IWN Report — Thursday, 17 September 2026

Gujarat has restored 27,652 hectares of mangrove cover since 2023, edging closer to a 29,250-hectare target set for 2027, according to figures the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change presented this week. Union Minister Bhupender Yadav announced the progress at a workshop on mangrove conservation in Bhuj on 13 September, where he also released new publications on the state’s coastal forests and launched a digital portal to track them.

The Kori Creek stretch of the coastline, where Gujarat’s boundary meets the Arabian Sea near the border with Pakistan, accounted for 12,450 hectares of that restoration. Officials described it as one of the harder sites to work, and said the plantation methods used there have had to be adapted to the creek’s own terrain rather than following a standard approach.

At the workshop, Yadav released a Coffee Table Book on Kachchh’s mangroves and a Mangroves Atlas of Gujarat, and launched the Mangrove GIS (MGIS) Portal to map and monitor the state’s mangrove cover. He spoke of restoration, scientific management, community participation and technology-enabled monitoring as the pillars the state is building its approach around.

Gujarat’s work falls under the Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats and Tangible Incomes (MISHTI), a central scheme launched on 5 June 2023 that funds mangrove plantation and restoration across thirteen coastal states and union territories through the Compensatory Afforestation Fund, the rural employment scheme MGNREGS, and state budgets. In an August 2025 parliamentary reply, the ministry put Gujarat’s mangrove cover under the scheme at 19,220 hectares, more than four-fifths of the national total restored at that point.

Rare Ground

The workshop also recognised the Guneri Inland Mangrove Village Biodiversity Management Committee, a community body in Lakhpat taluka that looks after one of Gujarat’s more unusual mangrove patches. Guneri’s mangroves grow roughly 45 kilometres inland from the Arabian Sea and about 4 kilometres from Kori Creek, spread across flat, non-tidal ground rather than the muddy tidal flats mangroves usually need. The 32.78-hectare site was declared Gujarat’s first Biodiversity Heritage Site in January 2025, and is managed under a plan drawn up by the Gujarat Biodiversity Board.

Sources: IANS, via Punjab Kesari, relaying a Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change statement · Press Information Bureau · Gujarat Forest Department