New Delhi, 10 August 2014

The National Board for Wildlife or NBWL meeting will be held in Delhi on August 12.

This will be the first meeting of newly constituted board of the standing committee in which Gujarat forest official H S Singha nd director of the Gujarat Ecological, Educational and Research Foundation (GEER) Bharat Pathak are appointed independent members. The third independent member is Raman Sukumar, an elephant expert from Bangalore.

The standing committee of the board, scheduled to meet on August 12 and 13, is likely to review dozens of pending projects – including planned highways, power plants and railway tracks that are awaiting the board’s clearance before take-off.

Kutch’s Ghaduli-Santalpur highway, Forest land allotment for Narmada canal in little Rann of Kutch are among the projects that Gujarat wants to get cleared by the NBWL, a 47-member board, meant to safeguard India’s vast trove of flora and fauna, mandated by the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972.