Dinesh Kamath's news 'Protect mangroves in the city, demand some NGOs' that was published in Newsband

Protect mangroves in the city, demand some NGOs

By Dinesh Kamath

NAVI MUMBAI: According to some members of certain NGOs in the city, cemented walls should be disallowed from being built around the wetlands and places where mangroves grow in large quantity since these result in destruction of mangroves and in the process the entire environmental behavior of this area gets affected. The wetlands between Mansarovar and Kharghar railway stations sector 20 in Airoli are found to have such cemented barricades all around the wetland.

The cemented walls prevent the mangroves from enjoying fresh tidal water. This can lead to these mangroves getting dried up.

There are NGOs which are constantly fighting against this practice of constructing cemented walls around mangroves. They have even knocked the doors of High Court to stop this kind of practice for once. But all these efforts by them have proved to be in vain.  

There is a law which says that mangroves deserve to enjoy the status of protected forest and hence nobody should indulge in doing construction works around such mangroves and also debris are prohibited from being dumped in coastal regulation zones.  

The mangroves between Kamothe and Kharghar were also getting badly affected owing to the road widening work that was in progress on the Sion-Panvel highway. But some NGOs played an instrumental role in preventing complete destruction of these mangroves.

The members of these NGOs demanded that brick kilns should not be allowed to be present at places where there are mangroves since they can lead to destruction of mangroves. Also a demand was made that forest departments should be given the charge of mangrove regions since this would lead to preservation of mangroves which is very advantageous to the environment of the regions where these mangroves grow.