Mumbai: The environmental clearance given by the Indian government to Western Coalfields Ltd (WCL), a subsidiary of Coal India, for the expansion of Durgapur open cast mine in Chandrapur district, Maharashtra, will drastically affect the tiger corridor, activists have said.

They also said it would make Chandrapur city even more polluted.

Kishor Rithe, a conservationist who has spent three decades in the forests of central India to save tigers, said he now feared the worst after the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change gave the green nod a few days back to Durgapur Extension Deep Open Cast mine to expand from 1186.54 hectares to 1622.50 hectares.

“Several factors are against this expansion of open cast coal mines,” he told Gulf News on telephone from Nagpur.

“First of all, Chandrapur is a tiger district, with the mines being in the tiger corridor.”

He criticised the grounds cited by the ministry, in considering certain points, before giving a nod to the coal company.

“Wildlife issues: there are no national parks, wildlife sanctuary, biosphere reserves found in the 10km buffer zone,” a ministry statement said.

But according to Rithe, the tiger doesn’t recognise man-made boundaries as the animal moves through the forest corridor.

“The vital issue here is that the coal mine extension is located next to the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve,” he said

The Nature Conservation Society, run by Rithe in Amravati, did challenge the proposed extension of Durgapur Rayatwari Colliery in the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court more than a decade ago.

“The court had stopped the illegal mining (when underground mining was done without permission) and imposed a fine. Later on, the WCL conceived of this project and to obtain environmental clearance,” he said.

The present project would entail an investment of Rs3.79 billion (Dh213 million) with a proposal to increase production from the current 2.3 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) to 3 MTPA.

“The human-wildlife conflict is already very high in this region and tigers need space. New open cast mines in this region will be disastrous for people and tiger,” says Rithe, who runs an NGO Satpuda Foundation for tiger conservation. He feels environmentalists are fighting a losing battle at a time natural treasures of India have to be protected with the strong support of the government.

“Open cast mines mean that the entire forest land will be removed by digging 10 feet into the ground, biodiversity will be lost and aquifers affected even as the release of carbon into the air will increase temperature.” Summers in Chandrapur have seen temperatures go above 47 degrees centigrade which was never the case earlier. The severe air pollution is behind various respiratory problems among children in this highly industrialised town.

The biggest fear is that none of the rules stipulated by the ministry, like transportation of coal by trucks to be covered and regular water sprinkling in critical areas prone to air pollution, have never been followed.