Coal mining ‘impossible’ at Tadoba

The Adani Mines Private Ltd will have to do the “impossible” if it has to go ahead with its proposed coal mining project at Lohara, on the outskirts of Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR), in Chandrapur district. It will have to “create a similar forest with identical biodiversity” to maintain continuity of the forest corridor stretching to South India.

A recent state forest department report has officials highlighting the possible threat to the pristine forest cover and the biodiversity of the region. They expressed fear that wildlife, and most importantly, Asia’s only teak wood gene pool — there are just 12 of them in the whole world — will be destroyed once the mining activities begin. “The only option is to create a similar forest with identical biodiversity in the vicinity, and then start mining,” said a senior official of the forest department. “This is something which cannot be done.”

A portion of the coal block, falling inside the proposed buffer zone of TATR, raises another insurmountable hurdle to the proposed project. “The 1600 hectares of land, being leased out to the company to mine coal for its proposed thermal power project at Tiroda in Gondia district, supports rich forest and wide-ranging biodiversity, including a sizeable tiger population,” said Shyam Pandharipande, a senior environmentalist from Nagpur. “Nearly 1.3 million full-grown trees will have to be cut down to clear the land for mining operations, which in turn are bound to damage to the ecosystem both above and below the ground.”

The environmental cost of the project, mentioned by the company in its environmental impact analysis, is a mind-boggling Rs2.78 billion. The buffer zone of the proposed coal mine covers an area of six reserve forests. “Also, under imminent threat is Asia’s only teak wood gene pool (National Germ-plasm Bank), which houses 279 mother plants with three replicas of each,” the official said.