By IANS,
New Delhi : Describing as alarming that India’s total dense forest cover was less than two percent, the Supreme Court Friday sought the government’s response to its panel’s recommendation for a mandatory buffer zone of two kilometres for all the national parks and sanctuaries extending 200 square kilometres or more.
A forest bench of Justice Aftab Alam, Justice K. S. Radhakrishnan and Justice Swatanter Kumar expressed its dismay that just 1.89 percent of the country’s area was under dense forest cover.
“I thought that after our intervention (constituting the forest bench), the things have improved,” observed Justice Alam.
Improving upon the recommendations of the court appointed Central Empowered Committee (CEC) on environmental matters, amicus curiae Harish Salve said that there should be three categories of national parks and sanctuaries having different buffer zones around them.
Salve said that all national parks and sanctuaries having area of 200 kms or more should have a buffer zone of minimum of two kms, forest cover of 100 to 200 square kms should have a buffer zone of 500 meters and those forests cover less than 100 square kilometres area have a buffer zone of 100 meters.
Under the existing government policy, the buffer zone is upto two kms.
Originally, the CEC had carved out four categories of the national parks and wildlife sanctuaries – 500 square kms and above, 200-500 square kms, 100-200 square kms and lastly upto 100 sqaure kms.
However Salve in his modification reduced it to three categories by clubbing the 200-500 square kms with the 500 square kms and above category.
He told the court that it should be across the board and not as government usually tags it with case to case basis.
“Ask the Union of India to consider it and if they insist (tagging buffer zone) on cases to case basis then, we have to argue it out,” he said.
Salve told the court that when then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had brought the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, the total area under forest cover was 20 percent. On a query from the court, he said that ideally 33 percent of the land area should be under forest cover.
Asking the Additional solicitor General Gourab Banarjee to file the government response in three weeks, the court fixed the next hearing of the matter Nov 2.
The CEC report said that there are 102 national parks and 515 wildlife sanctuaries together having an area of 1.60 lakh square kms.
Regarding permitting other facilities in the parks and Sanctuaries, Salve told the court that permission for the same should only be given only after the assessment of the sustainable capacity of each. He said if a protected eco-sensitive zone could sustain just two hotels then licence should not be given for more than that number.
The court accepted the suggestion that most of the interlocutory applications should be sent for adjudication by the National Green Tribunal and the apex court’s forest bench should concern its self with main issues.