Nature News- Vol. 7, Issue No.3 & 4 (March & April 2018)
BIRDS
The Times of India 5 Mar 2018Big Bird Day records number of bird species down to 238 from 268: NCR has recorded a drop in overall bird species on the Big Bird Day recently an annual birding event across the region where birders set out to record different species with 238 species counted this year as compared to 268 in 2017. Read more
The Hindu 19 Mar 2018
Poison kills 32 rare vultures in Assam: Carrion feeders die in Sivasagar district after eating goat carcass. It looked like a normal goat carcass, and a group of vultures in Assam’s Sivasagar district settled down to devour it quickly. But at the end of the meal, 32 of them lay dead on Saturday. Read more
CLIMATE CHANGE
The Pioneer 12 April 2018When business comes before climate: Despite the vociferous commitment of nations to reduce global warming under the Paris Agreement, countries are unable to reduce greenhouse gas emissions of major industries and businesses. Clearly, there’s an absence of an impactful intervention to rescue the environment Read more
ENVIRONMENT
The Hindustan Times 5 Mar 2018Treat green spaces in cities as urban sacred groves: Whichever way you look at it, urban India is in a mess. With every passing day, we are sliding down the abyss further. Here’s one more example the Dr Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary in Pune, is almost dead thanks to uncaring civic and forest authorities. Read more
The Pioneer 12 April 2018
Dream of a sustainable India: To make Green India Mission successful, the Government must adopt a reformist approach and integrate its working with the overall developmental perspective of the country. Effectiveness of environmental governance will determine the long-term sustainability of developmental programmes in India Read more
FOREST & BIODIVERSITY
The Hindustan Times 14 Mar 2018India’s forest governance needs systemic overhaul: Last week, a wild elephant attacked and killed a senior Indian Forest Service officer (IFS), S Manikandan, in a thickly forested area in Karnataka’s Nagarahole Tiger Reserve. The officer, who was the field director at the reserve, had gone to the area to assess the damage caused by a mild fire in the region. Read more
Indian Express 19 Mar 2018
A path through the forest: Forest Rights Act is not an obstacle to growth. Its non-implementation will be politically counter-productive. The farmers’ and forest dwellers’ march from Nashik to Mumbai, and the Maharashtra government’s decision to approve most of their Read more
The Pioneer 22 Mar 2018
A day to honour our trees: The global celebration of forests provides a platform to raise awareness on the importance of all types of woodlands and celebrate the ways in which they sustain and protect us. Forests play an important role in climate change. Nations should come forward in this effort to ward off the global warming catastrophe Read more
The Hindu 26 Mar 2018
Fighting forest fires: How information on a fire reaches the authorities and the ways in which firefighting can be improved. The recent wildfire tragedy in Theni in Tamil Nadu, in which 20 trekkers lost their lives, once again brings into focus forest fires in India. Over the past few years Read more
The Indian express 28 Mar 2018
Forest rights and wrongs: In 2014, the Delhi-based think-tank TERI cautioned that the wrong recognition of rights under the Scheduled Tribe and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights Act, 2006 (FRA) would leave forest-dependent people vulnerable to adverse impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Read more
The Hindu 9 April 2018
Anti-forest, anti-forest dweller: The Compensatory Afforestation Fund is a deeply flawed and unjust mechanism. Last month, Minister of State for Environment, Forests and Climate Change Mahesh Sharma informed Parliament that his Ministry has collected over ₹50,000 crore Read more
The Hindu 11 April 2018
A register by the people: The draft National Forest Policy identifies threats to forests, but does not provide systems for public involvement. India recorded a marginal increase in forest cover, according to the India State of Forest Report 2017. Around the same time this report was released Read more
The Indian Express 24 April 2018
Farmers, forests and the future: As India gives shape to its new forest policy, the votaries of forest conservation and tribal rights have come out strongly against commercial extraction of forests that undermines both local communities and ecology. It is a timely show of strength since the draft policy seeks to measure the productivity of our forests Read more
HUMAN-ANIMAL CONFLICT
The Indian Express 30 Mar 2018For the first time Bengal govt to use radio collars to study tusker herds, reduce conflict with humans: To study the movement of elephant herds and possibly bring down the rising man-animal conflict in South Bengal, the state’s forest and wildlife department will, in a first, use radio collars on tuskers in the region. Read more
The Indian Express 19 April 2018
Why trains keep killing elephants : It is the sovereign’s duty to protect the forests where elephants thrive, says the Manasollasa, a 12th century Sanskrit text attributed to the Western Chalukya king Someshvara III because only the richest and widest of forests can support the large, long-ranging Elephas maximus. Read more
WETLANDS, RIVERS & WATER
The Hindustan Times 6 Mar 2018World Water Forum: Sharing water should be the motto from now on: The Pororoca is one of nature´s most dazzling phenomena. When translated from Brazil’s indigenous Tupi-guarani language, it means ‘big rumble’ and denotes the big clash of sea and fresh water that happens every now and then at the Read more
The Hindu 8 Mar 2018
Stricter penalty for polluting Ganga on cards Stricter penalty for polluting Ganga on cards The ecologically subsidised city: What Dhrubajyoti Ghosh closely observed and learnt from Kolkata’s wetland communities. If ever there was someone who lived true to his name, it was Dhrubajyoti Ghosh. In Sanskrit, “Dhrubajyoti” refers to the light ( jyoti ) emitted by the pole star ( dhruva tara ). Read more
The Hindu 21 Mar 2018
Awash in water crises : As World Water Day draws closer (March 22), this year’s World Water Development Report makes it clear that nature-based solutions which are also aligned with the principles and aims of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development can offer answers Read more
The Pioneer 23 Mar 2018
A water crisis and poor forest management: World Water Day highlights how India is staring at a deepening water crisis with few steps being taken to ameliorate a bleak situation. This should serve as a wake-up call for the country to get its water and forest priorities right. The world celebrated the World Water Day on March 22, 2018 Read more
WILDLIFE & ENDANGERED SPECIES
The Indian Express 16 Mar 2018After 107 years, a rare tiger in Junglemahal, an army of officers on its trail: For a fortnight now, an army of Forest Department and police officials have been scouring the dense forest, armed with tranquiliser guns, cages with live baits, binoculars, search lights and drones. One hundred and seven years after a tiger’s presence was last recorded Read more
The Hindu 19 Mar 2018
Lalgarh tiger continues to be elusive: Trap cages, tranquilising teams and drones haven’t been able to trap it. Almost two weeks after an adult male tiger was photographed in the forests of West Bengal’s Lalgarh, it remains elusive. On March 2, four photographs of the tiger were recorded on camera traps Read more
The Hindu 22 Mar 2018
Assam rhinoceros data may have been doctored for funds: An animal could have been counted twice, thrice NGO an organisation of whistleblowers in Assam, armed with an RTI reply from the authorities of a national park, has said that rhinoceros census data may be getting doctored for ensuring the flow of foreign funds. Read more
The Indian Express 6 April 2018
Why dogs, not hunting, threaten the future of the blackbuck today: A couple of centuries ago, some four million blackbucks roamed the Indian landmass south of the Himalayas from undivided “Punjab to Nepal and probably in most parts of the Peninsula where the country is wooded and hilly, but not in dense jungle”. Read more
