Ankola: This small town by the National Highway 66 where one of the bitterest fights for environmental protection of the biodiversity-rich forest areas of the Western Ghats had been fought, is now in a pensive mood following the state Government clearing the Ankola-Hubballi Railway line survey.
A battery of engineers from the Railways armed with maps have begun the survey for this railway line, which is no doubt will be scenic for the passengers but is viewed as an ecological disaster in terms of destruction of forests, habitats and wildlife corridor.
This line had been rejected by MoEF twice and every other Government agency or regulator had put the project down on paper as “Environmentally and Ecologically unviable”.
Sowmya Reddy, Former MLA from Jayanagar in Bengaluru and who was a member of the Railway Board had resigned in 2020 in protest against taking up of the line for construction. Jairam Ramesh, Former Union Minister for Environment and Ecology has asked both the then Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and Environment and Ecology Minister Prakash Javdekar to intervene and cancel the decision made by the Karnataka Wildlife Board. Jairam had redflagged the Hubballi-Ankola line in 2008.
But now with the beginning of the survey, another round of churning is on the cards. The wildlife activists from various organisations are now huddling together to take the matter to the court as they alleged the Government had brushed away all expert views, reasons shown by the regulating agencies including the National Biodiversity Board and the MoEF. They also feared, if this line is allowed to be commissioned, the next project that will get approved will be the 81-kilometre Talaguppa-Honnavar line which is even more ecologically sensitive.
“The re-submitted Hubballi-Ankola Railway Proposal is redundant and extremely detrimental to wildlife conservation and also not much useful from an Economic Perspective and hence needs to be rejected”.
According to the estimation of the Forest Department, a corridor of 400 metres will be required to be cleared on 168.5 kilometres between Ankola and Hubballi, this will require a total of 769 hectares of forests to be cut and some 2.5 Lakh trees will be axed. “The losses to the environment cannot be assessed as over 90 per cent of the tree on the proposed corridor are over 50-100 years old. And even if the compensatory forests are developed it might take not less than 10-12 years to grow to the girth and canopy size of the present trees in the forests that are to be denuded” official sources at the MoEF, “the loss of rainwater holding capacity of the forests and the loss of oxygen generation, loss of habitat of many species, waterbody fragmentation, animal migratory routes disruption are some of the other losses we estimate that cannot be compensated” the sources say.
Though the application from the Railway Department mentions that 202,500 trees would have to be cut, the actual numbers may be higher than 300,000 when the project is implemented. Apart from the dry and moist deciduous, evergreen forests the project will affect an ancient, highly threatened ecosystem called the Myristica swamps. They are found only in very small patches in Uttara Kannada in Karnataka, in southern Kerala and Goa. The Myristica swamps are found in low-lying valleys and play a key role in maintaining perennial stream flow and stores higher carbon compared to non-swamp forests.
The forests where the railway track is proposed acts as a corridor between Kaali Tiger Reserve and Bedthi Conservation Reserve and this corridor will be seriously compromised affecting movement of wildlife both large and small” they noted
According to the line estimate drawn by the railways, the project was to be completed at Rs. 5000 Crore had it been the current costs it could have cost not less than 20,000 Crore, I see a big political move in this project, the Government would have handed over the corridor to a lumbering company at enormous cost and after few years it would find the project costs prohibitive and cite it as a reason and shelve it,” says an environmentalist in Uttara Kannada on conditions of anonymity.
Futility of scientific studies
There are various studies that have examined different aspects of biodiversity of the region including amphibians, birds, large mammals, human-elephant conflict and so on. However the specific study carried out by a group within the Indian Institute of Science has compiled the biodiversity of the area and suggested mitigation measures to implement the new Hubballi-Ankola railway track. The mitigation measures suggested in the report are very flimsy, superficial and will certainly not reduce any of the impacts this project will have on the biodiversity of the area. The study has become the basis on which this project has been cleared by the state Government hence it needs serious scrutiny.