“We have not given approval to this," Jayanthi Natarajan, minister of state for environment and forests, said over the phone.
The standing committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL), of which the environment minister is the chairperson, had received a proposal from the Indian Coast Guard “seeking diversion of 0.637 ha of forest land for installation of coastal surveillance radar and power supply source on Narcondam Island within the Narcondam Island Sanctuary in Andaman and Nicobar Islands."
Non-official members of NBWL and other environmentalists had immediately raised concerns and said that the installation of a radar would spell doom for the Narcondam hornbill, less than 350 of which remain.
Natarajan said that she took this decision as “within the NBWL there was very deep worry that entire species (of the Narcondam hornbill) would be wiped out," because of the project. “I did not want destruction of an entire species," she added.
The board, set up under the Wildlife Protection Act, is headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Natarajan is chairperson of the standing committee of the board that's empowered to decide on matters of construction inside protected areas.
The board has 47 members, of which 32 are serving or retired government officials.
The others are non-official members and are individuals from institutions that work in the area of conservation, such as the World Wide Fund for Nature, and other organizations such as the Karnataka Medicinal Plant Association.
Hailing the decision, Kishor Rithe, the president of the Satpuda Foundation and a non-official member of NBWL, said that any such project would have meant the end of the hornbill. “The uniqueness of the island is that there is no human habitation on it and that is the reason the Narcondam hornbill thrives on it."
In a 14 October 2011, meeting NBWL had prescribed a site inspection by teams including Asad Rahmani, director of the Bombay Natural History Society, K.B. Singh, conservator of forests, Andaman and Nicobar forest department, and others.
The field report rejected the Coast Guard's proposal, but it was up to the minister to take the final decision.
Rahmani, who is also a non-official member of the board, said that the Narcondam island is less than 7 sq. kilometre in area, hence a very small one. “The Coast Guard should try installing the static radar on a neighbouring island because we don't want to compromise national security also," he added.
The memorandum issued by the ministry on 31 August rejecting the proposal said that the majority of the birds' nests are located at a height of about 200 metres and in the same area to be used for the installation of the radar. “For the duration of egg laying and chick rearing, the females shed the flight feathers and are incapable of flight. In the circumstances, even if the area to be used for the project is less than 0.7 hectares, disturbances and damage caused to the habitat due to cutting of road through the area, and because of the regular functioning of radar system, is likely to cause irreversible adverse impact on this unique bird," it added.
The memorandum also states that while the Indian Coast Guard has an option of setting up the radar on some other island, “there is no such option available for the hornbill whose survival may get seriously threatened."
Shekar Dattatri, one of the coordinators at Conservation India and a former member of the board of wildlife, had opposed the proposal from the start. “While defence needs are extremely important, it is imperative that we look for alternatives when the survival of endangered species or habitats are at stake," he said, praising the minister's decision.
However, a project that entails setting up temporary structures for test-firing dummy missiles in Tillachong, an island where a sanctuary devoted to the Nicobar scrubfowl is located, is still pending with the NBWL.
The Nicobar scrubfowl is endemic to the islands althoughthe 2004 tsunami wiped out much of its population on some of them.
Source: Neha Sethi, Livemint, neha.s@livemint.com.
