After court prod, Karnataka wildlife board to discuss fate of Hesaraghatta grasslands

The court last year directed the government to ensure that the status of the Hesaraghatta grasslands is not altered in any manner.

A state wildlife board member, Siddharth Goenka, earlier this year appealed to forest minister Umesh Katti to send the issue back to the wildlife board so that it could be debated. “The Karnataka High Court has sent back the proposal of declaring more than 5,000 acres at Hesaraghatta as a conservation reserve back to the state wildlife board nullifying a wrongly made decision under duress from a non-board member,” he said.

In a meeting of the board on January 19, 2021, then chief minister B S Yediyurappa rejected the proposal to declare the area as a conservation reserve after Yelahanka MLA S R Vishwanath opposed the idea.

Wildlife board members then said that though he was not a member of the board, Vishwanath attended the meeting and told Yediyurappa that declaring the Hesaraghatta grasslands as a reserve would affect farmers in the region. And the chief minister, without seeking the opinion of other board members, rejected the proposal.

Earlier, when he was chief minister, Siddaramaiah proposed to set up a film city in Mysuru and later the Congress-JD(S) government decided to move the film city to Ramanagara, which falls under the area. The plan was met with stiff opposition from ecologists, who said the grasslands had become breeding grounds for rare birds such as greater spotted eagles and lesser floricans (only a few hundreds left) and home to slender loris and smooth-coated otters.

On August 29, birdwatchers and conservationists gathered around the Hesaraghatta lake and demanded the government notify the grasslands as a conservation reserve.

The wildlife board is a statutory body set up under the Wildlife Protection Act 1972.