Mining project threatens future of rare Jeypore ground gecko
The endangered Jeypore ground gecko, rediscovered in 2010, faces a renewed threat from a proposed bauxite mining project in Odisha's Balda hills. Conservationists and local Adivasi communities are concerned that industrial expansion will destroy the habitat of this rare reptile.
Why it matters
This highlights the ongoing conflict between industrial development and the preservation of biodiversity and indigenous land rights.
In the crevices of boulders and beneath the rustle of leaf litter in the hills of the Eastern Ghats in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh lives a tiny population of the strikingly-patterned Jeypore ground gecko, which was presumed extinct for 130 years until it was rediscovered in 2010 by an Indian scientist.
Just four individuals of this endangered species have been documented in the past year in Odisha’s Balda hills, worryingly, within the site of a proposed bauxite mining project by an Adani-linked group.
The nocturnal gecko, some 3.6 inches long, with a comparatively large head, and a yellow-orange body, was originally described as far back as 1878 by the British naturalist Richard Henry Beddome. It was only in 2010 that herpetologists Ishan Agarwal and Aniruddha Datta-Roy sighted a specimen in Odisha’s Koraput district.
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