BANGALORE, July 29: In a step that environmentalists view as another debilitating axe-blow to the fragile Western Ghats' ecosystem the State Government has all but transferred the 127 acres of reserved forests facing the Dandeli Wildlife Sanctuary in Uttara Kannada district to the privately-owned West Coast Paper Mills.

Deeply agitated over the move, environmental groups led by the World Wide Fund for Nature-India (WWF) are contemplating legal action.

WWF officials in Bangalore, who are just back from a fact-finding mission to Dandeli, said they were preparing a field report for the WWF-India legal cell in Delhi. ``We are not asking the Government to increase the area of national parks and sanctuaries... But they should leave two per cent of that area untouched,'' the officials said.

They further claim that the move is a blatant violation of the Wildlife Amendment Act and a Supreme Court judgement banning non-forestry activities in reserved forest areas.

However, Forest Industry Department officials here, when contacted, said the move was not violative of the Wildlife Amendment Act as the land lay outside the sanctuary and national park.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.