The 'Mangrove Cell' — a dedicated mangrove-conservation unit constituted…

Concept

Forests and wildlife sit on the Concurrent List. Coastal land itself is split between several authorities — revenue, fisheries, coastal-zone regulation and local bodies all hold parts of it — but once mangrove land is notified or transferred as forest land, its day-to-day custody passes to the State Forest Department. Where that notified stretch carries unusually heavy court-mandated protection duties, restoration targets and construction pressure, a state can lift it out of the ordinary territorial divisions and place it under a separate single-purpose body with its own senior head of forest force and budget line. Coastal states have done this under different names, so a named body of this kind is pinned down by the exact name it was given and the year it was constituted — not by which state holds the largest area of the ecosystem.

Application

The Mangrove Cell is the mangrove wing of the Maharashtra Forest Department, constituted in January 2012 as a separate, single-purpose unit of that department. It is headed by an officer of Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests rank and holds statewide charge of the mangrove land transferred to the forest department, from the Thane and Vasai creeks of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region down the Konkan coast through Raigad, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg.

• Why a separate wing was needed: the Bombay High Court's mangrove-protection orders and heavy construction pressure on Mumbai's creeks required one accountable custodian rather than several territorial divisions.

• What it does: mangrove afforestation, enforcement against destruction and encroachment, research on coastal and marine species, and community livelihood work such as mangrove eco-tourism.

• Institutional arm: in 2015 the state registered the Mangrove Foundation (Mangrove and Marine Biodiversity Conservation Foundation of Maharashtra) as the Cell's funding, research and outreach body.

• Measured effect: the state's mangrove cover rose from about 186 sq km in 2013 to about 304 sq km in 2017.

Cross-check

Every coastal state manages mangroves, and more than one has a special arrangement for them, so read the four side by side and let the name and the year do the work:

Read the two qualifiers together, because neither alone settles it. Odisha does run a dedicated mangrove body — the Rajnagar (Mangrove) Forest Division — so “has a special mangrove set-up” is not unique to one state; and West Bengal, which holds India's largest mangrove block, announced a body of the very same name on Mangrove Day in July 2023. What fixes the answer is the pairing of the exact name “Mangrove Cell” with the year 2012, and that pairing belongs only to Maharashtra. Mangrove area is a distractor throughout — the largest mangrove state is not the one being asked about.