Environment minister to clear project after site visit
SIXTY-NINE vultures and 22 vulture nests are left in Girnar Wildlife Sanctuary in Junagadh district of Gujarat, revealed a state-wide census of vultures in the last week of May.
Activists hope the finding will derail building a ropeway through the sanctuary for pilgrims visiting the Jain temples atop Girnar mountains. Vulture populations ave crashed in the past one decade. Vultures are listed as Schedule I species in the Wildlife (Protection) Act and are considered endangered.
“The ropeway will pass through the nesting sites of vultures,” said Amit Jethva, president of the Gir Nature Club who has been campaigning against the ropeway proposal. The Gujarat Ecological Education and Research Foundation, a non-profit, conducted the census.
The ropeway has been cleared by the State Wildlife Advisory Board and is pending before the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL). In the last meeting of the NBWL on May 14, it was decided that environment minister Jairam Ramesh, the board chairperson, would take the final decision after a field visit. The project was cleared under the Forest (Conservation) Act in 1995, much before the area was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 2008.
Activists said the project should also be cleared under the Wildlife (Protection) Act because the forest is now a sanctuary. In any case, the forest clearance should not be deemed valid after such a long time, they argued. An environment ministry official said the clearance is still valid. “But the project will have to be cleared by the NBWL and the Supreme Court,” said the official who is also on the ministry’s forest advisory committee.
Mahesh Pandya of non-profit Paryavaran Mitra said the project is likely to be cleared as the Gujarat government has been promoting tourism in a big way and the Jains are a powerful community in the state. The Girnar shrines attract a large number of pilgrims.
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