The State government has constituted a four-member committee for the final scrutiny of the amended ESA (Ecologically Sensitive Area) maps of the 123 villages demarcated by the High Level Working Group (HLWG) led by K.Kasturirangan for the conservation of the Western Ghats.
The State-level committee comprises the Chairman, Kerala State Biodiversity Board, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Director, Survey and Land Records, and the Director, Kerala State Remote Sensing and Environment Centre.
The committee will scrutinise the maps prepared by the panchayat-level panels entrusted with field verification to determine the territorial extent of the ESAs. Cadastral maps procured by the Kerala State Remote Sensing and Environment Centre from the Survey Department have been distributed to the panchayat committees.
The field-level data will be copied onto the survey sheet on the scale 1:5000, with forest areas, grasslands, shrubs, granite, water bodies, laterite and sandy grounds, rivers, streams, channels and ponds, human settlements and farmlands, and plantations marked in separate colours.