The hillocks dotting the coal hub of Chandrapur are a green oasis in the central Indian region pockmarked with coal mines, where even rain puddles are black, and a coal-fed thermal power plant belches smoke into the sky.
Yet locals live in fear of these hills – dunes formed with the sand removed from coal mines and covered by a blanket of green – as they have created a new habitat for tigers and other wild animals responsible for a string of devastating attacks.
India is the world’s second-largest coal producer after China, yet supply is falling short of the demand of its domestic industry and the government is ramping up production.
The impacts are mostly negative for local communities, said Patnaik – from increased poverty and health damage to the human-animal conflict now happening in Chandrapur.
“Human interference is the main reason behind disturbance in the environment – and fossil fuel extraction is posing an existential threat to the entire ecosystem,” he added.
With a dense population of 1.3 billion, India is vulnerable to human-animal conflict as people encroach on wildlife habitats, with Chandrapur especially at risk as its mines are close to a forest, experts said.
Bandu Dhotre, a member of the wildlife board of western Maharashtra state where Chandrapur is located, said the area had seen leopards, bears and now tigers, whose numbers are rising in tandem with species protection efforts.
“They have a conducive habitat, access to water and prey. But people are not foreseeing the future … This will be a big problem,” said Dhotre, founder and president of environmental organisation Eco-Pro, pointing to the hills on a rainy morning.
Chandrapur is home to the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve – one of 50 such reserves in India – and its tiger and leopard populations have doubled to about 85 and 105 respectively in the last 10 years as conservation efforts bore fruit, officials said.
