according to a study sponsored by the World Wide Fund for Nature ( wwf) and conducted by the Native Medicare Charitable Trust ( nmct ), a concentration of more than 500 brick factories around the Attapady plateau in the Nilgiris biosphere reserve of Tamil Nadu have caused extensive damage to the environment.The nmct team surveyed around 300 factories in an area of 2,025 ha. According to them, none of these factories had a licence or registration. While some excavated soil from their own land, others contracted land from farmers and villagers for soil excavation. As many as 264 factories used rainfed agricultural lands and 36 used irrigated land for soil extraction. These excavations have destroyed the fertility of the soil and changed the agricultural pattern. The report recommends the banning of the brick industry in enclosed valleys and important conservation areas such as biosphere reserves and river valley schemes. It also recommends that declared agricultural lands should not be transferred to brick factories and permission should not be granted for establishing these factories near villages.