Fifty per cent of the world's Olive Ridley turtles come to the coast of Orissa to lay their eggs every season. But in the next few years, you may never see this site again. The reasons?
The Tatas are building a port worth Rs 17,000 crore at a spot which is barely 12 kms from where the endangered Olive Ridley turtles come for nesting.
The site for the construction of the controversial Dhamra Port, which is being built by the Tatas, could sound the death knell of the Olive Ridley Turtles.
But the Tatas disagree. "Our decision to set up a port has arisen from the fact that the actual place where we are going to put up the port is nowhere near the place where the turtles congregate or nest and it is not going to effect the turtle habitat," says Santosh Mohapatra, CEO, Dhamra Port Ltd.
But satellite tracking of the turtle movement shows that the turtles are found around the mouth of the river Dhamra - the site of the port.
"The elementary studies that we did do - though it was on foot turtles - showed that all the foot turtles used those areas both during the breeding season and outside the breeding season. Ideally speaking, if I had to use the precautionary principle, I would build a port on the coast of Orissa, it would not be at Dhamra," says Kartik Shankar, a turtle biologist.
And the Tata are not the only ones building a port here. Multi-national South Korean giant Posco is also building a port at the Jatadhari river mouth in Orissa.
That's not all. The exotic playground of the turtles has also attracted oil companies.
Oil and gas exploration rigs can cause devastation to the turtles by creating a concrete jungle in the seabed and exposing this precious species to bright illumination -- thus, disorienting the migratory turtles.
And incidentally, the Reliance Group of Companies is doing just that. CNN-IBN's Special investigation Team has a report from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) that conveys another danger confronting the turtles.
The report reveals that exploratory drilling permissions were given to the Reliance Group of companies. And all of these were on the migratory route of the Olive Ridley turtles.
"You know that there is massive industrialisation that is taking place in Orissa and the ports will come up," Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said.
Ecology and environment are important but not at the cost of development for the people of Orissa.
Thousands of turtles have already died off the coast of Orissa due to the official neglect.
But as or the government at the Centre which gave the permissions and the state government 'development' has become a convenient bogey for mega-projects, with very little commitment to the turtles or for that matter the fragile coastal ecosystem of Orissa.
Meanwhile, a lone turtle makes her way to the beach. This may well be her last time. Soon, the lights will be up and mega-ships on these waters. And this will definitely mean a slow, but certain death for the Olive Ridley turtles.
http://www.ibnlive.com/article.php?id=7843§ion_id=3
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