Unlike crocodiles, gharials an

Gharial habitat cannot be disturbed: wildlife board

THE National Board for Wildlife or nbwl has shot down the Rajasthan government’s proposal to build four hydroelectric projects on the Chambal river.

The board cited a report by its two-member team saying dams could wipe out the “last stronghold” of gharials (Gavialis gangeticus) and dolphins (Platanista gangetica).

The four projects fall within the 424 km stretch of the river that is protected under the National Chambal Sanctuary. The nbwl team noted that nearly half the sanctuary would become unfit for gharials and dolphins if the dams that create stagnant reservoirs came up. It noted dolphins and gharials need flowing water to survive unlike crocodiles.

The dams were proposed along the Rajasthan border near Morena in Madhya Pradesh. The projects, together called the Chambal Development Plan II, are part of a joint venture signed in 2005 between Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Their combined installed capacity will be 270 mw.

The Chambal is one of the last bastions of gharials
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The nbwl standing committee first discussed the projects at its meeting on February 19, 2008. The chief wildlife warden of Rajasthan had applied for surveying and investigating the project sites for the environment impact assessment. The committee turned down the request, saying it could not be considered without a prior study of the minimum flow required in the river for its ecological health and of effects of the projects on aquatic life. The death of about 90 gharials between December 2007 and February 2008 also weighed on the committee when it took the decision. “The committee decided to reject the proposal in view of the recent large-scale mortality of gharials in the Cham- bal,” the minutes of the meeting noted.

Rajasthan, through its transmission corporation Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Prasaran Nigam Ltd, made another request in the next meeting of the wildlife board’s standing committee on May 22 to survey and investigate the projects. The corporation claimed there was no threat to gharials or other aquatic life in the river from the projects. Instead, it said, the chances of “survival of gharials and crocodiles would become better because of the availability of minimum water level throughout the year”. It claimed there were precedents of permissions given to hydel projects in protected areas in Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh.

Dhruva Jyoti Basu, gharial conservation coordinator at wwf India, said the projects would finish one of the last bastions of the reptile. In his critique of the written submission of the Rajasthan government before the committee, he said, “There are numerous examples of populations of gharial and other aquatic life being extirpated from the hydro-power dam sites, such as the Ramganga and Hirakud. Dams turn the upstream river segments into stagnant lake habitats … making them unsuitable for species that have evolved over geological eras in flowing water habitats of rivers.”

Basu said fish ladders—steps around dams to facilitate fish migration—were not the solution and dams would change physical and biochemical composition of water due to difference in depth, flow and sunlight penetration.

The nbwl committee in the May 22 meeting decided to form a team, comprising its former director M K Ranjitsinh and scientist B C Choudhury who is studying endangered species at the Wildlife Institute of India in Dehradun, for an inspection of the project sites. The team’s spot inspection report, recommending against the projects, was taken up by the committee on December 12.

Ranjitsinh pointed out that in the past 50 years three dams built on the Chambal, upstream of the proposed projects, wiped out the two species there. “The committee observed the total output of the proposed dams was minuscule compared to the loss of the two species,” he said. “Hence the proposal was rejected.”