Mumbai: Authorities break illegally built bund to save mangroves forest in Dahisar

Workers demolishing the illegal bund in Dahisar

The Mangroves Cell has demolished an illegal bund that was constructed in Dahisar with the intention of blocking tidal water from reaching the mangroves, in order to encroach on the area. The tidal water has started reaching the mangroves again.

Tidal water flows back into the mangroves after the demolition

Deputy Conservator of Forests (DCF) Neenu Somraj from the Mangroves Cell had tweeted about the demolition work that started on February 27. Later she tweeted more photos showing where the entire bund was broken and how the area was restored and the water can be seen reaching the mangroves.

In the fourth week of February, environmentalist Harish Pande had put up in his Facebook post the picture and videos of the illegal bund created by antisocial elements, after which the action was taken.

The Maharashtra Forest Department is taking proactive measures for the conservation of mangroves in the state and as part of these efforts, the Mangroves Foundation had sanctioned a project for high resolution mangroves mapping in Maharashtra to the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology in 2018.

Besides mapping and monitoring the state's mangroves, the other major objective of the project was to assess the health of the vegetation using near real-time open satellite data by developing an application tool. The exercise was carried out in coastal mangroves in the seven coastal districts: Mumbai, Mumbai sub-urban, Raigad, Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg, Thane and Palghar. The Thane mangroves have a total increment of 6.46 sq. km. Mumbai and Raigad show substantial increase in mangrove forest cover of additional 12.9 and 22.2 sq. km respectively.