Navi Mumbai: The State Mangrove Cell has taken cognisance of a complaint against the use of a drone dangerously close to flamingos resting at TS Chanakya for shooting for a film Sikandar ka Muqaddar currently streaming on Netflix. The forest department is exploring legal options in this matter, said Divisional Forest Officer Deepak Khade.
NatConnect Foundation had drawn the attention of the mangrove cell and the Maharashtra Chief Controller of Forests to the sequence featuring the flamingos in the movie now being streamed on the OTT platform.
“The pink bird sequence appears in the timeline 1:03:44 to 1:03:54, obviously shot by a drone, flying over the flamingos resting on the wetland and mudflats,” NatConnect director B N Kumar said.
“We have no objection whatsoever to the featuring the beauty of flamingos in the movie, but the use of drones flying over the resting birds is certainly objectionable,” he added.
Kumar further said that mangrove cell head S V Ramarao, Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, informed him that the Divisional Forest Officer has been asked to take cognisance of the issue.
“We mighgt send a notice after evaluating all the legal aspects. In such cases, a permission for drone shooting is sought from police and we are yet to confirm if the movie makers had taken one,” Khade added.
Kumar expects that the government would issue a notice to the movie makers and explain them the consequences of using drones near the bird. “Drones with sharp blades make a whirring noise that could disturb the resting birds or also injure them,” Kumar said.
The mangrove cell had earlier ordered a probe against the drone shoots at TS Chanakya wetland following a complaint by NatConnect and fellow environmental groups.
Sagar Shakti director Nandakumar Pawar pointed said, “As it is we have been losing our wildlife to a meaningless infrastructure development and now we have this new menace of drone shoots. We expect the authorities to step in and check this senseless and highly disturbing trend,” Pawar said.
Flamingos figure in the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) red list of near-threaded to vulnerable and hence it is the duty of human being to take care of them and not expose them to further dangers, said Jyoti Nadkarni, an avid birder and convenor of Kharghar Wetlands and Hills group.
The environmental groups have been campaigning to save flamingos and their abodes as part of the city’s biodiversity which is under constant threat.
The State government has even appointed a high-level committee to study and report ways to conserve one of the key flamingo destinations, the DPS Flamingo Lake. The committee report is awaited, Kumar added.
