Forest officials gave nod to Guguldoh mining project in tiger corridor

Nagpur: Forest officials bucking under alleged political pressure may have made the Guguldoh manganese ore mining proposal at Ramtek, in the tiger corridor bewteeen Pench and Navegaon-Nagzira Tiger Reserve (NNTR), one of the projects to get the fastest wildlife clearance from the state board.
Several road widening projects are stalled in corridors for lack of mitigation steps. The wildlife appraisal for the Guguldoh mining project was done on December 12, 2021, and on May 2, 2023, the state board for wildlife (SBWL) in its 20th meeting cleared it without any discussion. As reported by TOI earlier, the meeting ended in five minutes by clearing all the agenda items.
The manganese block involves the diversion of 105 hectare land, of which 100 hectare is reserve forest. The Raipur-based firm will extract over 3 lakh tonnes of ore from the forest area having presence of Schedule-I animals, including tigers and leopards.