Order of the Supreme Court in the matter of M K Ranjitsinh & Others Vs Union of India & Others dated 21/03/2024. The matter related to protection of Great Indian Bustard (GIB) and Lesser Florican. The SC order of April 19, 2021 imposed restrictions on the setting up of overhead …
The plans of the International Airports Authority of India (IAAI) to use trained falcons to scare away birds that pose a risk to aircraft near airports has run into rough weather. IAAI's move, based on a similar experiment conducted successfully at Heathrow a couple of years ago, seems to be …
THE FAILURE of the Siberian cranes to pay their annual migratory visit, in mid-November, to the Keoladeo Ghana National Park in Bharatpur is fuelling anxiety that these birds may be on the brink of extinction. The number of Siberian cranes coming to Bharatpur has declined steadily since 1969. In 1964, …
KOLLERU lake is no ordinary wetland. Located in Andhra Pradesh, it is one of the country's largest freshwater lakes and a bird sanctuary, hosting 193 species of birds and a variety of flora and fauna, including medicinal plants. However, Kolleru today is threatened by economic and industrial development, expanding fisheries …
EVER SINCE a 3-km straight-cut was dug into the Upputeru channel to speed up draining of water from Kolleru lake into the Bay of Bengal in 1972, soil erosion has plagued the tiny island of Chinna Gollapalem, situated where the lake waters meet the sea. The gushing waters of Upputeru …
EVERY DAY at 5 am, Sridevi picks up all the pots in her house in the Mandaveli slums of Madras city and places them at the end of the street, as she has been doing for the past 12 years. She must ensure that her pots are among the first …
IN APRIL 1983, the Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu governments signed the Telugu Ganga project agreement, under which Madras would get 15 tmc ft of water from the Srisailam reservoir between February and September. Government indifference and lack of funds delayed the project, but it has been revived recently. A …
CHILIKA LAKE, Orissa: Remote-sensing studies indicate the area of Chilika has shrunk from 2,200 square kilometers originally to about 915 sq km now. The northern mouth of the brackish lake, reported to be India's largest inland lake, has been choked by heavy siltation. Nearly 200 sq km of the waterspread …
IN THE Vaddi villages of Kolleru, life is almost totally monitered and controlled by a Kula panchayat. The panchayat is headed by a pedda vaddi (sarpanch), who is assisted by a maximum of seven peddalu or peddas (members), depending upon the population. The kula panchayat enjoys total power and can …
To the delight of bird lovers, the first census of birds in India was initiated in the second half of November. Bird lovers throughout the country volunteered their time to take a head count of forest birds, water birds and shore birds under a national project undertaken by the Bombay …
A BARREN hillock in Agali village in Kerala's Palakkad district is now verdant with forests worth lakhs of rupees, as a result of natural farming -- farming without any external inputs -- by two school-teachers, Vijayalakshmi and Balakrishnan. They have made 8 ha of degraded land cultivable through mulching, water …
THOUGHT the dodo was a lumbering, fat bird? You might be mistaken, says Andrew Kitchner, curator at the Royal Museum of Scotland, who has discovered that early illustrations of the dodo, which became extinct in the 17th century, reveal a distinctly thin bird, while later drawings showed the more familiar …
THE PACIFIC island-state of Nauru, once abundant in phosphates deposited by birds, now lies devastated and desolate. Most of the phosphate was mined by Australia and royalties made the Nauruans one of the richest people in the world. Now, they are left without any natural resources and only an investment …
THERE'S a maxim in Sanskrit that states peacocks in the forest are happy to see clouds in the sky. It's a pointer to the irrefutable fact of life that one cannot keep away from what is dear to one. Something similar happened to Madeleine Slade, popularly known as Mira Behn, …
HOW DID birds learn to fly? For over a decade now, this question has been at the centre of a debate about whether Archaeopteryx, the world's oldest bird-like creature -- found nearly 150 million years ago -- was a bird or a dinosaur. While ornithologists believe Archaeopteryx was a bird …
BIRDS are among the most fascinating of creatures. They tirelessly build exquisite nests and care for their eggs and nestlings. But even birds have their parasites, the most famous being the cuckoo, which never builds its own nest and spends no effort in incubating its eggs or caring for its …
IN US President Bill Clinton's nightmares, an endangered owl species must play a starring role, for he is trapped in the dilemma of protecting it or the jobs of thousands of loggers. The spotted owl once haunted his predecessor, George Bush, but Bush decided in favour of the timber interests …
THAILAND is literally a land of happy people for in the local language, thai means happy. The Thais are nature lovers and they are so fond of songbirds, they keep them as pets. Often, houses in Bangkok, the capital, have a decorated cage in which a bird coos melodiously. But …
It is perhaps a comment on how strident documentary film-making has become that one is puzzled by a film on a newsy, controversial subject that fails to make a point. After watching Chilika -- The Story of a Lagoon, one wonders what the film-maker set out to do. With an …
BIRD MIGRATION patterns can change dramatically over decades and scientists say global warming can increase the incidence of such changes. Drastic changes in climate and landscape during the ice ages led to many birds altering their migratory routes. Such changes occur at present as well, but too gradually to be …
IT WAS a strange case of politicians taking out their venom on snakes. Angry CPM workers in Kerala vandalised and set fire to the Parassinikkadavu Snake Park in Kannur. The reason for the wanton destruction of what was one of the finest snake sanctuaries in Asia, was the defeat of …
