New Delhi: The state forest department has advised the Karnataka government to stop entertaining proposals that ask for permission to carry out mining activities in unchartered forest areas, Deccan Herald has reported.

If followed, the advice could influence a change in the trend of governments opening up more and more forested area to mining in Karnataka.

A recent assessment of possible damage if nearly 485 hectares of ‘virgin forest area’ in the Swamimalai Block Forest in Sandur is opened up to mining led the department to conclude that nearly 99,330 trees will be felled in the process. Sandur is in Karnataka’s Bellary district.

The proposal for clearance over which the department conducted the field inspection that led to the distressing conclusion was sent by Kudremukh Iron Ore Company Limited.

The newspaper quoted a source as having revealed that the department used the sample plot method – in which 48 plots in each hectare were analysed – to arrive at the conclusion.

In addition, officials from the Government of India also found mining in the region would severely harm the region’s diverse wildlife, including populations of “leopard, sloth bear, four-horned antelope, jackal, pangolin, monitor lizard and star tortoise, among others”.

The Sandur forest, according to the report, was already severely affected by mining activity. The earlier source told the paper, “Nearly 10,000 hectares of the 32,000 hectare forest area…has already been destroyed by mining.”

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Mining at Sandur and especially at Swamimalai forest has been fraught with not just opposition from environmentalists and locals, but also archaeologists. Deccan Herald had reported in August and December, 2019, how the eighth century Kumaraswamy Temple in the forest now runs the risk of destruction now that the state government has opened 71 acres of the area to mining.

In 2015, the state government had withdran “a 1978 notification that banned mining within a 2 km radius of protected monuments,” Deccan Herald had reported then.

The Karnataka government has proven especially amenable to changing protective tags accorded to forests to pave the way for mining companies. The same newspaper has also reported on how a need to mine for gold in the biodiversity hotspot of Kappatagudda hills could force the government to take away the forest’s wildlife sanctuary notification.