CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu Forest Department on Tuesday swung into damage control mode on the proposal to denotify 40 per cent of Vedanthangal Bird Sanctuary.In a press release, S Yuvaraj, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) and Chief Wildlife Warden, said the department has no plans to de-notify the outer 2 km of the sanctuary, rather it will be declared as an eco-sensitive zone.
“The proposal we made was to make 1 km surrounding the Vedanthangal tank as core, the next 2 km as buffer and the outer 2 km as an eco-sensitive zone in line with the Union Environment Ministry guidelines.” Projects located within the notified eco-sensitive zones will be regulated as specified under ESZ notification. Usually, ESZ is identified outside the sanctuary area.
This is contrary to the department’s earlier proposal, which goes into greater detail on why the department wanted to de-notify the outer 2 km of the sanctuary area. Nowhere in the list of documents, reviewed by Express, submitted to the Union Environment Ministry and National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) had the Forest Department made a mention of the eco-sensitive zone.
In fact, the Ministry has raised a query regarding the proposal on Tuesday. Express was unable to ascertain the nature of the query.The original proposal was submitted to the Ministry on January 23, State Board for Wildlife clears it through a circular agenda in February without holding a regular meeting and recording the minutes. On March 19, the then environment secretary, Shambu Kallolikar, wrote to NBWL mentioning in clear terms seeking to denotify the outer 2 km zone of the existing 5 km of the sanctuary.
The site inspection report of the wildlife warden and the justification note attached with the proposal also said the 5-km sanctuary was making it difficult for establishment of any small, medium or large industries that provide employment to local people.
The site inspection report further goes on to say that denotifying the outer 2 km zone would not have any negative impact on birds in the sanctuary.“But, this will definitely have a positive impact on local people because they will be free from restrictions on land conversion, own house construction and any other personnel activities in the sanctuary,” it said.