‘Tiger on my farm’: India coal hub brings new dangers in villages
Al Jazeera
With a population of 1.3 billion, India is vulnerable to human-animal conflict as people encroach on wildlife habitats.
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. Coal mining is more commonly criticised by environmentalists for polluting air and water, degrading landscapes and fuelling climate change than for creating new wildlife habitats.More Related News