Goemkarponn Desk
DELHI: In a report to the Supreme Court, the Goa Foundation (GF) stated that the Goa Tamnar Transmission Project Ltd (GTPPL)’s afforestation efforts to make up for the 2,670 trees it cut down in 2020 at Sangod village in Mollem have nearly failed.
Recall that Tamnar obtained a licence under the Goa Preservation of Trees Act to fell trees in order to accommodate its electrical substation at Sangod in connection with the Tamnar 400 kV high tension line from Dharwad to Xeldem, despite the fact that the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 required prior clearance.
It will be recalled that for accommodating its electrical substation at Sangod in connection with the Tamnar 400 kV High Tension Line from Dharwad to Xeldem, Tamnar obtained a license for felling the trees under the Goa Preservation of Trees Act when it was required to obtain prior clearance under the Forest Conservation Act, 1980.
The Goa Foundation had swiftly filed a contempt petition in the Supreme Court against Tamnar and several forest department officers for the illegal mass slaughter of forest trees.
The Goa Forest Department in its defence attempted to file an affidavit to claim that 90% of the saplings since planted by the Tamnar agency to compensate for the mass felling had survived.
The Goa Foundation accordingly commissioned a site visit and study of three of the biggest plots claimed to have been planted by the Tamnar agency at Sangod and Usgao. It asked Farai Patel, an independent researcher and wildlife expert to head a team of 2 botanists and 4 ecologists to visit the 3 plots and submit a report.
The survey team established that the reasons for the failure of the plantation at Sy. No. 87 Sangod and Sy. No. 244 at Usgao was related to the fact that both sites were completely hostile for planting of trees as these are lateritic plateaus and traditionally host a different type of plants, mostly annual shrubs and herbaceous plants which are highly endemic to these plateaus.
This unique plateau (or sada) vegetation is biodiversity rich. Attempting to use these plateaus for planting trees was a wrong policy having no ecological sense since it attempted to replace the natural growing vegetation which could survive there with trees which would never thrive on this kind of soil.
Thus the report established that not only had Tamnar destroyed more than 2670 fully grown trees, but it had also destroyed hundreds of seedlings since these were planted in the wrong place. As far as reforestation of the original Sangod plot is concerned, we are still fairly close to achieving almost nothing.
Based on the highlights of the survey report, the Supreme Court directed the forest department and GTTPL to produce a proper rehabilitation plan by 17th May, when the contempt petition is once again to be taken up.
In the meanwhile, the forest department has notified three plots, including Sangod Sy.No.21 as a reserved forest under the provisions of the Indian Forest Act, 1927.
This was done after Tamnar handed over possession of the plot, originally purchased by them from private parties for over Rs.8 crores, to the forest department. It also added two other adjacent plots, taking the total to 17 ha. The total forest diversion for the Tamnar project in Goa is nearly 80 ha.
