The relentless growth in India’s population is forever placing greater demands for enhancing food grain production. This is being achieved through inputs of irrigation in areas under agriculture. The need to boost agriculture production through improved inputs of irrigation without jeopardizing the environmental conservation is the greatest challenge. The world over, experience drawn from the implementation of the irrigation and drainage projects suggest that invariably such projects have resulted in many reaching adverse ecological implications by bringing about the undesirable alterations in floral and faunal diversity, modification of edaphic features, hydrological regimes, habitat fragmentation and transformation of socio-economic systems. The sustainability of such projects is often linked to determining the acceptable levels of change and commitment for effectively recovering associated environmental degradation through mitigation based on wildlife science & practice.

The benefits of environmental impact assessment, an otherwise effective planning tool for integrating environmental concerns in development planning can also fall short in resolving conservation versus development issues. The merits of stand-alone ecological assessments are well acknowledged in supplementing information gaps on ecological aspects, which still remain a neglected subject in most environmental impact assessment reports for informed decision-making.

The Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF), Govt. of India entrusted WII the task of carrying out a rapid assessment of impacts of the proposed Human River Project in Maharashtra State on the habitat availability and wild animal use. The project area is located in the proximity of the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve.

This short term yet focused attempt to generate ecological baseline information on habitat availability and use by the wild animals has accomplished identification of a range of project impacts. Based on the observations made during field studies for this project and the strengths and convictions of past experiences of studies relating to irrigation projects, appropriate ameliorative and preventive measures have been outlined to mitigate the impacts on wild animals and their habitat use in the project area. This document needs to be viewed within the overall context of costs and benefits that the project would have on the economy, environment and people of the area.

[V.B. Sawarkar]
Team Leader, WII