The environmental hazards of Bannerghatta National Park’s proposed elevated flyover

by March 11, 2024 Environment
The four-lane expressway for commercial traffic will cut through critical habitat for elephants, leopards, and even tigers.

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has proposed building a four-lane elevated expressway through the Bannerghatta National Park, the only protected area within Bengaluru Urban district.

The NHAI is working on a 280 km long expressway called the Bengaluru Satellite Town Ring Road (STRR). The road, which is part of the Bharat Mala Pariyojna scheme, will connect towns like Hosur in Tamil Nadu to satellite towns around Bengaluru, like Anekal, Sarjapura and Doddaballapura.

Read more: Why a shrinking Bannerghatta forest should worry Bengalureans

NHAI claims that the expressway will divert all commercial traffic, like trucks, that currently pass through Bengaluru city to reach these towns. And a 3.85 km stretch of this expressway will cut through the Bannerghatta National Park.

Details of the proposed flyover

Bannerghatta National Park is located south of Bengaluru. The park, which is 260 square kilometres, is one of the smallest protected areas in India.  

Bannerghatta is home to several endangered mammals including elephants, leopards, sambar, chital, wild dogs, slender lorises, and two tigers. The park also has over 200 species of birds.

NHAI plans to build around 3.85 km of this road through the core zone and two km through the eco-sensitive zone or buffer zone. This will require the diversion of 11 ha of forest land in the core zone and 5.7 ha from the buffer zone of the Park.

Ministry for Environment, Forests and Climate Change and the National Wildlife Board have already cleared the project. It is now waiting for clearance from the Forest Conservation Authority.  

Unsurprisingly, ecologists and Bengaluru residents are concerned about the impact that this project will have on critical wildlife habitat. Conservation biologist Sanjay Gubbi felt the project would lead to more human elephant conflict. Jhatkaa.org is currently running an online petition.  

Watch the full story below:

Also read:

Sections:

About Bhanu Sridharan

Bhanu is the Engagement Editor at Citizen Matters, Bengaluru. She previously worked an independent journalist and primarily covered environmental issues. Her work has been published in Mongabay India, the Wire, Caravan and Citizen Matters. She is interested in issues of justice, equity, access to nature and how Bengaluru's growth impacts nature and people.
Read more by Bhanu Sridharan

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Similar Story

From garbage burning to traffic: Why Bengaluru needs hyperlocal air monitoring

by February 25, 2026 Environment
40 low-cost sensors across Bengaluru show sharp, localised pollution spikes, challenging the city’s ‘satisfactory AQI’ narrative. Know more in this interview.

Bengaluru is often described as having “better air” than North Indian cities, yet new evidence shows this perception may be misleading. Data from 40 low‑cost air quality sensors set up by the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP) reveal sharp variations in pollution across time and place, patterns that citywide averages completely miss. In this interview, Abhishek Penchala, Senior Analyst in CSTEP’s Air Quality team, tells Citizen Matters how hyperlocal monitoring uncovers hidden pollution hotspots, from waste burning to construction dust and traffic, that the sparse official network fails to detect, forcing us to rethink how urban…

Continue reading

Similar Story

Bengaluru’s Peripheral Ring Road: Traffic relief or ecological disaster?

by February 18, 2026 Environment
Even as landowners contest unfair compensation, other issues persist: emissions, large-scale tree felling, and the project's alignment through lake ecosystems.

Two decades after the Peripheral Ring Road (PRR) was announced, the project is far from completion. For farmers, it has meant years of uncertainty and mounting financial losses, while residents remain unsure about the usefulness of the long-pending road development. In an earlier article, we explored how the PRR project could lead to forced migration and threaten the livelihoods of farmers. In Part 2 of the series, we did a deep dive into the manipulation of compensation options that landowners strictly oppose. However, farmers and environmentalists raise different concerns: even if the road is built, will it truly ease traffic…

Continue reading