New Delhi and Cambridge (UK): The body meant to protect India’s wildlife has recommended shrinking or erasing 35 protected areas since 2012, for mining, infrastructure, tourism, temples and urban expansion.
Our analysis of 64 meetings of the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (SC-NBWL), the decision-making arm of India’s apex statutory wildlife body, found that 13 proposals involved the complete or partial “denotification” of protected areas, while 21 sought boundary alterations or “rationalisations”.
None of the 35 proposals was placed before the Supreme Court for prior approval, in defiance of binding judicial orders, which meant the SC-NBWL lacked the authority to do what it did.
In October 2025, the Standing Committee approved the deletion of 3,485 hectares—nearly 35 sq km—from Chhattisgarh’s Pamed Wildlife Sanctuary for a Central Reserve Police Force jungle-warfare facility and battalion camp.
The meeting minutes did not disclose the scale of the reduction: It was more than 12 times the CRPF’s original request for 283 hectares.
The deletion was presented as a “rationalisation”, offset by a “compensatory” addition of 3,535 hectares from an adjoining forest division. That addition has yet to materialise, leaving the sanctuary drastically shrunken while the claimed increase remains on paper.
The committee also bypassed the foundational “principle of avoidance”. It did not ask whether the facility could be located outside Pamed, nor did it require officials to explore alternative sites. The same failure to genuinely examine alternatives was evident across all 35 proposals we examined.
Pamed’s reduction severely threatens one of central India’s last populations of the endangered wild water buffalo. Once widely distributed, the species has dwindled to just 30-35 animals in Chhattisgarh, concentrated mainly in Pamed and the adjoining Bhairamgarh area.
Pamed is also a critical part of one of central India’s largest conservation landscapes, connecting the Indravati Tiger Reserve with the Tadoba Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra, the Udanti Tiger Reserve in Chhattisgarh and the Sunabeda Wildlife Sanctuary in Odisha.
The boundary alteration directly violates the Supreme Court’s order of 13 November 2000, reiterated in 2015, which prohibits the dereservation or denotification of forests, wildlife sanctuaries and national parks without the Court’s prior approval.
The data also reveal a striking trend: a surge in decisions to shrink or erase protected areas—from one in 2012-13 to six in 2014-15 to 28 in 2016-26.
Mutilating India’s Protected Areas
Pamed is far from an isolated case.
Source: article-14.com. Read more here