State government gets green signal to build tunnel under Matheran Hill

This is despite the presence of rich biodiversity in Matheran forests, including Maharashtra’s state animal, the Malabar Giant Squirrel, in addition to wild boars, mongoose, barking deer, large numbers of langurs and macaques, and several other species of avian and reptilian fauna.

Mumbai: The union environment ministry’s regional empowered committee (REC) recently issued a directive to the state forest department for digging an eight kilometres long, four-lane tunnel under Matheran Hill without obtaining wildlife clearance (WC) from the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL).

The tunnel under Matheran is part of the National Highways Authority of India’s (NHAI) Vadodara-Mumbai Expressway (Phase-II SPUR) which will run via Palghar, Thane and Raigad districts, connecting Virar in the north to Jawaharlal Nehru Port in the south. A sizable section will pass through the Matheran eco-sensitive zone (ESZ), which was declared as such in 2003 by the union environment ministry, to safeguard the region from developmental pressures. (Shutterstock)

This is despite the presence of rich biodiversity in Matheran forests, including Maharashtra’s state animal, the Malabar Giant Squirrel, in addition to wild boars, mongoose, barking deer, large numbers of langurs and macaques, and several other species of avian and reptilian fauna.

The tunnel under Matheran is part of the National Highways Authority of India’s (NHAI) Vadodara-Mumbai Expressway (Phase-II SPUR) which will run via Palghar, Thane and Raigad districts, connecting Virar in the north to Jawaharlal Nehru Port in the south. A sizable section will pass through the Matheran eco-sensitive zone (ESZ), which was declared as such in 2003 by the union environment ministry, to safeguard the region from developmental pressures.

The exemption of this project from WC follows on the heels of a Project Monitoring Group meeting on December 6 last year, wherein the Maharashtra government sought clarity on whether it can proceed to issue work orders for the tunnel on behalf of NHAI since the two ends of the tunnel do not open up within the ESZ itself.

“The user agency has not obtained WC yet, but it has requested the forest department to grant working permission in the protected area stating that construction of the tunnel will start before the start of the Matheran eco-sensitive area and will end after Matheran eco-sensitive area, therefore forest area will not be used for a non-forestry purpose,” the REC noted last month.

After deliberations, the REC concluded that “The Matheran eco-sensitive area has been constituted to protect the environment of Matheran and surrounding areas from the all-round development projects nearby under the Environment Protection Act, 2006 and there are not any critical wildlife issues to be addressed.” Essentially, since Matheran ESZ is not a wildlife sanctuary or national park under the Wildlife Protection Act (1972), “prior approval of NBWL is not applicable here.”

An official with the NHAI, who is overseeing the project, said while requesting anonymity, “This is a big hurdle we have crossed. The Matheran ESZ monitoring committee has given its go-ahead to the project and Stage-1 forest clearance was also granted in 2021. The tunnelling will happen under Matheran Hill, and no part of the surface area will be broken in the ESZ, so there will be no impact on the fauna. We are hoping for the state government to issue work orders quickly.”

“There is already quite a bit of disturbance in the Matheran ESZ. Residential settlements and paddy fields have come up in several places. If the tunnelling is happening at a sufficiently lower altitude, then there should be no disturbance to the wildlife, but the alignment of the tunnel itself needs to have been very carefully considered,” said Nikhil Bhopale, conservation ecology expert and founder of the Green Works Trust.