Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of Ramdevbhai Samatbhai Sanjva Vs State of Gujarat & Others dated 09/05/2025. The matter related to remedial actions to be taken for abatement of pollution of river Bhadar near Ahmedabad. Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) has filed the response affidavit, March …
The plague mystery still foxes the high level technical advisory committee constituted by the Centre. In its 7 page interim report, the committee headed by V Ramalingaswamy, former director general of health, has stated that the isolating of Yersinia pestis from humans through DNA fingerprinting has confirmed that it was …
The lion can be heard prowling at night, near the livestock enclosure. In the morning, we are woken up by blasting in the limestone mines surrounding the fields. The lion eats only when it is hungry. But the factory (the Ambuja Cement Factory beyond the mines) never stops eating. --- …
Conflict between the local population in Gir and the conservation authorities can be traced back to the formation of the wildlife sanctuary in 1965. Revenue wastelands and grazing land on the Gir forest periphery were declared reserved and protected forests without the villagers knowledge. This land was previously kept outside …
Intensive management of Kuno forests is required before lions can be introduced in the area, claim Wildlife Institute of India researchers. Because the population of herbivores such as chital, nilgai, sambar and blackbuck is too low to sustain the lions, it is planned to introduce over 5 years 500 of …
Supplementing efforts to preserve the Asiatic lion, albeit in captivity, the Sakkarbaug Zoo in Junagadh has bred about 150 lions since the '50s. These have been sent to zoos in India and abroad and form the only pure-bred population of the cat in captivity. Sakkarbaug zoo officer R D Katara …
Jan-Feb 1995 •Preparation for relocation and rehabilitation of the local people from proposed national park area in Kuno with their consent. •Translocation of captured nilgai, sambar and other ungulates that form the prey for the lion. March-July •Shifting of villagers from core areas of proposed Park and starting rehabilitation work …
Letter to deputy forest protector, East Kutch forest department to the Kutch collector on matter pertaining allocation of land located at Mudra Taluka, Kutch District on rent to Adani Chemicals Ltd, for the production of salt.
PEOPLE's efforts to protect forests in the villages of Gujarat are recent compared to those in the Bihar-Orissa belt and started only after the forest cover had become non-existent. Villages had become surrounded by dry, barren ground. The trees had been reduced to mere root-stock. With an uncorporative forest department …
The controversy over the reduction of dam height of the Sardar Sarovar project is back in the news with the Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh governments locking horns to scale political heights over it. The disagreement is likely to explode in the forthcoming meeting of the Sardar Sarovar Construction Advisory Committee, …
Medical experts have warned that a rat borne disease, leptospirosis, which has already claimed 14 lives in Bulsar district in Gujarat, may spread to other parts of the country and rapped the government for ignoring its spread. At Plague Vision '94, held in Delhi on October 12, K K Aggarwal, …
ONE of India's most outstanding economic jewels has lost its glitter. All that Surat could do is wait weak-kneed and groggy for a Pied Piper to slough off its gigantic army of rats and bandicoots, which recently sent the world's most dreaded disease rustling insidiously through India. One of the …
Till September 1994, plague was s 'upposedly a forgotten disease in India. It caught the country's medics aghast at their own ignorance. But after its outbreak, medical authorities have taken to pointing out that they had never claimed the disease had been eradicated from the country. The bacterium which causes …
Although the plague was thought to have been sent packing in 1966, isolated suspected cases have since been reported, the most recent being from Him Pradesh in 1984. Besides, since 1989, the NICD's Bangalore-based Pla Surveillance Unit has been rattling off outbreak predictions - all of them binned. Serum tests …
The plague caught institutions everywhere completely inert. Only the Plague Surveillance Unit (PSU) in Bangalore - the last of its kind in the country - and its sub-unit at Kolar in Karnataka, were active during the 190s. Delhi's National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) had the only group of epidemiologists …
In the wake of the plague came the clamour for plague-beating drugs, particularly tetracycline. Says Prabir Biswas, director (marketing) of the Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Ltd (IDPL), "When all hell broke loose, we had a stock of 4.8 million capsules ready." IDPL's Hrishikesh and Hyderabad plants functioned 24 hours a …
IF WE are to believe K K Seth's declamations on Prosopis chilensis , it is a perfect Dracula of a weed, devilishly draining an already gasping Rann of Kutch of life-giving water (see Down to Earth, August 31, 1994). But actual facts point in quite a different direction. There is …
This indicative plan has based on the work of field/park directors and their colleagues in the eight protected areas, and of various non-governmental organisations involved in carrying out PRA in the proposed project area. The final output has benefit greatly from the inputs of the various national consultants and consulting …
The Union minister for environment and forests, Kamal Nath, has allowed the de-reservation of 10,900 ha of forest land in Gujarat's Kheda, Panchmahal and Vadodara districts. He has also said that a proposal to regularise encroachments on another 39,750 ha in the state would be cleared by August 25. The …
THROUGH the '80s, Vadodara was known as much for being one of India's fastest-industrialising cities as for its mountainous garbage problem. But the Baroda Citizen's Council (BCC), a local voluntary body, is taking care of the latter. The BCC programme to involve residential colonies in cleaning up their own household …
The Little Rann of Kutch is under attack from the Gujarat forest department, which is merrily planting a weed that is sucking the area of its juices. The history of the Little Rann tells us that before the '50s, sweet water could be found at a depth of 6 metres. …
