At a time when crores are being spent on tiger conservation, forests would be cut down at Mahan in Central India following provisional clearance for coal mining by the Government. According to experts 35 per cent of the 1,700 Indian tigers left in the wild are in the forests of Central India where there are leopards and elephants too. Further, there are also indigenous communities that depend on these forests for their livelihood. A report by Greenpeace prepared with the help of Ecoinformatics Lab of Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE), says that about eight to 10 tiger reserves in these Central Indian States are very close to the 13 coal fields that are in various stages of exploitation in the concerned area. The report points out that of the total of 1,104,000 hectares (ha) of standing forest which overlaps with these coal fields, over 739,000 ha is dense forest and over 354,000 ha lies within the 10-km buffer of a protected area. “The endangered tiger inhabits a significant chunk of the 13 coalfields. While the Government claims its priority to conserve tigers, it absurdly allows coal mining in Central India where most of the coal reserves lie,” pointed out Ashish Fernandes, one of the architects of the report. “These new coal mining areas are located in the States of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand besides parts of Odisha and eastern Maharashtra,” says the report. These regions are also parts of India’s largest contiguous tiger landscape. The report says that connecting corridors between major protected areas will be either severed or heavily disturbed by coal mining and related infrastructure. The 13 coalfields will impact at least eight tiger reserves in varying degrees due to loss of connecting corridors as a result of coal mining. “These reserves sustain an estimated population of 230 tigers and these corridors are essential for their long-term survival,” says the report. The affected areas especially include corridors in the Bandhavgarh-Sanjay-Palamau tiger reserve belt, corridors between Palamau-Lawalong-Hazaribagh, between Tadoba and Bor-Umred-Karandla, Pench and Bor, Pench and Satpura, Tadoba and Kawal, Tadoba and Chaprala/Indravati and Satkosia Gorge and Simlipal. According to the Standing Committee member of National Board For Wildlife (NBWL), “By order of the Supreme Court, any mining within 10 km of protected areas requires the permission of the Board but this does not seem to be happening while clearing the coal blocks.” The report also cautions that the Planning Commission projects coal requirement for electricity generation in 2031-2032 in the range of 1,475 to 1,659 million tonnes. This is more than double the current coal consumption. Given the high cost of importing coal, the bulk of this demand would be required to be met through domestic coal production, which hints at the fact that virtually all forest areas in these 13 coalfields, and many more besides, would be opened up.