This is the first in a three-part series about how the Hollongapar Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary, home to India’s only ape, is being compromised on all fronts in the name of development projects.
As the harvesting of crops came to a close on Magh Bihu, Binoy Karmakar, a young grassroots activist from Mariani in the Jorhat district of Assam, says almost 75 per cent of the land in his village, Hollonguri, that borders Nagaland, was not cultivated. Located in the eco-sensitive zone of Hollongapar Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary (HGWLS), Hollonguri shares its predicament with several other villages facing increasing human and elephant conflict. To make it worse, global metal manufacturing giant Vedanta is all set to explore oil in the eco-sensitive zone, with the National Board of Wildlife approving the proposal on January 9.
Vedanta is set to become a major player in expanding oil and gas-bearing areas in Northeastern India, aimed at improving energy security. However, several residents are worried about their future as returns from agriculture or their reliance on forest produce will diminish over time.
Vedanta had bagged permits in 2018 to drill 27 exploratory oil wells in the Mariani subdivision over 839 square kilometres via a petroleum exploration lease from the Assam government. The oil exploration project has worried environmentalists due to the project’s proximity to the Hollongapar Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary in Jorhat, a tiny island of dense forests housing rare and endangered primates.
The eco-sensitive zone of HGWLS extends up to 22 kilometres in places covering three reserve forests, which include the Dissoi Reserve Forest, the Dissoi Valley Reserve Forest, the Tiru Hills Reserve Forests and several villages, including Hollonguri.
Coexistence in Peril
Karmakar, a law graduate, says that elephants and humans have coexisted in the area for decades until oil companies started conducting seismic surveys right next to the HGWLS. “One day I found that people from an oil company were setting off small bombs near my village to find crude oil. No one from the government informed us. The forest department is absent here even as people have stopped cultivating crops due to human-elephant conflict,” Karmakar told East Mojo.
Environmentalists echo Karmakar’s statements, pointing out that the human-elephant conflict will increase as forests will be further fragmented due to oil exploration.
“We have seen in Tinsukia how fragmented forests have created a web of conflicts in which humans and wildlife, particularly elephants and humans, are pitted against each other as new areas come under oil exploration. Sadly, the Indian government is violating the very laws that it once framed to protect the environment and people,” Mridu Pawan Phukan, an environmentalist who has been training wildlife guards in Hollongapar Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary for several years, told East Mojo.
Vedanta applied for an environmental clearance for the first set of oil wells proposed to be located in Dissoi Valley Reserve Forest from Assam’s State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) for six oil pads on January 5, 2023, valued at Rs 16 crore as per the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
On August 27, 2024, the Forest Advisory Committee also recommended the proposal for the first oil pad inside the Dissoi Valley Reserve Forest. Later, on October 15, the National Board of Wildlife (NBWL) deferred the decision to divert close to five hectares of forest land from Dissoi Valley Reserve Forest for the exploratory oil drilling pad. NBWL proposed a site inspection report before approving the decision. After a site visit in November, the proposal got approval on January 9, 2025.
Fragmented conservation
Dissoi Valley Forest is a crucial buffer area for wild animals, including elephants, hoolock gibbons, leopards and even jungle cats. The site chosen for oil exploration falls under the eco-class 1 category of forests with a vegetation density of 0.4, indicating highly dense forests.
The forest is drained by the Dissoi River that originates in Nagaland, and as the river meanders through the Jorhat district to meet the Brahmaputra, it is also called Bhogdoi. With no water sources in the core area of HGWLS, Dissoi or Bhogdoi is a water source for the communities and the wildlife thriving in the area.
Dilip Chetry, a renowned primatologist who was the force behind the creation of the HGWLS in 1997, says that not just elephants but Hoolock gibbons and other primates like capped langurs have been observed in the Dissoi Valley Forest.
“The animals move through the expanse covering Dissoi forests and Tiru Hills and Hollongapar. We have observed elephants moving to the upper reaches towards Nagaland in summer. In the winters, they descend through the Dissoi valley towards Hollongapar, eating paddy and other crops,” Chetry told East Mojo. The forest department staff posted at HGWLS estimated 62 elephants divided into smaller herds that traverse through the ESZ of HGWLS, including the Dissoi Valley.
When FAC approved Vedanta’s exploratory drilling proposal, the committee recommended that two per cent of the project cost to mitigate human-elephant conflict in the area.
Vedanta also prepared a ‘conservation plan for the schedule I species’ in June 2020, stating that both Hoolock Gibbons and Elephants have been located within the 10-kilometre radius of the proposed project site.
In the same plan, Vedanta listed habitat fragmentation, expansion of tea gardens and human settlement, poaching, and expansion of road networks and railways as threats to the elephants and primates in the area.
The Vedanta study also blames Hollonguri, along with seven other villages, for forest fragmentation. Curiously, when the Forest Advisory Committee evaluated the exploratory drilling project, it stated that about 1350 trees would be cut in the project, which was reduced to 17 tree poles when the Jorhat DFO filed the site inspection report. “Furthermore, 17 trees are proposed to be felled in the proposal with 3.0598 hectares out of the total 4.4998 hectares used for creating an approach road while the remaining 1.44Ha is proposed for exploration drilling,” stated the Assam Chief Wildlife Warden in his comments recommending the project to NBWL.
According to Jorhat DFO, an unpaved approach already exists, being used by some Naga villages, where the vegetation mostly consists of shrubs and degraded forests.
Approving the project, the 81st meeting of the Standing Committee of NBWL comprising representatives of the MoEFCC, Wildlife Institute of India, Assam Forest Department and the elephant expert, Raman Sukumar, stated that the exploratory drilling may not cause much damage to the area.
“However, commercial drilling may not be allowed. The User Agency [Vedanta] has given an undertaking that they would not carry out commercial drilling at the site,” the minutes of the meeting stated.
The Inspector General of Forests, Conservation Division of MoEFCC, Raman Kumar Pandey, mentioned that in hydrocarbon extraction, exploratory drilling is the actual drilling which leads to commercial drilling.
On the other hand, Sukumar informed the Committee that ESZ is important for the seven species of primates found in HGWLS as the area provides connectivity. Sukumar further stated that HGWLS is stressed because of a railway line that divides the sanctuary into two unequal halves.
The Minister of State for MoEFCC, Kirti Vardhan Singh, who was also present in the meeting said that the exploratory drilling could serve the purposes of ascertaining the extent of subsurface oilfields and could also lead to commercial drilling. The minutes of the meeting mention that Vedanta in its undertaking to MoEFCC has stated that the purpose of the drilling inside the ESZ is to discover hydrocarbon reserves in the area. “Any extraction of the hydrocarbon reserves discovered would be carried from outside the ESZ of the Sanctuary,” Vedanta told the Ministry according to the minutes of the meeting accessed by East Mojo.
NBWL has imposed strict conditions on the exploratory drilling project. It has prohibited Vedanta from extracting hydrocarbons for commercial purposes. The standing committee asked Vedanta to deposit an amount equivalent to the mitigation costs of drilling inside the ESZ to the Assam Forest Department besides continuous monitoring of the project by the Director General of Hydrocarbons, Pollution Control Board of Assam and the Forest Department.
Environmental activists in Assam such as Mridu Pawan Phukan have been incensed by the news of the approval granted by NBWL to the drilling project. “It is hard to believe that NBWL approved this exploratory drilling so that the project proponent just discovers hydrocarbons.
“The exploratory drilling sites, as per Vedanta’s own EIA documents will have 80 to 100 personnel around the site for the drilling activity round the clock through a period of two or more years. There will be generators, there will be waste coming out of the project. Why would a company undertake such an expedition for two years with a chance of hitting a big hydrocarbon reserve and not going commercial extraction? Even from a business point of view, this does not make sense,” Phukan said.
The activist questioned NBWL for approving the project without public consultation. Under the EIA notification, exploratory drilling is exempted from public consultation but Phukan says that there are caveats.
“EIA states that any project or activity specified in Category ‘B’ will be appraised at the Central Level as Category ‘A’, if located in whole or in part within 5 km from inter-State boundaries and international boundaries or located five kilometres from eco-sensitive zones. This project lies inside an eco-sensitive zone on the Assam-Nagaland border. NBWL should have placed it under Category A, where public consultation is mandatory,” Phukan said. Neither SEIAA nor FAC members were available to comment on the issue of categorisation.
With the news of NBWL approving Vedanta’s plans to explore oil, legal experts point to the recent dilutions made by the BJP government to the forest laws that allow exploratory drilling activities inside forests. “In 2023, the Government of India diluted the definition of forests to amend the Forest Conservation Act [FCA] of 1980, renamed it as Van Surakha Adhiniyam. One of the most significant dilutions was the change of the meaning ‘forests’. Earlier, FCA drew the definition of a ‘forest’ from the standard English dictionary. By changing this definition, it allowed non-forestry activities like oil exploration in reserve forests which in this case is the Dissoi Valley Forests. These dilutions have been challenged by retired IAS officer Ashok Sharma and others in the Supreme Court. The matter is sub-judice. Therefore, the fate of these dilutions depend on the Supreme Court judgement. NBWL should have considered these aspects before allowing the exploration in the Dissoi Valley Reserve Forest, which is likely to increase wildlife conflicts in the area,” said Vikram Rajkhowa, an environmental lawyer based in Guwahati.
Vedanta is yet to clarify the issues raised by the environmentalists and locals from Assam for their proposed oil exploration.
Besides Jorhat, the multinational company has also bagged exploration rights over an area of 268 square kilometres, including parts of the Dehing Patkai Elephant Reserve on the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border, which was approved by the Forest Advisory Committee in 2024. The oil exploration, although important for energy security, has sparked a debate yet again around a fragile habitat in Assam. It remains to be seen how the impacts will be mitigated.
Also Read: Broken roads, high dropout rates: The Majuli we often choose not to see
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