Western Ghats: Centre puts Sharavathy Valley Project on hold, flags threat to lion-tailed macaques

New Delhi: The Centre has deferred approval for diverting 54 hectares of forest land inside the Sharavathy Valley Lion-Tailed Macaque Sanctuary in Karnataka’s Western Ghats for the 2,000-megawatt Sharavathy Pumped Storage Hydroelectric Project, citing serious ecological and legal violations. 

According to minutes of the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) meeting held on October 27, the project would require the felling of over 15,000 trees within dense tropical evergreen and semi-evergreen forests — ecosystems the panel described as “highly complex and impossible to restore once destroyed.”

The FAC noted that the proposed project area lies entirely within an ecologically sensitive zone that supports several threatened species, including the Lion-Tailed Macaque, Tiger, Leopard, Sloth Bear, King Cobra, and Malabar Giant Squirrel.

The committee cited a wildlife census recording 730 Lion-Tailed Macaques in the sanctuary and warned that “loss of canopy and habitat would intensify fragmentation, posing a serious risk to the survival of LTMs.”

Both the Deputy Inspector General of Forests (Central), Bengaluru, and the Chief Wildlife Warden of Karnataka opposed the project, warning that the hydel infrastructure — involving deep tunnelling, blasting, and excavation up to 500 metres — could trigger landslides and erosion in Seismic Zone 3, where the region lies.

The FAC also flagged legal concerns, saying that the proposed power transmission lines appeared to violate provisions of the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, and lacked separate forest clearance.

It concluded that the compensatory afforestation land offered by the project developer cannot compensate for the loss of wet evergreen forests, noting that the CA sites proposed are “ecologically different from the forests being lost.”

The panel has asked the project proponent to conduct a detailed hydrological study, prepare a wildlife mitigation plan, and minimise tree felling before the proposal can be reconsidered.