Govt sets up panel to de-notify half of Great Indian Bustard’s home in Rajasthan

The Rajasthan government is allegedly planning to set up windmills in the de-notified area.

Updated on: Jun 16, 2017, 12:09:47 IST

New Delhi, Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan

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The environment ministry has set up a committee to consider de-notifying almost half of the India’s only desert sanctuary - Desert National Park - home to more than half of the India’s population of the endangered Great Indian Bustard (GIB) apparently for easier proliferation of wind mills.

A Great Indian Bustard in the Desert National Park, Rajasthan. (Wikimedia Commons)

The Rajasthan governments had proposed to free 1,400 square kilometers of the total 3,162 for “other uses” saying there was no wildlife in the zone. The state wildlife board headed by chief minister Vasundhara Raje approved the proposal last year and formed a committee to examine the rationalisation of the boundary.

The decision was challenged in the Bhopal bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on the ground that the area had other wildlife such as desert fox, desert cat, chinkara and monitor lizards, which the state forest department did not consider wildlife.

The NGT while disposing off the petition asked the environment ministry to examine the proposal.

In lieu of this, the ministry has constituted a committee of expert members of the standing committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) HS Singh and R Sukumar to examine the proposal. The committee will be assisted by a representative of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and a nominee of the wildlife division of the ministry, said the minutes of the latest standing committee meeting.

The Centre has also sought comments of the chief wildlife warden of Rajasthan on the proposal to de-notify parts of the national park. “It has been mentioned in the petition that the respondents are going to de-notify an area of 1400 square km out of an area of 3162 square km of the protected area for commercial purpose,” the minutes read.

The Great Indian Bustard is an endangered bird. (Wikimedia Commons)

The petitioners have told the NGT that the Rajasthan government planned to set up windmills in the de-notified area as the region in Jaisalmer and Barmer have huge potential to generate power from the renewable source.

Several windmills are already operational outside the park, considered biggest home for bustards locally godavan.

Wildlife Institute of India scientist VY Jhala told HT last month that in Rajasthan the birds face the risk of hitting electricity lines near windmills in the desert national park, where they are found in large number. This was after conservations demanded underground power lines in the park to prevent deaths of the bustards.

In the last count in 2013, their number was less than 200, down from thousands a few decades ago. The bustards are mostly found along India-Pakistan border in Rajasthan and Gujarat.

However, the Rajasthan forest department officials said the state wildlife board in October 2016 had decided against de-notification saying it was not feasible. The decision was based on a feasibility study done by former IAS officer MK Ranjitsinh which said that rationalization of the boundaries will be detrimental for future of the endangered species.

Sources said that the environment ministry has now revived the proposal.

(With inputs from Sachin Saini in Jaipur)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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