Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
The worldwide decline in amphibians has been attributed to several causes, especially habitat loss and disease. We identified a further factor, namely "habitat split"
There's a beautiful wetland in Nepal that's being destroyed-yet it's no ones fault. Seb Buckton reports on an innovative WWT (Wildlife & Wetlands Trust) project aimed at bringing the balance back to a pristine land.
The relocation and resettlement of people from nature reserves is a controversial issue in the conservation community. The perceived poor success rate of resettlement efforts, combined with availability of few well-documented studies, warrants a detailed examination of this issue. The authors has analyzed a relocation and resettlement project in India
On the night of October 1, 1998, when Salman Khan went hunting blackbucks, he was explicitly warned not to do so in the Bishnoi area because only a few have managed to get away from them. Yet Khan and his co-stars Saif Ali Khan, Tabu, Sonali Bendre and Neelam, along …
Exclusionist policies of forest conservation, of which preservation via dislocation is an extreme manifestation, need to be situated within the broad canvas of the conservation-poverty-rural livelihood interface. Prima facie, a clear correlation seems to exist between access to natural resources and forests and the incidence of rural poverty, especially in …
The Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus) population in Rajaji National Park, north-west India is an important part of India's heritage, but has not been intensively studied until recently. Understanding the population dynamics is important for managers if the population is to remain viable. The researchers used marked adult male Asian Elephants …
The overall aim of the India Ecodevelopment Project, approved in 1996, was to conserve biological diversity in seven globally significant protected areas (PAS) by implementing an ecodevelopment strategy (prepared by the GOI). The strategy embraced a community based approach encouraging durab1e partner ships between Forest Department staff and local communities …
Action to conserve biodiversity, particularly through the creation of protected areas (PAs), is inherently political. Political ecology is a field of study that embraces the interactions between the way nature is understood and the politics and impacts of environmental action. This paper explores the political ecology of conservation, particularly the …
A way out of conflict? One of Sri Lanka's biggest corporates, Ceylinco Insurance, was happy to take on Ranjith Bandara's research and develop a viable scheme for elephant depredation for rural farmers. An insurance scheme that is partly corporate social responsibility and partly profit driven, Ceylinco will charge a small …
There is limited information on the ecological effects of anthropogenic disturbance caused by extractive activities such as grazing and firewood collection. A study was carried out in Sariska Tiger Reserve in India, to investigate the effects of disturbance on forest bird communities.
The issue of displacement and rehabilitation of people from wildlife areas is a recurrent and central theme in the context of crises in nature conservation in India. India is one of the countries where the issue of relocation has lately acquired centre-stage in debates on biodiversity conservation.
Livestock production is the primary source of livelihood and income in most of the high steppe and alpine regions of the Indian Trans-Himalaya. In some areas, especially those established or proposed for biodiversity conservation, recent increases in populations of domestic livestock, primarily sheep and goats, have raised concern about domestic …
In this paper I address the general perception that agricultural activities are the principal threat to primate biodiversity in the tropics and argue that in Neotropical landscapes some agricultural practices may favor primate population persistence, and that this situation merits attention and investigation. To explore these issues, I examined three …
Rajaji-Corbett Tiger Conservation Unit (RCTCU) in north-west India, is one of the eleven Level I Tiger Conservation Units (TCU) identified in the Indian subcontinent for the long term conservation of the tiger. Between November 1999 and March 2000, we evaluated the status of tiger and leopard by counting the number …
Sri Lanka is identified as one of the biodiversity hotspots in Asia. Although many of the endemic species are found in the hill country, the low country dry zone is home to some of the most seriously threatened species of wildlife. Following the protracted armed conflict, it appears that defaunation …
On August 14, 2005, Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje instructed the forest secretary to prepare a proposal for setting up a separate Ranthambore Board to manage the park. "I cannot say anything before the proposal is finalised and cleared by the cabinet,' says Sudarshan Sethi, forest secretary, Rajasthan. On November …
