the tiger and elephant populations are much larger and growing. Yet we have an obsession for these two species with much lower conservation value.
Threats to biodiversity
Gharial’s decline is attributable to the loss of riverine habitat with dams, barrages, irrigation canals and artificial embankments, changes in the river course due to siltation and sand-mining and high levels of pollution including by heavy metals like lead & cadmium. Indeed, pollution, of air, water and soil and modification of natural habitats are the most potent of threats to biodiversity in India today, far more serious than hunting of species banned under WLPA. Pollution and habitat destruction are both being positively encouraged and impacting the country’s environment more and more seriously today. Regretfully our Pollution Control Boards are continually engaged in whitewashing and do not maintain any honest records. To make matters worse the 2020 EIA notification declares even red or most polluting industries to be strategically important and exempts them from public scrutiny.
All over the country natural habitats are being destroyed in many ways. Expansion of agriculture into forested areas is only one relatively insignificant aspect of such modifications. More potent is the building of high-rise buildings for the wealthy, construction of highways and rail way lines, airports and ports, quarrying of rocks and mining of sand and limestone to support this construction, and mining for coal and a variety of minerals. Maharashtra’s Samruddhi highway is one such
38
