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Urgent Appeal to Withhold Statutory Clearance under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 for the Great Nicobar Coral Translocation Plan

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Urgent Appeal to Withhold Statutory Clearance under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 for the Great Nicobar Coral Translocation Plan

To,
The Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF)
Department of Environment and Forests,
Andaman and Nicobar Administration,
Port Blair

Subject: Urgent Appeal to Withhold Statutory Clearance under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 for the Great Nicobar Coral Translocation Plan

Respected officer,

We are writing to you to express our profound concerns regarding the impending statutory clearance being sought by the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. This clearance pertains to the relocation of coral colonies from Galathea Bay, the site of the proposed Great Nicobar transshipment port.

The pace at which this project has been approved and is progressing is concerning to not just us but also to thousands of people across the globe. The glaring scientific gaps, ecological risks, and data contradictions inherent in the current translocation plan necessitate your urgent, rigorous intervention. As the custodian of the islands' invaluable forest and marine biodiversity, we formally appeal to your office to withhold statutory clearance until a credible, transparent, and long-term scientific strategy is publicly established.

The current plan has caused several alarms that we would like to redirect your attention to:

  1. Lack of Specific Planning

    Minutes of the November 2025 biodiversity committee meeting, released by ANIIDCO on June 10, 2026, reveal a scale of coral presence that drastically contradicts initial assessments. A staggering **20,668** colonies have been recorded within just the 10-hectare port footprint. Of these, 16,150 colonies are earmarked for translocation, while 4,518 are to be left "under observation."

    However, the project’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) failed to provide any concrete operational framework:

    • No Named Recipient Sites:

      The plan vaguely references "alternate suitable offshore habitats," leaving the four proposed destination sites on the island's west coast entirely unnamed and unmapped. This is concerning, as without knowledge or declaration of where corals are planned to be translocated, neither the authorities nor the citizens can function well in a democracy. We are also unaware of whether these sites have been properly examined for suitability of the coral colonies of Galathea Bay.

    • Absence of Survival Targets:

      No baseline survival targets have been set for Galathea's corals. The EIA merely cites a generalized "90%+" success rate borrowed from an entirely unrelated ZSI project in the Gulf of Kachchh, ignoring regional ecological variables.

    • Ecological concerns:

      The EIA conducted over a period of just 9 days does not accurately capture the potential behaviour and impact on the corals of this abrupt relocation in habitat. As per IUCN standards, the donor site must be studied across multiple seasons to ensure to capture potential changes in behaviour of the corals with variation in seasons and predict safe standards for translocation. We are also unsure if the project has conducted any genetic sampling to determine whether the corals to be translocated represent a sufficiently diverse set of genets to be able to successfully build colonies in the new sites.

    • Misleading Precedents:

      The National Green Tribunal’s February 16, 2026 order dismissing petitions against the project relied heavily on ZSI’s initial finding that “no major coral reef exists” in the work area. This claim stands completely untenable alongside the plan to move over 16,000 colonies. Separately, the project's own Expert Appraisal Committee found ZSI's ₹55-crore translocation budget was costed for only 10 years against a 30-year project life (through 2052), and has directed a revised proposal that also covers the endangered giant clam.

  2. High Mortality Risks and Ecological Incompatibility

    According to experts, The current proposal fundamentally misreads basic reef ecology. Galathea’s centuries-old boulder corals are uniquely adapted to the specific currents, light, and bathymetry of the east coast.

    Forcing these colonies into ecologically distinct west-coast conditions could result in 90% to 100% mortality rates. Without site-specific matching, expensive GPS-tagging will serve as little more than a digital record of ecological loss rather than a safeguard for survival.

  3. Denotification of Protection Status and Dilution of Protection Laws

    The dilution of protection laws and denotification also has a concerning trajectory. Activists have also petitioned the National Green Tribunal, Citing the island’s coastal maps and existing rules under the Island Coastal Regulation Zone notification 2019, Asish Kothari’s petition pointed out that seven square kilometres of the project fell in the CRZ 1-A coastal area, where most development activities are strictly prohibited. However, the High Powered Committee put in place to ensure the legitimacy and the integrity of the environmental clearance has conveniently accepted the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM) vague explanations sometime in 2023. NCSCM “concluded” that the areas in question no longer fell in the CRZ 1-A zone, but in the CRZ 1-B zone, where port construction is permitted.

    This is contrary to the NCSCMS’s past assessments. No details about the NCSCM’s survey methods were revealed, and neither the HPC’s findings nor the NCSCM’s report are publicly available. The government has kept them confidential citing national security. On July 5, the government submitted the HPC’s proceedings to the NGT in a sealed envelope. The ICRZ also requires three seasons of data for any environmental impact assessment on islands. The EIA for Great Nicobar used data from 9 days of field surveys.

    The approvals granted for diversions by the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (SC-NBWL) are also in violation of the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972. The statute is explicit: any activity in a Protected Area, and any NBWL intervention or decision, must be for the “improvement and better management of wildlife”. This coral translocation is neither.

  4. Discrepancies in data

    As we have seen On June 5, 2026, Leader of the Opposition alleged that official coral maps were redrawn to erase reefs from the record. This is a point of contention and deeply concerning, especially in a project of this scale with this much biodiversity at stake. Additionally, the opposition has also sought formal clarity on the project's ownership structure on June 22, 2026. Granting clearance to a flawed plan under such heavy scrutiny risks undermining public trust in statutory environmental safeguards.

We all know the GNI project has been under considerable scrutiny by experts, media, citizens, activists and conservationists, and even the international community for a few years now over a platitude of reasons. The concerns surrounding the Great Nicobar project are not isolated to environmental reports; they reflect a massive, coordinated pushback from citizens across India. The people of India want your help and cooperation to save the beautiful integrity of these islands and our country. The Save Nicobar Campaign has garnered the attention of citizens, resulting in 5,344 emails and over 1,200 physical postcards sent from all corners of the country directly to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. The movement has also highlighted the risks of the project to 15 Members of the Parliament, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), and sent an objection letter to the Social Welfare Department of the Andaman & Nicobar Administration challenging the systemic flaws in the Social Impact Assessment (SIA). This multi-pronged public mobilization underlines a clear reality: the Indian public is watching, and they demand administrative accountability.

Union Shipping has confirmed on June 23, 2026, that Phase-I port construction will start by 2028. Because groundbreaking is still up to two years away, and since ZSI is committed to completing translocation prior to the commencement of works, your office holds a vital window of opportunity. This time must be used to build a scientifically sound blueprint, not to rush approvals under deadline pressure.

Therefore, There Is No Earth B, a citizen led group committed to environmentally responsible future and democratic citizen engagement, on behalf of all concerned citizens calls upon your office to direct the proper authorities to:

  1. Publicly name, map, and share baseline ecological data for all four proposed west-coast translocation recipient sites to prove their biological compatibility.
  2. Publish a fixed, phase-wise translocation schedule strictly tied to the confirmed 2028 construction timeline.
  3. Establish explicit, numeric post-transplant survival targets alongside an independent monitoring protocol.
  4. Release the revised, fully costed 30-year translocation budget as directed by the EAC.
  5. Make the Wildlife Protection Act clearance application and its specific conditions public before any physical handling or disruption of the coral colonies begins.

A Schedule-I species protection plan of this unprecedented scale must be rigorously cited, benchmarked, and finalized well before any ground is broken. We urge you to exercise your statutory authority to protect the fragile marine heritage of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands by ensuring compliance with these essential scientific safeguards.

Thank you for your time, leadership, and serious consideration of this urgent matter.

Yours sincerely,
The people of Save Nicobar Campaign
There Is No Earth B

Sources:

EIA citation: Environmental Impact Assessment for ICTT (14.2 Million TEU), Greenfield Airport, Township & Power Plant, Great Nicobar Islands (2021). Key refs: Ch.4(A) pp.391–393; Ch.4(B) pp.444–445; Ch.5 pp.565,577; Ch.6 pp.588–592; Ch.10 pp.738–739,751; ZSI Annexure pp.1078–1083.

More info on #SaveNicobar, here.

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