Look Away as the Western Ghats Crumble - Pumped Storage Project

Look Away as the Western Ghats Crumble - Pumped Storage Project

Dawn breaks over the mist-shrouded slopes of the Sharavathi Valley, where ancient lion-tailed macaques swing through canopies older than empires. Suddenly, the earth groans—blasting echoes through the hills as massive drills carve 500-meter-deep tunnels into the fragile rock. A river's flow stutters, and in the distance, a hillside slips into oblivion, burying villages and wildlife alike. This is the blueprint for tomorrow's headlines, scripted by unchecked mega-projects ripping through India's biodiversity.

At its core, the crisis in the Western Ghats boils down to a brutal clash: Push for development versus the survival of the ecosystems. Spanning 1,600 kilometers along the country's southwest coast, this mountain range— a UNESCO World Heritage site—harbors over 7,400 species of flowering plants, 325 globally threatened animals, and endemic wonders like the purple frog and Nilgiri tahr. But today, it's under siege from infrastructure blitzes: pumped storage hydropower plants, sprawling rail lines, dams, and roads that fragment habitats and trigger disasters. The Sharavathi Pumped Storage Project, a 2,000 MW behemoth in Karnataka, demands felling up to 15,000 trees and diverting 142 hectares of pristine forest, while the long-stalled Hubballi-Ankola rail corridor threatens to slice through 600 hectares of wildlife corridors, felling nearly 2 lakh trees. This is part of a pattern where economic imperatives—power for renewables, connectivity for trade—trump ecological red lines. And between the roar of machinery, scientists, who hold the data to halt this, are not shouting.

The Western Ghats' plight is similar to the global biodiversity hotspots. Like the Amazon's arc of deforestation, where Brazilian highways and soy farms have erased 20% of the rainforest since 1970, or the Congo Basin's mining corridors fragmenting gorilla habitats, India's Ghats face the same: infrastructure as a Trojan horse for habitat loss. In the Andes, similar pumped storage schemes in Colombia have spiked landslides by 40%, same as the Ghats' vulnerability—recall the 2024 Wayanad tragedy that claimed 254 lives, fueled by quarrying and deforestation. Globally, hotspots like these are losing species at 1,000 times the natural rate; the Ghats, with 33% of its biodiversity are at risk by 2030 from climate shifts and human pressure, isn't unique. How emerging economies sacrifice lungs for growth.

The real devastation isn't just trees felled or rivers dammed—it's the cascading silence that amplifies it. Experts have flagged these projects for decades; they rejected Sharavathi's forest clearance in May 2025 over landslide risks in this seismically twitchy zone, but its pushed ahead, citing "minimal impact" in rushed EIAs that ignore underground blasting's ripple effects on aquifers. Overlooked data from the Indian Institute of Science shows a 5% plunge in evergreen cover since the 1980s, directly tied to such intrusions, while freshwater species—like the critically endangered Mahseer fish—are facing extinction rates four times higher here than global averages, poisoning water for 50 million downstream dwellers. Scientists aren't absent; they're divided or defunded. Some have endorsed rail alignments for "freight efficiency," while others warn of irreversible ecosystem collapse. But the hush? It's born of pressure: grants tied to state agendas, fear of backlash in a development-obsessed polity. T

North Karnataka's farmers, already water-starved, face poisoned rivers and barren soils, turning a biodiversity paradise into a disaster factory no one's admitting.

If the Ghats fall silent forever, will your water source—or your supply chain—be next?

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