SC: Evict 39 resorts in Tamil Nadu's Nilgiris elephant corridor

NEW DELHI: Describing elephants as “keystone species” for survival of Indian forests and other animals, the Supreme Court on Wednesday concurred with the Madras high court and directed eviction of 39 resorts in the Mudumalai reserve forest area falling in the elephant corridor. The resorts, which house 309 buildings, hindered the nomadic lifestyle intrinsic to the survival of pachyderms.
A bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices S Abdul Nazeer and Sanjiv Khanna upheld the Tamil Nadu government’s order of January 1, 2010, identifying elephant corridors in the Sigur Plateau connecting the forests in the Wester n and Easter n Ghats, which sustain elephant populations and their genetic diversity.

Writing the judgment, Justice Nazeer said, “The precautionary principle makes it mandatory for the state government to anticipate, prevent and attack the causes of environmental degradation... we have no hesitation in holding that in order to protect the elephant population in the Sigur Plateau region, it was necessary and appropriate for it to limit commercial activity in the areas falling within the elephant corridor.”
The bench noticed variance in the areas to be freed of encroachments to provide unhindered passage to migrating elephants and appointed a three-member committee to identify areas for securing the corridors.
Corridors crucial in sustaining wildlife: SC
The panel will be headed by retired Madras HC judge K Venkatraman. Its other members are Ajay Desai, consultant to World Wide Fund for Nature-India, and Praveen Bhargava, trustee of Wildlife First. The committee will decide the individual objections of the appellants and others claiming to be aggrieved by the actions of the Nilgiris district collector pursuant to the TN government order and action taken reports, as also the allegations regarding arbitrary variance in acreage of the elephant corridors under the impugned order of January 2010. The bench agreed with wildlife experts’ unanimous opinion regarding elephants as a “keystone species” because of their nomadic behaviour, which is immensely important to the environment.
“The corridors allow elephants to continue their nomadic mode of survival, despite shrinking forest cover, by facilitating travel between distinct forest habitats. Corridors are narrow and linear patches of forest which establish and facilitate connectivity across habitats. In the context of today’s world, where habitat fragmentation has become increasingly common, these corridors play a crucial role in sustaining wildlife by reducing the impact of habitat isolations. In their absence, elephants would be unable to move freely, which would in turn affect many other species and the ecosystem balance of several wild habitats would be unalterably upset,” the bench said.
Any hindrance to such corridors would eventually lead to local extinction of elephants, a species which is widely revered in India and across the world, the court said. “To secure wild elephants’ future, it is essential that we ensure their uninterrupted movement between different forest habitats. For this, elephant corridors must be protected,” it added. The issue in contention before the court was the corridor in Sigur Plateau, which has the Nilgiri Hills on its south-western side and the Moyar River Valley on its north-eastern side.