By Simrin Sirur/Mongabay
The environment minister’s Forest Advisory Committee has granted “in principle” approval to a hydropower project in a region of Arunachal Pradesh that is inhabited by the white bellied heron, a critically endangered bird whose species number was estimated to be less than 60, globally, in 2015. To compensate for the forest loss resulting from the project, the FAC approved afforestation thousands of kilometres away, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, a decision experts termed futile for the bird’s conservation.
The FAC, a statutory body under the environment ministry which evaluates project proposals on forest land, gave its approval to the Kalai II hydroelectric power plant (HEP) in a meeting on May 8. The 1200-megawatt run-of-the river dam is planned on the Lohit river, a tributary of the Brahmaputra, in the border district of Anjaw. The river’s catchment area is flanked by tropical wet and dense mixed forest types and sits in the Eastern Himalaya biodiversity hotspot. A total of 33,338 trees are proposed to be felled within this landscape for the dam.
In its meeting, the FAC noted that the white-bellied heron was absent in the list of important species that could be impacted by the project, and granted its approval on the condition that the Wildlife Institute of India vet the project’s Wildlife Management Plan. The FAC insisted that the assessment put a special emphasis on conserving the bird’s habitat. However, conservation experts say that the hydropower project is likely to cause major disruptions to the species’ survival in India. Approximately six to nine individuals are estimated to exist in Arunachal Pradesh.
“The white-bellied heron needs clear, shallow, and fast flowing river streams to fish. They wait for the fish to come, and unlike other herons, they don’t move around too much. Their inability to adapt to changing habitats comes down to this foraging behaviour,” explained Yumlam Benjamin Bida, a project manager at ATREE who has studied the bird. “Fish is their only form of nutrition, and if there is any disturbance, it will reduce their energy intake drastically,” he added.
Environmental impact assessment
The white-bellied heron is listed in the first schedule of the Wildlife Protection Act, granting it the strictest protections under the law. While it was never found in abundance, its distribution and population have shrunk sharply in recent decades.
In the early 1900s, the bird was found across Nepal, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. Today, it is found only in parts of Arunachal Pradesh, Myanmar, and Bhutan, in regions that are relatively undisturbed by [development]. “The white bellied heron is an indicator species of a pristine habitat,” said Bida. Significantly, the bird found no mention in the Environmental Impact Assessment for the Kalai II project.
The dam is being developed by THDC Limited with the state government, and the EIA report was prepared by WAPCOS, a consultancy firm under the ownership of the Ministry of Jal Shakti. In the FAC minutes, a state official said it wasn’t included because the bird was not recorded at the project site. Conservationists have found its presence 50 kilometres upstream along the Lohit river, in Walong.
The dam is slated to come up in Hawai, 26.5 kilometers away from the Namdapha Tiger Reserve and 11 kilometers away from the Kamlang Wildlife Sanctuary. Apart from the white- bellied heron, other significant species likely to be impacted include takin, a large ungulate endemic to the region, and the large indian civet, Assamese macaque, and jungle cat, among others. For the takin, the EIA report says a budget of ?100 lakhs has been proposed to design a conservation plan which includes habitat protection, anti-poaching, monitoring and research, and training and awareness.
The project’s likely impact on species endemic to Arunachal Pradesh demonstrates the inadequacy of carrying out compensatory afforestation in a different landscape, said Umesh Srinivasan, an Associate Professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science. “The white-bellied heron, for example, requires habitats with fast flowing rivers and forest, and Madhya Pradesh is simply out of that habitat range,” he said.
The FAC directed THDC Limited to carry out compensatory afforestation on 51 patches of degraded land in Guna, Madhya Pradesh, where the forests are primarily dry and mixed deciduous. “Even if afforestation is done scientifically, using native species, it will bring back diversity that is native to Madhya Pradesh, not what is native to Arunachal Pradesh, which is one of the most diverse regions in the world,” Srinivasan added.
Impacts on community
Approximately 33 villages will be affected by the Kalai II hydropower project. Its development is supported by the central government, which provided the state with financial assistance worth ?1,300 crores. “There will be significant improvement in infrastructure in Namsai and Anjaw District of Arunachal Pradesh, including the development of around 29 kilometres of roads and bridges for the project which shall be mostly available for local use,” the central government’s press release says, adding that local population shall be benefitting “from many sorts of compensations, employment and CSR activities.”
Community support for the project appears divided, with some groups welcoming the project and others opposing it entirely. Roshman Tawsik, president of the District Congress Party Committee and a resident of Nukung, a [partially-affected] village, said his community opposed the project because of threats to livelihood. He filed a legal notice with WAPCOS in October 2025 alleging parts of the EIA were “copy-pasted” from a previous version. “We have opposed the project since 2008, when it was first proposed. We don’t want to sacrifice so much of our land and watch it get submerged.”
In the public hearing, held on August 20, 2025, community leaders raised concerns about inadequate surveys by WAPCOS on flora and fauna, and expressed apprehensions about noise and water pollution. The EIA report records 209 plant species within a 10-kilometre radius of the project, and 20 mammalian species.
WAPCOS responded saying specific flora like the Mishimi Teeta, an endemic medicinal plant, had been added to the report. “An oil and grease separator unit has been proposed to treat the effluents from workshops, parking areas, etc. to treat the effluent before disposal, so that there is no impact on aquatic ecology,” WAPCOS said in response to concerns about pollution.
This article is republished from Mongabay under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here.