With the car depot site closed down by the govt, Forest Dept will now ensure that wildlife movement returns to normalcy in the area
As the car depot has been shifted from Aarey Colony to Kanjurmarg, the tin sheets installed surrounding the site will be removed in coming days following the site closure instructions given to MMRCL by the government.
Talking to mid-day, sources from Forest Department, who did not wish to be named, said that once the site is opened, the camera trapping exercise would also be carried out on the plot to study the movement of wild animals. "The information that we have received is that the site closure instructions have been given to MMRCL by the state government. In the coming days, the work of removing the tin sheets surrounding the car depot plot at Aarey Colony will begin and post that we have plans to install camera traps in the area to monitor the wildlife activity on the plot," the source said.
It may be noted that before the car depot work started, there was a leopard, jungle cat, small Indian civet activity seen by many people staying. But after the plot was given for construction of car depot, MMRCL had installed tin sheets around the plot.
Aarey residents including wildlife lovers had even said that the tin sheets had caused a great deal of hindrance to free movement of wildlife. However, there were reports a couple of weeks back that few spotted deer had entered the car depot site and sources from Thane Forest Department (Territorial) confirmed the same. The group of volunteers doing camera trapping exercise at Aarey also got an image of a leopard in the camera traps on the hillock facing the car depot site at Khadakpada.
It is also said that after the tin sheets surrounding the car depot site are removed, the work of restoring the land where dumping was done will also be carried out to try and bring back the land to its original state.
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