Gujarat covers 27,652 hectares of mangroves under MISHTI, short of the 2027 target

Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav told a workshop in Bhuj on 13 September that Gujarat has covered 27,652 hectares for mangrove restoration under the MISHTI programme, against a 2023-27 target of 29,250 hectares. A large share of that work sits in Kori Creek, where 12,450 hectares have been treated in difficult tidal ground.

MISHTI stands for Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats and Tangible Incomes. The scheme is run by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. Gujarat's number is a coverage figure, not a claim that every hectare already holds a closed canopy. Restoration in a creek system is counted when planting, hydrological work and protection are in place. Survival is a later measurement.

Yadav visited a scientific nursery at Jakhau that raises mangrove and seaweed species chosen for local tides. Coastal communities and the Border Security Force take part in the nursery. He flagged off 33 patrolling and rescue vehicles for the forest department under the Cheetah Project and wildlife protection work, and opened Saira Van Kavach under the "Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam" campaign: more than 10,000 plants of 49 species on one hectare, with apiculture kits on the same plot.

A map before another monsoon

At the workshop the minister launched the Mangrove GIS portal, MGIS, and released two publications, a coffee-table book on Kachchh mangroves and a Mangroves Atlas of Gujarat. He said the portal is meant to put planting and monitoring on the same map so that site choice is not left to a single season's enthusiasm.

Kachchh is not the Sundarbans. Rainfall is low. Tidal range is high. Salinity swings hard. The species that take in the Ganga delta do not all take on the Kori mudflats. Yadav said the state has used site-specific methods rather than a single planting recipe, and has added seaweed cultivation and livelihood work so that the creek is not only a forestry file.

The remaining gap to the 29,250-hectare target is 1,598 hectares. That is small on a spreadsheet and large on a creek, because the easy ground is already in the 27,652. What is left is the ground that failed once or that sits farther from a nursery road.

What a coverage number does not say

India's official forest accounts have treated mangrove area as a success story for a decade. Gujarat's coastline is long enough that a 27,000-hectare programme can be both real and still thin against storm surge and port expansion. MISHTI's second word, incomes, is the part of the title that is hardest to audit from a workshop. A nursery job and a honey box are incomes. A closed fishing creek after a plantation fence is also a change in income, in the other direction.

The useful public fact from 13 September is narrower than the speeches. Gujarat has now booked 94.5 percent of its four-year MISHTI area target, with 16 months left on the calendar. Kori Creek is no longer a pilot. It is 45 percent of the booked area. A GIS portal exists as of this week, which means the next argument can be about specific polygons rather than about the slogan.

Whether the 1,598 hectares still open are planted by March 2027 is a forestry question. Whether the 12,450 hectares in Kori Creek are still standing in 2029 is the question the portal was built to answer.