Judgment of the Supreme Court in the matter of In Re: Zudpi Jungle Lands. A batch of applications involved a peculiar issue concerning the situation prevailing in the six districts of eastern Vidarbha region namely Nagpur, Wardha, Bhandara, Gondia, Chandrapur and Gadchiroli. The issue pertains to the status of the …
PAKISTAN'S JUNIPER forests -- the second largest in the world -- have been struck by the dwarf mistletoe, reveal Pakistani scientists. The mistletoe is a parasite that hampers the growth of the host, seriously affecting seed development and leading to premature death. Vast stretches of the forest have been affected …
India's agricultural universities are producing far too many forestry graduates for the jobs available. Protests by the graduates prompted the Union ministry of environment and forests (MEF) to write to the department of personnel in the Union home ministry, requesting them to include forestry as an optional paper in the …
THE UPHEAVAL in Canada's forestry sector is shaking many of the biggest companies to their roots. Parent companies, strapped for cash, have stopped supporting subsidiaries that are making losses because of the low newsprint and pulp prices -- the mainstay of Canada's forestry industry. The giant CP Forest joined a …
WITH PREDICTIONS by World Health Organisation officials that 40 million people will be infected by HIV by 2000 and six million of them will go on to contract AIDS and die, a cure for the disease holds out promise for vast profits -- and the Australians, at least, are determined …
SUB-SAHARAN Africa's debts have increased three-fold since 1980 and the only prospect is that the arrears will mount as just half the scheduled payments are being met. Solutions being explored range from implementing the so-called Trinidad terms to creating a UN Economic Security Council (ESC), whose 11 permanent members would …
SCIENTISTS claim to have unveiled through a DNA analysis the mystery about the fate of Czar Nicholas II and his family in the wake of the Russian Revolution. A team of British and Russian forensic experts matched the DNA from blood samples provided by three living relatives of the Czar's …
THE MONSOONS in Bangladesh have once again triggered floods, displacing 1.5 million people. The worst affected are Sylhet and Chittagong, where road and rail links with the rest of the country were snapped. Bangladesh, located in the delta regions of two major rivers, the Ganga and the Brahmaputra, receives vast …
IS THERE a tenth planet in our solar system? Astronomers who have observed Uranus and Neptune deviate from their calculated orbits, attribute such irregularities to the gravitational pull of an unknown planet, usually referred to as Planet X (Nature, Vol 363, No 6424). But Myles Standish of the Jet Propulsion …
THE US has extended its nine-month moratorium on testing of nuclear weapons that expired in July. It abandoned plans to conduct nine underground nuclear tests and says it will not resume testing unless another country first conducts tests. This marks a retreat by the Clinton administration in the face of …
When did life on earth begin? The question continues to stoke the curiosity of scientists, stimulating the search for fossils that provide the only source of direct evidence of when a particular organism existed or how it evolved. Now, J William Schopf of the University of California, Los Angeles, says …
AMERICAN doctors are waving their scalpels against Hillary Clinton, head of the presidential task force on health. The American Medical Association, which fears that investments made in specialised training and equipment by physicians would be devalued if Hillary's proposed health care reforms come into force, has contended that the practice …
SCIENTISTS have found that the ability of certain rats to reject a tumour can be transferred to other rats using a simple technique that could one day be used to enhance human resistance to cancers. Ashok Khar of Hyderabad's Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) discovered a certain type …
THE WORLD Health Organisation asked governments and other groups at the Ninth International AIDS Conference held in Berlin in June, to provide it with $2.5 billion annually, to combat the AIDS epidemic and save 10 million people all over the world this decade. The World Bank also endorsed the plan, …
FOR CHEMIST Andrea Stierle, it was like searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack. She was scouring the ancient cedar forests in Montana, USA, for a fungus that produces a compound called taxol, which is used to treat ovarian cancer. And find it she did, though she herself had …
WHETHER the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development -- a kind of mini-Brundtland Commission in the forest sector -- being proposed by former Swedish prime minister Ola Ullsten will come into being depends greatly on the support it receives from UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali. But the idea will …
ATMOSPHERIC pollution is taking a heavy toll of European trees. The 1991 survey of trees conducted by the UN Economic Commission for Europe shows nearly a quarter of all trees are defoliated.The majority of critically affected forests are in Bulgeria, erstwhile Czechoslovakia, Germany, Poland and the UK. Overall conifires are …
"RANTHAMBORE is like a leper's pock mark on this district," says a senior citizen of Sawai Madhopur, the town near which this important national park is located. The comment sums up the disdain in which many Sawai Madhopur residents hold the park. It also puts into doubt the government's nature …
The hilly tract of Uttara Kannada district in the Western Ghats of India has been famous for its arecanut and spice orchards for several centuries. The cultivators have evolved complex horticultural practices to maintain productivity under conditions of high rainfall, hilly terrain and leached soils.
EVEN WHILE the government is privatising and cutting subsidies, paper and forest-based industries are about to receive in response to their clamouring the biggest bankroll of all: natural wealth. At a recent seminar in Delhi on raw material supply for these industries, the ministry of environment and forests (MEF) hinted …
A significant provision for forests in this year's Union budget may turn out to be a case of missing the forest for the trees. Motivated by a desire to "protect the environment and to save wood," Singh cut the excise duty on plywood from 34.5 per cent to 20 per …
