Tiger Corridor : Now Satpuda Melghat National Parks Connectivity At Risk

Much- hyped wildlife friendly NH7 passing   through the famous Kanha -Pench forest corridor and named after the two famous national parks should have 11.81 kms long under passes to let the wildlife have a safe passage. Instead the National Highways Authority of India (NHA) overlooked the rules and constructed only 4.41 km long underpasses compromising their dimensions.  Similarly in NH6, only 2.95 km of mitigation work was done against a schedule 8 kms length. Not everybody knows this truth.  Now NHAI seems to be completely violating the Wildlife (Protection) act 1973 while constructing a road patch on NH46 ( Hoshangabad -Betul). This is a functional tiger corridor connecting Melghat and Satpura tiger reserves. Now the connectivity is also as threatened as the tiger itself.

 No Lessons Learnt From NH6 Kanha- Pench Corridor

The reduced length of structures in  MH6  and NH7  -connecting East with the West and  North with the South  respectively -for safety of the wildlife could be achieved   only after arduous court battles between conservationists and government authorities for close to a decade. The highway expansion was delayed for years. In 2008, the Wild Life Institute of India (WII) approached the apex court for a realignment of the road project. The NHAI refused to agree. Later, the agency also scaled down its own proposals and refused the mitigation plans proposed by WII.  The much diluted mitigation measures that we see today on NH7  are the results of many flip –flops ,political interventions and litigations .

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MP seems to have learnt no lessons from the dispute over wildlife mitigation on Pench-Kanha corridor (NH7) .Now a similar dispute has developed on Gwalior to Betul NH46 where MP forest department also looked the other way  undermining the  Wildlife (protection ) act  as the road construction work goes on to meet the deadline. Officials admitted that the 2012 project should have been referred to the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL)  for the mitigation  works.  But no lessons were learnt from the previous  experiences and  the  NHAI as well as MP forest department - allegedly under immense pressure from politicians -have chose to  bypass the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, by not taking the NBWL and NTCA clearances  while  expanding three corridor stretches — Baretha Ghat, Bhoura (in Betul) and Kesla Ghat (Hoshangabad). Forest department sources also said that the NHAI has expressed inability to construct underpasses because of the topography of the area. 

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The Satpura-Melghat in Central India and Eastern Ghats is among the 32 major tiger corridors across the country mapped by the NTCA. Management interventions for these corridors are operationalized through a tiger conservation plan. Absence of mitigation would mean jeopardizing almost 10,000sqkm landscape integrity and also compromising a long-term viability of 70 plus population of tigers  in the Satpura-Melghat landscape and a colossal  loss of genetic diversity among endangered species .

Need to Preserve Connectivity 

Central India is considered to be the heart of India’s wildlife. It is home to some of India’s largest forest tracts, rich wildlife and indigenous people .It is also recognized by the NTCA as a region with the best potential s for long term tiger conservation. It harbors over 700 tigers in 19 tiger reserves .The faunal diversity includes some of the endangered species such as leopards,  sloth bear, gaur and the hard bound swamp deer. The tiger reserves and protected areas are connected by wildlife corridors falling outside the protected area network. These corridors provide connectivity and allow free movement of tigers and other wildlife from one forest area to another thereby connecting the source population and  ensuring  demographic and genetic viability. 

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 Any infrastructure development in such landscapes should therefore consider the significance of the need to maintain connectivity between these animal populations. "With a declining prey densities and other more endangered co-predators occupying the same landscape, tiger corridors benefit not just tigers, but the entire gamut of wild animals that inhabit our forests", said Milind Pariwakam, IUCN’s Connectivity Conservation Specialist Group. " In other tiger range countries (TRCs), which harbour lesser number of tigers and in lower densities, corridors prove to be even more crucial", he said.