Greens disagree with Nitin Gadkari’s ‘no wild animal killings on highways’ claim

NAGPUR: Wildlife conservationists have disagreed with Union road and highways minister Nitin Gadkari’s statement in the Lok Sabha that “no incident of killing of wild animals in road accidents on national highways (NHs) has been reported by the MoRTH during the last 3 years in the country”.
The claim by Gadkari on July 22 came to an unstarred question by BJP MP Sangamlal Kadedin Gupta wanting to know the number of wild animals killed (state-wise) in road accidents on NHs during each of the last three years in the country, and the steps taken by the government to prevent such cases and rescue operations.
Conservationists say Gadkari’s claim is untrue. They said, “Though technically the highways minister may be correct as MoRTH doesn’t record wild animals and it is done by the forest departments, the fact cannot be ruled out that several such animals including tigers, leopards, and herbivores have died on highways in road hits in the recent past. NHAI should be held responsible for reluctance to take mitigation steps.”
Though Gadkari led the way by taking mitigation measures on NH7, it was only after a long battle in Nagpur bench of Bombay high court. According to a leading NGO working for wildlife conservation in the country, deaths of 185 leopards have been recorded in road hits since 2019 till date. The data shows that most of these deaths were on NHs.
On May 24, TOI reported that as per official data procured under the RTI Act, 87 leopards died in Maharashtra in the first four months of this year. Of these, 33 were killed in road accidents. Most of these roads are being widened by NHAI in the state.
Two tigers have died in roads hits in the last six months. A tiger was knocked dead on January 7 on Ramnagar-Nainital highway in Uttarkhand. On June 18, another sub-adult tiger died while crossing NH-43 in Umaria district of MP. On April 19, a young male tiger suffered femur fractures after it was hit by a vehicle on NH-7 near Deolapar. The incident occurred close to a wildlife mitigation structure. The tiger is in captivity for life at Gorewada. On February 4, 2019, a tiger was critically injured on NH-7 near Paoni on NH-7.
“These are just a few examples. At the national level, there may be many animals dying on the highways but have gone unnoticed. It catches the attention of wildlife lovers when it comes to either tigers or leopards,” said young naturalist Himanshu Bagde.
“The statement of the minister may well be true but it doesn’t necessarily mean that there are no road kills at all. Our own database has thousands of data points of hundreds of species getting killed. Almost every week, 2 leopards die on India’s roads and this may be the tip of the iceberg as many road kills go unrecorded,” said Milind Pariwakam, a road ecologist with the Wildlife Conservation Trust (WCT).
Pariwakam, a member of IUCN’s Connectivity Conservation Specialist Group (CCSG), said, “Implementing agencies are mainly contractors and engineers. They may not consider the recording of road kills of animals as their responsibility. Considering the fact that as recently as five years ago Maharashtra forest department itself admitted that it did not have any data on road kills on NH7, it is quite possible that road implementing agencies have not reported any kills.”
Pariwakam added, “At the same time, NHAI has patrolling vehicles on every stretch and no other agency can match such significant resources. If NHAI patrolling vehicles can collect geo-tagged photos of road kills, the data can be of great help in building mitigation measures which can reduce roadkills.”