Wildlife Activists Move Supreme Court Against Dhamra Port
Found this article encouraging... Eminent names like Shekhar Dattatri and Romulus Whitaker are taking good steps for the cause. We should also write to the MoEF for the same. A mass response is essential to stop this catastrophe. Hope the Supreme Court intervenes in favour of the environment...
Three renowned wildlife activists have moved the Supreme Court, alleging that that the private Dhamra port was being built on forest
land. The petitioners alleged that this was in defiance of the stipulated law and also the apex court, which had earlier acknowledged the status of the land.
The petitioners are Bittu Sahgal, former member of the Indian Board for Wildlife and the Expert Appraisal Committee for Infrastructure (including ports) of the environment and forest ministry; Shekar Dattatri, who made two famous films, The Ridleys' Last Stand and The Killing Fields; and Romulus Whitaker, founder of the Madras Crocodile Bank, Madras Snake Park and host of other wildlife-related organization. The upcoming port is close to defence establishments like the Integrated Test Range, Chandipur, and Wheeler Islands.
The petitioners have appealed to the court to immediately ban the ongoing port work, penal action against violation of the provision of the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 and orders of the December 12, 1996 order of the Apex court.
They submitted a host of official correspondences done on the issue to prove their points and apprehended that if the work continued it could pose threat to the environment and the endangered Olive Ridley habitat. It quoted the government notification dated October 4, 1961 and a June 26, 2000 letter by the Rajnagar divisional forest officer (DFO) and said, "excavation and levelling of earth for yard construction has been done over the unsurveyed areas and appears to be within the protected forest areas."
According to the letter, the district level committee (DLC) set up pursuant to the December 12, 1996 orders of the SC had identified the area as a "forest". The chief wildlife warden of Orissa in his August 10, 1998 letter had "confirmed the status of this area as protected forest and had recommended strongly to also constitute the area north of Dhamra port area as a Reserve Forest in view of the significance of mangrove forest in protecting the area from the fury of the cyclone and sea erosion along the coast."
It said the principal chief conservator of forests (wildlife) and the chief wildlife warden had on December 6, 2007 written a letter to the Bhadrak wildlife division DFO asking him to take "necessary action" on the matter. The PCCF (wildlife) had also in his July 25, 2008 communication to the chief conservator of forest (Central), MoEF, had highlighted how the "ongoing expansion work on the Dhamra Port project was endangering the forest and the wildlife specially the Olive Ridley Turtles."
Found this article in today's edition of Times of India.
The article can be found online at http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/c...ow/5110555.cms
