The environment minister’s Forest Advisory Committee has granted “in principle” approval to a hydropower project in a region of Arunachal Pradesh that is inhabited by the white bellied heron, a critically endangered bird whose species number was estimated to be less than 60, globally, in 2015.
To compensate for the forest loss resulting from the project, the Forest Advisory Committee approved afforestation thousands of kilometres away, in Madhya Pradesh, a decision experts termed futile for the bird’s conservation.
The Forest Advisory Committee, a statutory body under the environment ministry which evaluates project proposals on forest land, gave its approval to the Kalai II hydroelectric power plant in a meeting on May 8.
The 1,200-megawatt run-of-the river dam is planned on the Lohit river, a tributary of the Brahmaputra, in the border district of Anjaw. The river’s catchment area is flanked by tropical wet and dense mixed forest types and sits in the Eastern Himalaya biodiversity hotspot. A total of 33,338 trees are proposed to be felled within this landscape for the dam.
In its meeting, the Forest Advisory Committee noted that the white-bellied heron was absent in the list of important species that could be impacted by the project, and granted its approval on the condition that the...
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