CB BureauWith Navi Mumbai airport getting the green signal from ministry of environment and forests (MoEF), what has been the annual home of migratory birds (over 150 species) is bound to get ruined.
Bird species including Kenyan flamingo, Siberian ducks and ruddy turnstone, godwit, heron, and spoonbill from distant Europe visit the area around the proposed airport site every year around October, and stay put around the site till March. However, when the airport will be built, the area will obviously become a ‘no flying zone’ for the birds.
‘We expected a lot from Jairam Ramesh. We hoped he would remain firm on his stand that the airport be shifted to another site – for the sake of not just the migratory birds, but also the several other environmental concerns that were raised. But it seems that he, too, has chosen not to go against the flow. I do not know how concerns, which were so immense not too long ago, were resolved so suddenly,’ Adesh Shivkar, director of Nature India who is also a well-known bird watcher, told The Times of India.
According to Prashant Shinde, executive director of Srushti Dyan, a city-based NGO working on conservation issues, ‘the airport will lead to nothing but the destruction of the present ecosystem. Trying to replicate the ecosystem of the airport site at another place will destroy the latter’s ecosystem as it will not be natural.