project marching headlong across the state. It does not care if there are hillocks on the way. It just cuts through them destroying forest and wildlife habitats and sources of streams that are the lifelines of the neighbouring villages’ agriculture. The wild animals rendered homeless have taken to raiding the villages, hyaenas are attacking cattle and panthers have seriously injured people.
Balance of nature
Another pseudoscientific assertion relates to the balance of nature. Nature has always been in flux; there never has been a balance of nature either on evolutionary or ecological timescales. Life originated four billion years ago; if ithad remained in balance from that time onwards there would now be only anaerobic, non-photosynthetic primitive organisms on the bottom of deep sea near the sites of eruption of undersea volcanoes. But life has not remained in balance. Two billion years ago it came out of the sea in moist habitats on land. Somewhat later it colonized the rest of the land and finally air. Life evolved from very simple one-celled organisms to complex fungi, plants and animals. Our own species arose 3 years lakh ago on the savannas of Africa and colonized the Indian subcontinent 65 thousand years ago. Notably there were no Asiatic elephants on the continent at that time; that species arrived on the continent much later. So, if one is to talk of encroachment it is elephants that have encroached on human habitats, not the other way around. On the ecological time scale too, there is continual dynamic change. At CES of I]Se we
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