An open licence to exploit

Recent surveys show that a substantial 33-35 per cent of the 3,400 recorded devrais in Maharashtra are located in a single ecological corridor — in the Western Ghats that straddle Pune and Raigad among other districts. But there’s bad news: the Shiv Sena-BJP government in Maharashtra, knowingly or otherwise, has dealt a deathly blow to hundreds of these devrais in the Pune-Raigad belt.

The first portent of this disaster-in-the-making was a three-page notification issued in November 1996 that allowed large-scale private development of hill stations and tourist resorts. Challenged by environmental groups, the notification was upheld by the Mumbai High Court last month in its judgement on the controversial Sahara Amby Valley project.

This alone covers 2,000 hectares of forest and agricultural land in Mulshi taluka near Pune. The court struck down the Letter of Intent issued to Sahara two years ago but that’s only one chapter in the story. Besidesthe allegations of criminality against Sahara and mala fide intentions of the government, petitioners wanted the notification examined.

Post-judgement, it is possible to have not one but a dozen and more Saharas in the ecological corridor. There are at least three proposals on the government shelves awaiting a nod. Golden Glades, Tunnel Tops and Esselworld have sought to “develop” between 400 and 2,000 hectares in the Mulshi and Maval region near Pune. Says a senior bureaucrat in the Urban Development Department: “We were waiting for the Sahara issue to be decided before deciding on the others. We considered them as very interesting proposals but when the issue went into litigation, we postponed taking a decision.” The decks have now been more or less cleared for that decision and no points for guessing that it could well be a green signal for developers.

The net impact of several private hill stations and holiday resorts — private means access is restricted to members — on the ecology, wildlife andlocal peoples is far from clear. A regional Environmental Impact Assessment study was called for but it was never on the government agenda. Ironically, official records such as the Regional Plan for Pune classify Mulshi-Maval region as extremely sensitive from the environmental perspective — a fact confirmed by independent studies as well.

The prognosis is not heartening at all. It’s not only the devrais that are threatened; the entire eco-system in the corridor has come under a cloud. “Traditional holdings have a large number of trees along the paddy bunds and on the slopes…in contrast, holdings purchased by developers have been extensively cleared and terraced. This has resulted in large denuded areas,” states a University of Pune study on forest corridors in the region. It emphasises “the need to conserve what is probably the only (such) corridor in Maharashtra”.

The Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) found that the region accounts for about 20 rare and endangered species of plantssuch as Entada pursaetha (garmabi to locals), Rauvilla serpentine (sarpgandha) and the Pranctium santamaria (lili); it also houses the Giant Indian Squirrel and species of the mouse deer that are high on the conservator’s list. “There will also be long-term implications when changes in the forest cover impact on water resources and the groundwater table. This is apart from the changes in the devrai eco-system,” says Sanjay Deshmukh, a scientist with the BNHS.

There’s also the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), 1998, report that lists 150 tree species, 418 herbs, 135 birds and 17 mammals found in a small section of Western Ghats in this region, some of them endemic to the region.

The area blue-pencilled for hill station development is several times that of the WII study. “The Western Ghats are unique in being the repositories of gene pool…the occurrence of typical families of tropics, there are species of Australian families, families typical of tidal creeks and species of Himalayas,” observesthe report.

And, all this precludes the people of the region, their livelihoods and cultures. It’s now an accepted norm that local management of forest areas benefits both the people and their environment. Yet, the notification provide a carte blanche for the total exploitation of these areas — the government can declare “any suitable area at an appropriate height” to be developed into a hill station, the private developer is allowed to purchase tribals’ land. A well-known environmentalist puts it this way, “It’s a licence to exploit the natural wealth for private use.”

To be fair, the notification states the developer shall not cut down mountains and shall plant specific numbers and kinds of trees. There is, however, no penalty for not doing so as was seen in the Sahara case.“The company is guilty of cutting down a part of the mountain but the state government was quiet and the courts were silent on this aspect,” says Samir Mehta of the Bombay Environmental Action Group. Hill stations, that tooprivate ones, do not have to mean a frontal assault on unique eco-systems like devrais and rare butterfly species like the Blue Mormon. But in the Mulshi-Maval region of the Western Ghats, it seems to be an unequal battle.

Under Threat

PLANTS

ANIMALS