Walls Come Down To Make Way For Elephants

In a landmark moment for environmental activism in India, on March 17, Numaligarh Refinery Ltd. (NRL) began demolishing its 2.2-kilometre boundary wall in its township that had been restricting the movement of wild animals in Deopahar’s reserve forest in Golaghat district, Assam.

NRL is a public sector oil company, and a joint venture with Bharat Petroleum, Oil India Ltd (OIL) and the Government of Assam as the parties. The demolition of the wall reportedly started after the Gauhati High Court upheld the original decision of the National Green Tribunal (NGT). The NGT in August 2016 had ordered the demolition of the wall, in response to the applications filed by conservationist and RTI activist Rohit Choudhury.

On February 8, an order passed by Justice Devashis Baruah dismissed two writ petitions filed by NRL that challenged NGT’s 2016 order. NRL had begun the demolition activity once in March 2018, and demolished 289 metres of the wall, before abandoning the project.

When contacted, Kajal Saikia, General Manager (HR) of NRL told Mongabay-India, “We respect the order of the Hon’ble High Court and will comply with the court’s order.”

The demolition will be entirely carried out by NRL and the district administration of Golaghat will not be involved. Uday Praveen, Deputy Commissioner, Golaghat told Mongabay-India, “The district administration has not been made party to the order by the Hon’ble Court. So, the demolition of the wall will have to be carried out entirely by the NRL. They will have to provide the human resources and machinery required for the job.”

On condition of anonymity, a source close to NRL informed that the company was looking to complete the entire demolition by the end of March. “Not only demolishing the wall, they will have to pull out the entire foundation they had built,” the source said. At the time of publishing this article, the final phase of the demolition was still on.

A Decade-Long Legal Battle

While Choudhury is relieved with the High Court judgment and the start of the demolition, the journey has not been plain sailing. The demolition of the wall was ultimately a result of almost a decade-long legal battle fought in three different courts.

He first filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) with NGT in 2015, and in August 2016 NGT declared the construction of the boundary wall illegal, as it fragments a critical elephant corridor.

In the order, NGT directed NRL to demolish the wall and asked the company to pay a sum of 25 lakh rupees to the Assam Forest Department for the ‘destruction of forest cover’ and the flattening of a hill to build a golf course. NRL was also asked for ‘compensatory afforestation of 10 times the number of trees’ that were felled to build the wall.

The verdict said that the wall and the proposed township, which were part of the then ‘Proposed Reserve Forest’ of Deopahar, fall in a no-development zone declared by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (then Ministry of Environment and Forests) in 1996 and any non-forest activity in the area would be in violation of a Supreme Court order issued in 1996 in the T. N. Godavarman case. Deopahar was notified as a proposed reserved forest in 1999 and was given the status of a reserve forest in 2019.

Regarding the NGT verdict, Choudhury said, “Following the order, NRL filed a review application in the Tribunal. This application was dismissed by NGT in 2018, following which the refinery filed a writ petition in Gauhati High Court asking the Golaghat district authorities not to demolish the entire boundary wall. While this petition was pending in Gauhati HC, NRL filed an appeal against the NGT orders in the Supreme Court in 2018. A two-member bench of the apex court dismissed the appeal in January 2019 stating that elephants have first rights over the forest.”

“NRL filed another writ petition in the HC in August 2019 and finally, the HC dismissed the two writ petitions challenging the NGT order. Now, they have exhausted all their legal options and will have to comply with the NGT order,” he added.

A Wildlife Haven

Deopahar’s reserve forest lies adjacent to the NRL township. Mubina Akhtar, a conservationist from Golaghat for over two decades, stressed that Deopahar plays a very important role as a corridor for wild animals. She said, “As far as I remember, the boundary wall constructed by the NRL authorities came to my notice in 2011. Telgaram, where the Numaligarh Refinery is situated, is known for its elephant habitations and the area serves as a transit for elephants moving between Kaziranga and Karbi Anglong. With the establishment of the NRL in Telgaram in the 1990s, vast tracts of forested areas were cleared for housing the refinery project. These areas were serving as critical wildlife corridors and part of a larger ecosystem and catchment.”

Akhtar claimed that with the expansion of the township, new settlements and the growth of small tea gardens in and around Numaligarh, human-elephant interactions escalated as well. “Such interactions increased over the years, resulting in casualties on both sides. More than 20 people lost their lives between 2011 and 2020 in the greater Numaligarh area,” she said.

“The neighbouring areas such as Daigrung, Morongi, Falangani, Bokial and Kalioni, have to bear the brunt of regular raids in the croplands. Incidents occur when elephants find barriers in their refuge or regular pathways. A two-kilometre stretch of a boundary wall built by NRL inside the Deopahar forest became a huge physical barrier for the elephants blocking their regular movement. In a number of cases, elephant calves got separated from their herds because of this barrier. The pachyderms were even seen hitting the walls trying to get rid of the obstructions,” she added.

Talking about the biodiversity of the reserve forest, Sushil Thakuriya, Divisional Forest Officer of Golaghat district told Mongabay-India, “This forest has a resident population of around 15 elephants. Apart from that, migratory elephants use this forest as a corridor. Deopahar has a good population of leopards too. There are also some other wild cat species, hoolock gibbons, slow lorises, deer, pythons and many species of butterflies and birds here.”

Conservation Success

Environmentalists now breathe a sigh of relief following the news about the demolition of the boundary wall.

Debadityo Sinha, Lead of Climate and Ecosystems at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy said, “The demolition of the NRL wall can be considered as a victory for wildlife conservation in the country. However, this task should have been carried out by the State as it is the primary custodian of wildlife and forest. But ultimately it is a citizen who had to take up the matter in his hands and seek help from the judiciary which was a lengthy process. Elephants are known for their intellect and strong memory, so when their traditional routes have been disturbed for so long, nobody knows how it affects their ecology in the long-term. However, one can hope that following this judgment and its implementation, it will serve as a reminder to those who violate environmental norms.”

Having grown up in Bokakhat, a town 20 kilometres from Numaligarh, Choudhury recalled a different landscape from then and said, “At that time, the NRL township was completely surrounded by forests. I remember how people who used to go to Golaghat would take the 4 p.m. bus back or even earlier during winters. Because in the evening, hundreds of elephants used to come out on the road in Numaligarh. Elephants have always been an integral part of the lives of people here. Development shouldn’t come at the cost of our environment and wildlife.”

(Published under Creative Commons from Mongabay-India. Read the original article here)