Caught in study riddle, greens waste chance to save Ridleys

If the Olive Ridley habitat of Dhamra in Orissa suffers because of the Tata Steel port coming up there, environmentalists won't be able to escape blame. For, the company has been "open to a study of the port's impact on the turtles". In fact, it had offered to foot the bill when various NGOs opposing the port, including Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) and Greenpeace, said they would want to conduct an environment impact study before giving their nod.

It even paid Rs1 crore upfront for the purpose in 2002, a good two years before starting work on the port. The company said it would dump the project if the study proved the fear of environmentalists, that the port would destroy the nesting site of the turtles. But the NGOs returned the money a few months later, expressing inability to undertake the study.

"We are open to any study by turtle experts to mitigate the effect of the port on marine ecology. We had even agreed to a study by a consortium of experts headed by BNHS. But they refused without quoting a reason," Sanjay Chaudhry, chief of corporate affairs and communication, Tata Steel, said.

"We had given an assurance that if experts found that the port would affect turtles, Tata Steel will forgo the project," he said, claiming the nesting site was 15 km from the port and even movement of ships would not affect the turtles.

On Thursday, when a group of ecologists protested at the Tata Steel AGM in Mumbai, group chairman Ratan Tata once invited Greenpeace activists to inspect the port site and suggest measures to protect the habitat.

Sources said, "At that time [in 2002] only the land acquisition process for the port had been completed. But environmentalists could not manage to get turtle experts for the study."BNHS director Asad Rahmani, however, claimed the study could not be undertaken as Tata Steel was not ready to stop dredging.

Greenpeace ocean campaigner Ashish Fernandes, who was a member of the "non-starter" team of turtle experts, also complained that the company refused to suspend work during study.But a member of the same team said, "Some NGOs and environmentalists are at fault for stalling the study. Efforts should be made to ensure the turtles do not pay for their blunder."