Rahul Somvanshi
Since Karmactive’s September report on Sasoli village, the number of trees felled in Dodamarg taluka has climbed past 7,500 — up from 6,000 documented last month. Contractors with heavy earthmoving machinery are still operating despite a standing Bombay High Court ban. Local residents have now issued an ultimatum: permanently remove the machinery or they will launch an indefinite hunger strike.
The ongoing clearing in Sasoli, Dodamarg taluka, Sindhudurg district, involves Poclain earthmovers and mechanized tree cutters carving terraced roads through forested hillsides in the Western Ghats. Out-of-state investment syndicates, primarily from Delhi and Haryana, have been consolidating agricultural and forested land into gated villa enclaves marketed as luxury estates near Goa’s Manohar International Airport in Mopa — an approximately 2,133-acre facility roughly 50 kilometres away. Konkan-based documentary photographer and environmental activist Sarvesh Pednekar (@sarvesh.pednekar), who leads the Save Konkan movement, has documented the destruction on the ground. An on-ground resident and grassroots environmental campaigner from Sasoli village, speaking in Pednekar’s reporting, described the scale: “A Rs 900-crore dealing by cutting down the forest in Sindhudurg. Outsiders from Delhi and Haryana have put the Konkan up for sale. They have hollowed out the hill like this, felled roughly seven and a half thousand trees, and outsiders have consolidated this land and put it up for sale.”
Property buyers investing in unapproved residential or resort plots across Dodamarg taluka face severe legal and financial exposure. Land cleared through unauthorized tree felling directly violates the Bombay High Court’s standing tree-felling embargo and the statutory rules governing the Sawantwadi-Dodamarg Eco-Sensitive Area. With local village governing bodies formally opposing commercial projects and a district task force investigating unauthorized excavation, purchasers risk frozen title registrations, cancelled non-agricultural conversion permits, and retrospective demolition of unpermitted boundary infrastructure.
The Brick Kiln Permit Masking Industrial Deforestation
The continued clearing has exposed how contractors are bypassing court-ordered environmental safeguards. A local campaigner named the method: “Despite a High Court order imposing a blanket ban on tree felling in Dodamarg taluka, they’ve brought in poclains and cut over 7,500 trees. While the felling goes on, the tehsildar is granting permission for a brick kiln (taas) at the spot — so it looks like no tree felling is happening — and on that pretext the whole forest is being flattened.”
By classifying site leveling as temporary earth extraction for brick kilns, commercial operators deploy industrial earthmoving machinery under revenue department permits while bypassing the Forest Department’s tree-felling application process entirely.
The legal framework prohibiting this is layered. The central government formally notified the 212.59-square-kilometre Sawantwadi-Dodamarg Eco-Sensitive Area on February 24, 2026, mandating strict prior permissions for any tree felling across 25 regional villages and recognizing the corridor as a migration route for tigers, leopards, and other wildlife connecting the Tillari Conservation Reserve with Goa’s Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary. On top of that, the Bombay High Court has maintained a blanket ban on commercial tree felling across Dodamarg taluka under PIL No. 179 of 2012. Both layers are being circumvented.
The Sindhudurg District Collector established an inter-departmental task force on August 7, 2026, comprising revenue, police, and forest officials, but on-site enforcement has lagged behind the speed of mechanical excavation. Private land plotted and sold under fraudulent conversion permits in the eco-sensitive area carries no legal title security for buyers — a fact that neither developers nor the revenue office promoting the permits have disclosed.
A resident who has personally tracked the destruction appealed directly to the administration: “My request is that this felling must stop. If it doesn’t, I will sit on hunger strike along with these villagers. Every year over a hundred large trees are cut here with tree cutters. Officials have themselves had sightings here — king cobra, even tigers. Mopa airport is about fifty kilometres from here. Everyone in Sindhudurg — this felling must stop.”
The stripping of these hillside root networks threatens water security beyond the immediate tree loss. The ridgelines above Sasoli absorb monsoon rainfall, recharge subterranean aquifers, and sustain the natural springs that supply drinking water and paddy cultivation across downstream Konkan settlements. For anyone following Maharashtra’s Western Ghats conservation and Sindhudurg land rights, this case is where speculative land assembly and eco-sensitive zone enforcement failures converge.
Environmental action group Vanashakti has filed a contempt petition before the Bombay High Court’s Kolhapur Bench, citing persistent non-compliance with judicial tree-felling orders. The district administration’s formal inquiry report into fraudulent conversion permits and unauthorized brick-kiln clearances is expected this month. Check back as court proceedings and village resistance develop.
