Forest officials slammed for shoddy evaluation of project sites

An evaluation report on the Niyamgiri Hills in Odisha by a retired forest official could not differentiate between a tiger and a hyena. The report relates to Vedanta's controversial bauxite mining bid and is one of the instances of shoddy evaluations quoted by three members of the statutory Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) in their letter to environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan. The 10-page letter is filled with scathing remarks about the mode of evaluation and says large-scale approval of most ecologically damaging projects have been based on such shoddy reports.