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On October 19, 2023, a group of retired Indian Forest Service officers and some others had filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the very definition of “forest” contained in the highly controversial Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023 that had been bulldozed through Parliament in July of that year. The public-spirited petitioners had argued—and rightly so—that the 2023 law dilutes the broader definition of “forest” as laid down by the Supreme Court itself in its very famous Godavarman judgment of Dec 12, 1996, and reiterated in a number of subsequent orders most recently in March 2024 and March 2025. On Sept 16, 2026, in a little-noticed order on a related matter, the Supreme Court announced that it would give its final verdict on the Oct 2023 petition on Dec 8, 2026. Coincidentally, this would be four days prior to the 30th anniversary of the Godavarman judgment itself. The nation awaits with its fingers crossed. Will the Supreme Court reaffirm the Godavarman definition that has helped protect forests or will it uphold the 2023 dilution? When forests across the country are facing such severe threats, the choice should be obvious. The decision will be a call to our collective ecological conscience.