The Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife has cleared the diversion of 310 hectares of forest land from the core area of the Namdapha Tiger Reserve in Arunachal Pradesh for the construction of the Arunachal Frontier Highway, despite concerns raised over the felling of over 1.5 lakh trees and inadequate measures to protect wildlife.
The Namdapha decision is the latest in a string of government-backed projects that push environmental boundaries in the name of growth.
Earlier this year, the Telangana government began clearing 400 acres of forested land in Kancha Gachibowli, adjacent to the University of Hyderabad for an Information Technology park.
Students and environmental groups erupted in protests. The Supreme Court intervened, halted further deforestation and warned the state government that failure to restore the forest could lead to jail time for senior officials.
Kancha Gachibowli is not a remote forest. It’s a rare urban lung space, one of Hyderabad’s last, rich in avian and reptilian biodiversity. Yet, the decision to auction it off reflected a broader trend: in India’s development narrative, forests often show up as blank spaces waiting to be filled.
Great Nicobar Project
A fragile island ecosystem is being primed for demolition under the guise of "holistic development".
The Union government’s Rs 80,000-crore megaproject on Great Nicobar, involving a transshipment port, airport, and township, threatens to displace tribal communities, raze 130 sq km of pristine forests, and endanger rare wildlife including the Giant Leatherback turtle.
Environmentalists and ecologists have flagged it as an irreversible ecological catastrophe, yet it has sailed through official clearances.
Even former critics in scientific institutions have turned approvers. With the home ministry steering the project and restricting media access, critics warn that the island’s future is being signed away in secrecy, with both biodiversity and indigenous cultures treated as collateral damage.
Sariska to be cut up for mines
In Rajasthan, instead of cutting trees outright, the state is redrawing boundaries.
A proposal under review will reclassify 48.39 sq km of “human-impacted” terrain from Sariska Tiger Reserve’s core area and move it to the buffer zone where mining is permitted.
If approved, the move would allow over 50 mining operations shuttered by the Supreme Court to reopen.
Officials called this a “rationalisation” of conservation boundaries. Environmentalists called it a loophole. Villages like Khoh, Tilwad and Gordhanpura are at the heart of this proposed shuffle.
The Supreme Court had recently forced these mines to shut for being within a kilometre of critical tiger habitat.
Aarey, again
Mumbai’s Aarey Colony tells a similar tale. In 2023, authorities felled over 500 trees for the Metro-3 car shed project...far more than the 84 trees initially permitted by the Supreme Court.
The Tree Authority later approved the cutting of 177 trees, but by then the damage was already done.
Videos of villagers weeping as chainsaws buzzed through ancestral groves flooded social media. The top court imposed a Rs 10 lakh fine on the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Ltd., and demanded a compliance report from the Maharashtra forest department.
Over 2,000 trees had already been cut by the time the court asked for compliance.
The government’s defense in many of these cases has hinged on numbers.
In Arunachal, officials pointed out that the 1.55 lakh figure includes undergrowth and poles, not just trees. But cutting a tree is the erasure of a microhabitat, often irreplaceable.
The “animal passages” proposed for the Namdapha Highway are based on outdated culvert designs, rather than real-time animal movement data.
Despite warnings from ecologists and internal members of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL), the highway plan was pushed through, according to reports.
One committee member, wildlife ecologist R Sukumar, has questioned why the highway required such extensive tree felling for what is an upgrade from a 3.5-metre track to an intermediate lane road.