Midweek Musings, 42, 30.09.2026

 Not conserving the Western Ghats – a Biodiversity Hotspot is unwise, to say the least

By Malini Shankar

Digital Discourse

In rejecting the Kasturirangan Committee’s recommendations to notify the (Karnataka stretch) of the Western Ghats – a Biodiversity Hotspot – as Eco Sensitive Area, the Karnataka Government has erred, to say the very least. Albeit the Karnataka government seeking a one-year time frame / gap to notify the Western Ghats – as an Eco Sensitive Area, it reeks of ad-hocism, because the political leadership seems unwilling to compromise the interests of livelihoods of people. In doing so the government is compromising on critical conservation of life forms and resources – the very resource that they need to survive.

The pressure of development – power stations, mining, dams, highways, industries, plantations, schools and colleges all find real estate only in these fragile forests. SC AIR 302 / 95 a Mandamus Continuum –that is also referred to as Godhavarman versus Union of India was indeed so far sighted in banning all non-forestry activity in forest areas…. With forest area and development activities both terms conforming to dictionary definitions in the Mandamus Continuum. In 2011 the BJP Government in Karnataka led by the ubiquitous B.S. Yediyurappa refused to declare the Western Ghats a UNESCO World Biological Heritage Site. And now in 2026 the INC government in Karnataka led by D.K. Shivakumar has virtually rejected – by seeking a year’s extension to notify Karnataka’s stretch of the Western Ghats as Eco Sensitive Area. Instead of expediting relocation of forest dwellers, this regressive move to stall notification of the Western Ghats as Eco Sensitive Area – will only sustain poverty instead of ameliorating the lot of the hapless forest dwellers who live cheek by jowl with endangered wildlife.

The Western Ghats got the epithet the Biodiversity Hotspot because the ecologically fragile area is so rich in biodiversity yet so vulnerable because of its endemism.  The Western Ghats is the crowning glory of India’s vast and unique biodiversity reserves. These forests serve as the catchment area for the critical South West monsoons. These forests are teeming with life… not just a faunal spectrum. The biodiversity hotspot is a germ plasm of all life forms in the subcontinent… indeed the crucial link between biodiversity and the roots of agriculture food and nutrition security.

It is estimated that there are four thousand species of flowering plants known from the Western Ghats. 1,500 of these are endemic. Of the nearly 650 tree species found in the Western Ghats, 352 (54 percent) are endemic. The Western Ghats supports a diverse fauna. Among the vertebrates, birds represent the largest number of known species (508 species), followed by fishes (218), reptiles (157), mammals (137), and amphibians (126) are found to be endemic. The greatest number of endemics is found among the amphibians (78 percent) followed by reptiles (62 percent), fish (53 percent), mammals (12 percent), and birds (4 percent). With a range of 2,500- to 5,000-millimeter of rainfall it is no wonder that atleast 60 rivers take birth in the biodiversity hotspot.  Karnataka which is opposing declaration of the Western Ghats as an Eco Sensitive Area already has 5 Tiger Reserves all nestled in the Western Ghats. To leave such already well protected areas vulnerable to mining or other anthropogenic conflict would not just be sacrilegious but will be fraught with grave risk – to Humanity.

But all of this is under threat today… However, this biodiversity hotspot has tragically become the amphitheatre of development indices and its ill thought out impact on forest dwellers. It is high time that impoverished forest dwellers lead a life of dignity consuming the services offered by the State outside tiger terrain where they have to lead life cheek by jowl with endangered wildlife.

These forests serve as the catchment area for the Indian monsoons. More than 60 rivers take birth in the Western Ghats. But all of this is under threat today… However, this biodiversity hotspot has tragically become the amphitheatre of development quotient with all development indices being sited wrongly. These forests serve as the catchment area for the Indian monsoons. The fragile but precious life forms cannot be re-sited / relocated elsewhere. They are endemic to the terrain, ecosystem, weather, latitude and longitude. Given its fragility and non-endemism, sighting developmental activity in this fragile ecosystem makes it a Biodiversity Hotspot. Adding to this, non-cooperative state governments are seeking future legal exemptions to protect critically endangered wildlife and habitat and it smacks of political expediency, is bereft of ecological sensitivity and logic. This decision smacks of an abandonment of the interests of wildlife.

Sure democracy calls for participatory approaches and due diligence… a Committee has been instituted to evolve best practices and recommendations to find a good balancing and sustainable solution without compromising the need to conserve the Biodiversity’s germ plasm. But as political will favours regressive anthropocentric approach at the cost of conservation of endangered wildlife the binaries are unsustainable as this kind of callous attitude to conservation will perpetuate and sustain human wildlife conflict and decimate the catchment of the monsoons. With Climate Change only exasperating the El Nino cycles, the ones to face Mother nature’s fury is the common man, indeed the poor farmer who has to feed the billion odd people on the Subcontinent while the modern democratic Avatars of neo will keep fiddling while the forests burn. 

Politically expedient decisions like development: plantations, infrastructure, dams, highways, mines, Pylons, Power supply corridors cut through Protected Forest Areas. This is traumatizing to endangered endemic wildlife; and there is no knowing how this trauma on wildlife will manifest in the future – near term or far. Politicians in power today may be in no position or power on the day a Sloth Bear gruesomely attacks a forest dwelling hapless villager, or the even more vulnerable farmer is bitten by a poisonous snake inside the coffee plantation. 

Crop raiding elephants calls for either change in cropping patterns or wholesale relocation of human settlements. Explosives deployed for mining is so damaging to the environment and nesting / nursing wildlife. – It is asking for provocative attacks.  

These forests are the source for all the river systems in the Indian peninsula. I recall, when I was doing a story for German public broadcaster DW Radio back in 2003, one of the villagers in Shettihalli Wildlife sanctuary in Karnataka, told me, “we have been resettled in this forest area after relocation from Linganamakki Dam / Sharavathi Hydel Power Station Site. We have been given land rights here, we have land ownership documents here; We are now tax paying citizens here no way will we relocate again. The Administration has to either relocate the wildlife or denotify the forests. Just too bad”.

Imagine if as per his grandiose recommendations the forest department relocates a venomous snake like a Malabar Pit Viper to say a dense urban setting. What about relocation of its food chain then? Not just its own prey base, … what about its hunters or predators that eat Malabar Pit Vipers? That would be the King Cobra. To relocate a hunter or predator of the Malabar Pit Viper (King cobra) to a densely populated area where the Pit Viper has its new home would be so fallacious so impossible. So utterly stupid!

Things haven’t changed at all. If anything has changed, Shettihalli Wildlife sanctuary has only been denotified. So the forest department why did they denotify a notified wildlife sanctuary and they will readily blame politician and retired bureaucrats. “The villagers from Linganamakki had been settled or dumped in the forests outside Shivamogga town back in 1962 one day before the sluice gates were to be opened; infact they were brought here in the dead of the night and left here to their fate madam. Infact the Shettihalli wildlife sanctuary encroaches on parts of the Shivamogga town / district headquarters itself. Only on day break did the hapless evacuees realise they were dumped in the forests. Over time they settled in here, have secured ownership documents and pay tax on their properties. The only choice was to denotify the notified wildlife sanctuary.” The non-chalance of the bureaucrats was such that the forest survey was ridiculed without remorse or regard to the power of the Wildlife and its jaws.

Mining areas already sited in de-notified Protected Areas face the double whammy of permanent dislocation of habitat for precious endangered native wildlife.  When non forestry activity like highways construction divide habitat herds of fauna like deer or elephants are separated and are traumatised. This trauma can exacerbate Human Wildlife conflict on the one hand and isolate herds inside the forest itself. This causes inbreeding in herds, can skew gender ratio, and the health of the gene pool imbalancing the faunal population in the mid-term. All because a minority of tax evading mining behemoth fancied more money than the reality bites.

“As far as dams and mining activities, – two important developmental activities are concerned, the primary loss is the forest itself. we lose a large extent of forest due to submergence and also due to excavation of the mines. as far as the impact of this other than the loss of forest on the wildlife is – many a times the movement – the migratory paths of the wild animals gets blocked. thereby the habitat – the large habitat gets fragmented. the continuity gets broken basically. and this results in isolation of the animal and there is the locally there will be inbreeding and this inbreeding results in local extinction of some of the species which are quite sensitive to these kind of changes” Mr. Manoj Kumar the then Divisional Forest Officer of Dandeli Anshi Tiger Reserve had told me in an interview.

Picture credit: Malini Shankar & BNHS