Meet On 9th About Hubballi-Ankola Railway Line
The Karnataka government has called for a State Wildlife Board meeting on 9 January 2019.
Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy will chair this meeting. This will be the first board meeting since the coalition government took charge.
This meeting has been called specifically to clear the Hubli-Ankola railway line.
It is on top of the agenda. Chief Wildlife Warden Jayaram, who is to shortly retire, is pushing this, based on the report given by IISc researchers.
The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has refused to attend this meet. The Railways department is not too keen. The railway ministry had backed off from the project only last week. However, Mr Kumaraswamy insisted that the railway line should be laid through the dense forests of the ecologically sensitive Western Ghats.
If the State Wildlife Board gives the green signal, more than two lakh trees in the ecologically sensitive Western Ghats will be felled. Global warming is at its peak. Natural disasters have become as common as the flu. Yet the Karnataka government is hell bent on a project, which had been shelved for more than ten years.
This project can be stopped only if the people come forward and help. Only then the ecologically sensitive environment and the wildlife can be saved.
