Rahul Somvanshi
Sarvesh Pednekar has 92,000 followers on Instagram. His tagline is: “कोकण वाचवूया जगाला दाखवूया” — Save Konkan, Show It to the World. He is a photographer and content creator from the Konkan coast of Maharashtra. Over the past year, he has been pointing his camera at what is happening to the hills and forests of Sasoli village in Dodamarg taluka, Sindhudurg district. The videos are difficult to watch.
Heavy Poclain excavators are visible on forested hillsides. Slopes that once carried dense indigenous tree cover have been carved into flat terraces. Trees have been pulled out by their roots. Internal roads have been cut through the hillsides for access to demarcated plots. In one video, Pednekar pans across what remains of a ridge: bare earth, stumps, rubble.
“Where will these animals go?” he asks. “Even a single tree is not left standing here.”
This is happening inside a formally notified Eco-Sensitive Area.
On February 24, 2026, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change issued the final notification establishing the Sawantwadi-Dodamarg Eco-Sensitive Area (ESA), covering 212.59 square kilometres across 25 villages in Sawantwadi and Dodamarg talukas of Sindhudurg district. The notification requires prior permission for tree felling on forest, government, revenue, and private land within its boundaries. It prohibits mining and quarrying. It restricts large construction and township development. It identifies the corridor as habitat for tigers, leopards, Asian elephants, and bonnet macaques, with semi-evergreen and tropical forests that connect multiple protected areas across Maharashtra, Goa, and Karnataka.
Sasoli falls within this notification area.
The connection between Sasoli’s forests and outside development interest runs through the Manohar International Airport in Mopa, North Goa, which opened in January 2023. Sasoli is in close proximity to the Goa border. Premium land near the Mopa airport carries high prices on the Goa side. Developers and buyers from Delhi and Haryana have been acquiring land parcels in Dodamarg taluka, where base land rates have historically been lower, for non-agricultural layouts marketed as second homes, managed villas, and gated communities. Promotional materials have described these properties as being on the “North Goa border,” without prominently stating they fall within Maharashtra’s ecologically regulated forest zone.
Residents of Sasoli documented what they were seeing and took it to their gram sabha. The village governing body passed a unanimous resolution demanding that Sasoli be formally declared an Eco-Sensitive Area to protect its forest and water resources from speculative development.
Following Pednekar’s on-ground video documentation, revenue and forest officers inspected the site and temporarily seized excavating machinery. In July 2026, residents again alleged fresh land levelling, tree cutting, and excavation. A company representative named in local reports denied the allegations, describing them as baseless and stating the work was legal and backed by documents. That denial is part of the public record. The question of which activities took place, on which parcels, and with which permissions is before the authorities.
What is documented in formal records goes beyond village-level allegations. NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) leader Jayant Patil raised the matter in the Maharashtra Legislature and submitted a formal memorandum to Revenue Minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule. The memorandum cited the felling of more than 6,000 trees without statutory permission, fraudulent non-agricultural conversion approvals, diversion of natural water streams in the adjacent villages of Gharpi and Udeli, and extraction of minor minerals. The Revenue Minister stated that a formal inquiry would be conducted.
Vanashakti, an environmental organization, filed a contempt petition before the Bombay High Court’s Kolhapur Bench in July 2026, alleging illegal tree cutting and excavation in the Sawantwadi-Dodamarg corridor despite the court’s earlier orders.
The Bombay High Court’s history with this corridor goes back fourteen years. PIL No. 179 of 2012, filed by Vanashakti, challenged the absence of an Eco-Sensitive Area notification for the Sawantwadi-Dodamarg belt. The court placed an embargo on tree felling in the corridor and directed the government to finalize the notification. The 2024 Bombay High Court judgment continued that protection and directed the ESA proposal be submitted. Court proceedings from 2024 record allegations of more than 300 acres of deforestation in Sasoli and approximately 639.62 hectares of deforestation across the wider Sawantwadi-Dodamarg area. These figures are from petition material, not independently verified measurements.
The final ESA notification arrived in February 2026 — fourteen years after litigation began.
On August 7, 2026, the Sindhudurg district administration announced the formation of the Sawantwadi-Dodamarg Task Force, a joint initiative of the Revenue, Forest, and Police departments, to address illegal tree felling and environmental damage in the corridor.
Dr. Jayendra Parulekar, an environmental activist in Sindhudurg, has warned publicly of a Chipko-style resistance — direct, non-violent action to physically prevent machinery from entering the forest — if large-scale tree cutting in the area continues.
The Sawantwadi-Dodamarg corridor connects Maharashtra’s Tillari Conservation Reserve and Radhanagari Wildlife Sanctuary with Goa’s Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary and Bhimgad in Karnataka. Tree root networks across the Western Ghats ridge hold hillside soil during the monsoon, stabilize slopes, and feed perennial springs. Those springs supply the wells and paddy fields that farming families in Konkan depend on across generations.
“Trees were cut, hills were hollowed,” Pednekar says in one of his videos, standing where forest once stood. “And behind me, you can see what’s gone.”
The Sawantwadi-Dodamarg Eco-Sensitive Area was formally notified on February 24, 2026, covering 212.59 sq km across 25 villages. Allegations of tree felling and land levelling in Sasoli continued into July 2026; a company representative denied them. Jayant Patil formally submitted a memorandum to the Revenue Minister citing more than 6,000 trees cut without permission. Vanashakti filed a contempt petition in the Bombay High Court in July 2026. The Sindhudurg district administration formed the Sawantwadi-Dodamarg Task Force on August 7, 2026. The Bombay High Court has maintained oversight of this corridor through PIL No. 179 of 2012.
