A villager gazes at a devastated area.
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The ‘Save Mollem’ campaign has drawn in everyone from celebrities to politicians, protesting the lack of assessment of the threats posed by three proposed infrastructure projects
The dense evergreen and semi-evergreen forests of Mollem at the edge of the Western Ghats, 60 km from Goa’s capital Panaji, support thousands of indigenous people and abound with a huge diversity of wildlife: tigers, leopards, gaur, and over 200 species of birds. They also happen to be the site of three proposed infrastructure projects a highway expansion, the double-tracking of a railway line, and a power transmission line which if initiated could mean the felling of over 30,000 trees, irreversibly impacting this rich ecosystem.