Uran mangroves being buried during lockdown, allege activists

Vast stretches of mangroves are being destroyed at three major locations in Raigad’s Uran taluka by various project proponents under cover of lockdown, environmentalists alleged in a complaint to chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and environment minister Aaditya Thackeray this week

Vast stretches of mangroves are being destroyed at three major locations in Raigad’s Uran taluka by various project proponents under cover of lockdown, environmentalists alleged in a complaint to chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and environment minister Aaditya Thackeray this week.

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They said such work was in violation of earlier orders by the Bombay high court (HC), which bar construction in mangrove areas, as well as the Coastal Regulatory Zone (CRZ) notification. “The pace at which whole swathes of mangrove forests are being buried is shocking, particularly at Cidco’s Holding Pond 2 area of Dronagiri node in Uran, which has been placed under CRZ-1 by the Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA),” said BN Kumar, director of NatConnect Foundation.

Low-lying intertidal regions in the area have been levelled with non-oceanic mud, and in some cases construction of pakka structures has also begun, leading to recent unseasonal floods in Uran. Holding Pond 2 is a contiguous 237-hectare running waterbody and even in the nomenclature of local planner Cidco, the area is supposed to be a flood control mechanism. “But unfortunately, the holding pond itself is being shrunk with the burial of lush green mangroves,” said Nandakumar Pawar, head of NGO Shri Ekvira Aai Prartishtan.

Members of Paaramparik Machhimar Bachao Kruti Samiti, whose artisanal fishing livelihood is threatened by the resulting ecological damage, also alleged the frequency of landfilling activities has visibility increased during lockdown, and first picked up pace a little less than a year ago. “The scale of mangrove loss is plain to see. But most of the work happens at night, when trucks come and blatantly dump debris and mud directly over the water bodies,” said Deepak Koli, a member of the group.