Ready proposal to demarcate Dulung-Subansiri elephant corridor, Union environment ministry tells Arunachal, Assam
Ready proposal to demarcate Dulung-Subansiri elephant corridor, Union
environment ministry tells Arunachal, Assam
Nikhil Ghanekar, Indian Express
March 28, 2024
The wildlife division of the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and
Climate Change (MoEFCC) recently directed the forest departments of
Arunachal Pradesh and Assam to prepare a proposal to notify the
Dulung-Subansiri elephant corridor – downstream of the 2000 MW Lower
Subansiri hydroelectric project.
The proposal to demarcate the corridor will be presented during the next
meeting of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL), which is the apex
government body on wildlife conservation and regulation of development
projects in wildlife areas. Notification of the elephant corridor will
involve physically marking the relevant areas used by elephants on the
ground as well as potentially notifying parts of the corridor as either a
wildlife sanctuary or a conservation reserve.
Including the corridor as part of a legally notified protected area will
provide legal sanctity to it. An expert committee of the NBWL, which was
inspecting the compliance of conditions imposed on the Arunachal Pradesh
government, as part of the clearance of the hydroelectric project, had
recommended the notification of the elephant corridor in May last year.
The ministry’s directions to the state departments come in the backdrop of
the NBWL’s meeting in January this year, which saw deliberations on ways to
protect the critical elephant corridor.
During the deliberations, members of the wildlife board concluded that this
corridor is important, as it facilitates the east-west movement of
elephants across the Subansiri River. The corridor, however, is fragile and
requires urgent restoration efforts, they had noted.
“Each state could notify the area of the corridor falling in their
respective jurisdiction as conservation reserve under Wild Life
(Protection) Act, 1972,” H S Singh, an NBWL member, had said, as per
minutes of the January meeting. An elephant corridor is a strip of land
that enables connectivity in otherwise fragmented wildlife habitats. These
are ecologically important as they help animal movement between forest
ranges and enable genetic exchange which, in turn, helps in sustaining
healthy elephant populations.
The wildlife board’s recommendation to the states was based on the Wildlife
Institute of India’s (WII) rapid assessment of the elephant corridor, which
looked at the corridor’s functionality to elephants as well as the
potential impacts of the hydroelectric projects and related developments on
the corridor. The NBWL had commissioned the rapid assessment last year to
recommend ways to ensure connectivity between Panir Reserve Forest and
Dulung Reserve Forest.
The 2000 MW Lower Subansiri hydro-project, executed by the National
Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC), has been in the works since 2003
and is yet to be commissioned. It is located in the Kamle and Dhemaji
districts of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, respectively, and is being
constructed on the Subansiri River, a tributary of the Brahmaputra River.
As per the WII’s study, even before the project’s commissioning, the
establishment of a residential complex, offices, school, and other
recreational spaces by the NHPC has already caused both habitat loss and
hindrance to elephant movement. “Numerous commercial establishments and
roads have proliferated, adding to the biotic pressure on the already
tenuous elephant habitat,” the WII’s report stated.
“The Dulung-Subansiri corridor is functional and of vital importance in the
larger landscape for elephants. However, the corridor is tenuous at present
and thus needs to be immediately notified and marked on the ground. It is
also timely to further strengthen the corridor,” the WII report added.
The WII report had also pointed out that hydropeaking for power generation
from the project will pose a threat of sweeping away elephants, especially
calves, due to flash floods. “Peaking operations resulting in a sudden
increase in water depth by nearly 2.0 meters and accompanied by velocity
could increase the risk of elephants, particularly calves, getting swept by
flash floods,” the report said.
Hydropeaking refers to regulating the flow of water released from a dam to
generate power, depending on demands. Even as the threats posed by
hydropeaking were discussed during the NBWL’s January meeting, it has not
yet commissioned any hydrological studies, as suggested by the WII, to
understand the wider impacts of hydropeaking downstream of the power
project.