Trees in Corbett fell prey to greedy nexus, says SC
‘Amazed at the audacity’ of exMinister, officials involved in felling of 6,000 trees in reserve, says Bench; court wants panel to study if tiger safaris should be allowed in buffer zones of reserves
The Supreme Court on Wednesday condemned the illegal felling of over 6,000 trees to construct buildings, ostensibly for “ecotourism” at the Jim Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand, as a “classic case” of nexus between politicians and officials working to ransack the environment for shortterm commercial ends.
“The present case depicts a sorry state of affairs of human greed devastating one of the most celebrated abodes of tigers i.e. the Corbett Tiger Reserve,” a threejudge Bench headed by Justice B.R. Gavai observed.
The court also directed the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate
Change to form a specialised committee to study and recommend whether tiger safaris should be permitted in the buffer areas of a tiger reserve.
On the “huge devastation” caused by the illegal felling, the court said it was “amazed at the audacity” of former Uttarakhand Forest Minister and Congress leader Harak Singh Rawat and former Divisional Forest Officer Kishan Chand for giving forest and wildlife conservation laws a complete goby and throwing the public trust doctrine “into the dustbin”.
The judgment approved the Central Bureau of Investigation probe initiated into the case and directed the agency to submit a report in three months.
The Bench said Uttarakhand could not “run away” from its responsibility to restore the forest to the last tree.
Justice Gavai said the tigers needed the forest as much as the forest depended on the tigers. “The presence of tigers in the forests is an indicator of the wellbeing of the ecosystem. Unless steps are taken for the protection of tigers, the ecosystem which revolves around tigers cannot be protected… Events like illegal construction and illicit felling of trees like the one in Corbett cannot be ignored,” he said.