Massacre Of The Mangroves

Illegal tree-felling to build homes and create farmlands in a section of the protected mangrove belt—allegedly to favour ruling party loyalists—highlights new threats to the ecologically fragile Sundarbans

- Romita Datta

For decades, the 4,265 sq. km Mangrove belt, spread over the Sundarbans delta and the reserve forests of South 24 Parganas in West Bengal, has acted as a line of defence for its 2.5 million people against coastal erosion, tidal onslaughts and natural calamities. While the scars of an expanding human footprint over the years are indisputable, environment watchdogs have spotted and put a stop to fresh violations in this ecologically sensitive region—it seems just in the nick of time.

Hundreds of acres of the Sundarbans mangroves—one of the world’s largest such forests—are feared to have been lost due to illegal felling carried out for government schemes aimed at providing housing and farmland to the poor. This has happened under the patronage of the local administration, allegedly to benefit Trinamool Congress (TMC) loyalists.

The zone of illegal activity is Sagar island in South 24 Parganas, where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, in 2013, announced a project each in Dheusagar and Rupsagar to promote mangrove conservation and tourism. An estimated Rs 1 crore was spent to fence off the sites, spread over a total of 50 acres, with plans to create a ‘mangrove walkway’ for tourists. Six years on, there is little evidence of conservation. Instead, swathes of mangrove vegetation have given way to a greyish landscape of sediment where tree stumps stick out of the soil like cigarette butts. Around 25 brick and concrete structures, built illegally by cutting mangrove trees, have come up over three acres.