chairman Devendra Pandey (a
former IFS officer) pointed out that private lands, plantations and
revenue lands would be considered forests if they comprised thick
vegetation (as per the Supreme Court ruling in the Godavarman case)
and would therefore come under the purview of the Forest
Conservation Act. The EAC further directed KPCL to clarify exact
status of the lands that would be submerged.
This is a small victory, according to H.A. Kishore Kumar, a lawyer
and plantation owner from the Hongadhalla village one of 18 villages
along the streams that will be diverted. Kumar is convenor of the
Malenadu Janapara Horata Samithi (MJHS), a group from Hassan
opposing the project. Members of MJHS allege lack of transparency in
the entire project, since its inception in 2004.
MJHS is group of ‘concerned citizens’ from Hassan, comprising of
farmers, teachers, lawyers, members of trade unions, political parties
like Congress and CPI and journalists.
Their main concern with the project is its environmental impact. They
worry that apart from affecting the climate here, loss of forests will
result in increased conflict between farmers and elephants.

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Sr. Lecturer - SFIMAR
“Only after the RTI Act was passed in 2005, we managed to get exact
details of the project from the District Administration,” explains
Kumar. He claims the dates for the Public Hearing for the project,
originally scheduled for July 26, 2008 was changed to August 6, 2008
without any notice. He alleges that the minutes of the Public hearing
sent to the EAC by the District Commissioner Naveen Raj Singh,
were manipulated and did not mention the arguments against the
project. “We recorded the entire hearing on video independently; so
we have proof of the objections raised. The minutes submitted by the
Commissioner have projected that there was only support for the
project,” he adds. They were present at the meeting, see quote before
this.
The EIA report has also got several facts wrong according to Kumar;
a view endorsed not just by conservationists like Niren Jain, but
several independent scientists.
For instance, a tiny paragraph in the EIA mentions categorically that
there are no wildlife sanctuaries or animal corridors in the project
site. According to the report the closest sanctuary is the Pushapagiri
Wildlife Sanctuary at 30 kms; the Brahmagiri Wildlife Sanctuary is 60
kms and the Kudremukh National Park is 90 kms away. However
according to Jain, the topographic measurements of the Survey of
India’s maps show that Pushapagiri is within 9.5 kms of the project
site.
According to the Environment (Protection) Act all protected areas
must have a buffer zone of 10 kms, usually to ease movement of
wildlife. A big hydel project is a violation of the MoEF’s order
prohibiting any such activity within this ecologically sensitive zone.
Furthermore, the EIA report fails to mention Elephant Corridors
located within the project area. Hassan and Dakshina Kannnada
districts are hotspots of the Human-Elephant conflicts.
Hassan district alone has seen the death of 14 wild elephants and 19
people in the past five years. Former Prime Minister H D Deve

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Gowda (who is an MP from Hassan) has even promised MJHS that he
would take up this issue with the Environment Minister in the
Parliament. Elephant corridors in this area have already been affected
by two 18 MW hydel projects both within the Gundia Catchment —
one in Kempehole forest and another under construction upstream in
the Kadumane forest. Unfortunately under the current EIA norms,
projects only need to be assessed individually; there is no
requirement for an assessment of the impact of a new mega dam on
existing projects.
The section on the flora and fauna of the Gundia Catchment are just
as inadequate. A comparison of this report with an independent
survey conducted on 17 and 18th January, 2007 (and published on the
16th of May, 2007) when by the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES)
at the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc), Bangalore, reveals some
glaring differences.
The CES survey (Biodiversity & Ecological Significance Of Gundia
River Catchment) identifies six different types of forests in the project
site, from Tropical wet evergreen forests to vegetation in plantations
and abandoned fields.
The CES report lists a total of 184 species of plants during the surveys
of which 67 species are endemic to the Western Ghats. Of these 67
species 27 are extremely rare, restricted to the South West Region of
India and Sri Lanka. However the EIA report states that ‘the
submersible area does not contain any rare, vulnerable, endangered
or endemic plant species or suitable niches for mega animals.’
The Faunal diversity of the Gundia Catchment according to the EIA
report can be summed up as common birds and animals found all
over India. The report lists only 12 species of animals in the entire
area and fails to classify the wildlife according to accepted norms of
taxonomy.
Butterflies (which are insects) and rats (mammals) are classified as
reptiles while frogs (amphibians) and Jungle fowl (aves or birds) are

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Sr. Lecturer - SFIMAR
classified as animals. The EIA report contradicts itself by mentioning
sightings of elephants (in addition to jungles cats and mongooses) but
claiming that ‘in the proposed GHEP weir and dam sites area, no
mega animals were sighted.’ The CES report identifies 19 species of
mammals including mega fauna like tigers and elephants.
The Gundia catchment is also one of only three known spots in
Karnataka where the Travancore Flying Squirrel were reported in
study by zoologists from the University of Mysore.
In addition to this the scientists from IISc also identified 29 species of
birds including the elusive (and endemic) Malabar Pied Hornbill. The
Kempahole region is recognised by the Bombay Natural History
Society (BNHS) and the International Bird Conservation Network as
one of the top 25 ‘Important Bird Areas’ (IBA) of India. Students of
Wildlife Biology, at the National Centre for Biological Sciences,
Bangalore also identified 49 species of birds in three days in the
region including protected species (Schedule I of Wildlife Protection
Act) like the Ceylon Frogmouth. The CES report also lists 44 species
of butterflies (two on Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act), 12
species of snakes and 23 amphibians, including a rare and critically
endangered frog called Indirana Gundia—named after Indira Gandhi
and Gundia, the only region it is found in.
As the project will divert water from four streams of the Gundia
River, the aquatic ecosystem of the region could be directly affected.
The EIA report claims that the Hongadhalla and Yettinahole streams
comprise very few fish species. The report adds that ‘None of the
species of fishes reported from the area, shows migratory behavior
and none of the species are rare, threatened or endangered.’ Not
surprisingly the scientists of IISc beg to differ. The CES report
identifies 14 species of the freshwater fish, two of them endemic and
3 endangered.

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Sr. Lecturer - SFIMAR
However it must be noted that the EIA has something that the CES
report doesn't. Perhaps in bid to make up for animals that ICSEM
missed, the EIA mentions sighting hogs in the region.
The glitch— hogs are found only in the North and Northeast India!
With all this biodiversity at stake, the gram panchayats of five
villages - Hongadhalla, Hethur, Valalahalli, Vanagoru and
Subramanya - in the Hassan district passed a resolution against
GHEP. The Biodiversity Management Committee (BMC) of the
Hongadhalla village formed under the Biological Diversity Act (2002)
raised objections to the project. Kishore Kumar, who is also the
chairman of the Hongadhalla BMC, asserts that the project can only
take off if they acquire a no objection certificate from the local
Biodiversity Management Committees; a procedure he says the KPCL
has overlooked. But Karnataka Biodiversity Board (KBB) member
secretary R C Prajapathi says the BMC does not need to be intimated.
The BMC can complain to the KBB if they feel a project will adversely
affect the biodiversity, says Prajapathi, but he is not clear on what
powers the KBB have in preventing damaging projects.
KPCL’s reactions to these allegations seem to vary. The group
escorting the EAC on their visit to the project site last week appeared
eager to assure the three member committee that environmental
damage would be minimal.
Dr Jaamdar at the KPCL office in Bangalore, however rejected
environmental concerns as ‘absolutist arguments.’ “All hydroelectric
dams in Karnataka are located in the Western Ghats.
It is inevitable that some forest will go,” he said. Jaamdar also
dismissed the possibility of not getting environmental clearance. “I
have got all clearances but one, from the EAC. We will get it after this
visit,” he adds. Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa appears to share his
confidence, as he laid a foundation stone for the project on the 26th
May 2009, even before they had environmental clearance, amidst

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tight security arrangements, that included arresting the MJHS
protestors to prevent them from reaching the project site.
Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, however took exception to this
act. In a letter to Yeddyurappa, dated 20 June 2009, Ramesh said the
400 MW project drowning 1900 acres of thick forest in the Western
Ghats region, was “something that both Karnataka and our country
can ill-afford." He further adds, "I do not think that environmental
clearance should be taken for granted any longer." Since then the
minister has repeatedly made statements in the press, refusing to give
the GHEP a green signal.
KPCL's Jaamdar brushes aside queries relating to these statements,
referring to the Environment Minister as a spokesperson for the
Centre and not the final authority. “There are people above him. The
project will happen,” he says. On questions regarding the veracity of
the EIA report, he alleges that certain corrupt environmentalists had
bribed two or three journalists to report falsehoods. When asked to
name them, he declines adding, “I will reveal their names when the
time comes.”

Much more needs to be done India's budgets fly with the rhetoric of
development and economic growth, but have yet to recognise the
wealth the country stands to gain with its biodiversity intact. Budgets
of the future need to recognise the value of biodiversity and
generously fund conservation and promotion of sustainability.
With co-coordinated action, biodiversity loss can still be salvaged,
atleast to some extent.
Some recommendations:
1. Have a policy framework that constantly monitors dangers to
biodiversity and acts on it.
2. Ensure that commercial development is not allowed in areas that
need ecological security.

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3. Expanding biosphere reserves may not be easy, but atleast what
exists must be zealously protected.
4. Document traditional knowledge before it is lost and use it to save
resources that are being eroded.
5. Train people in natural resource management. Involve village
communities in forest management.
6. Research areas in immediate danger.
7. Create wildlife protected areas with strict penalties.
8. Go back to diverse crop cycles. Food policies have to be so
designed to promote practices that help conserve diversity.
9. Avoid unsustainable farming methods that lead wastage of water
and excessive use of pesticides.
10. Encourage appropriate and sustainable technologies.
11. Build capacities of local communities to tackle biodiversity issues
and sensitise them.
12. Develop energy sources that will save natural resources like
wood.
13. For being a part of a complex system that protects biodiversity,
farmers have to be rewarded. The government could introduce
nutritionally superior foods into the public distribution system like
coarse millets and also get it into programmes like Food for Work.
This will keep diverse strains of the grain alive as there is a demand
for it.

When a nation loses biodiversity, it stands to lose not only its wealth,
but its future. There is little time for India to lose as its biodiversity is
already in danger.

Prof T. Mathew 11
Sr. Lecturer - SFIMAR