Nagpur:

As the NH7 widening matter comes up before the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court on Thursday, a group of 29 NGOs and individuals including top conservationists have written to National

Conservation Authority (

) and Wildlife Institute of India (

) pointing out fundamental flaws in the manner in which the latter has repeatedly contradicted itself and reduced the mitigation measures without scientifically justifying the act.

“If any dilution of mitigation measures contained in the May 2012 report is now recommended, which itself would be a major compromise, it would fly against the spirit of good governance promised by the government,” they said. “Further, the very credibility of WII as a scientific institution will be at stake. Changing scientific recommendations without any credible data to the contrary would only lead to the inevitable conclusion that it is being done under political compulsions,” they added.

WII had recommended 10 underpasses of seven metres height each, totalling 5.5 km along the stretch of National Highway 7 (NH7) that extends from

in Nagpur to Seoni in Madhya Pradesh, as a wildlife mitigation measure to minimise the damage caused by 4-laning of the road, cutting through the Kanha-Pench wildlife corridor. The NHAI had questioned the need for the structures.

In January 2015, however, the measures were reduced to underpasses 2.7 kilometres long and 4.5 metres high. With NHAI continuing to red-flag the measures, WII further reduced them to 2.2 km length with an improvement of 0.5 metre height.

“Scientific merit has been ignored while reducing these measures. The 2012 WII report is based on a four-year study conducted by WII after consultation with various stakeholders. The said action of WII and NTCA raises fundamental questions about scientific integrity in the absence of any data to support the reduction in measures,” the group said. “Extensive camera-trapping since 2006 has recorded tigers dispersing between

and

reserves,” it added.

Interestingly, the NHAI top authorities had explicitly mentioned that cost was not a constraint and that it would strive to save every species

.

The case has wider ramifications for corridors across the country as the linear intrusions (particularly highways) were acknowledged by NTCA, WII as well as NHAI as one of the biggest threats to wildlife corridors. The case will also set a precedent for mitigation measures in other corridors across the country.

The signatories are a virtual Who’s Who of tiger conservation and include activists such as Belinda Wright, Bittu Sahgal and Dr K Ullas Karanth. They added Kanha-Pench corridor needs to be given legal status and mitigated with green infrastructure for development projects within the corridor habitats to ensure continued gene flow between the populations.