Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of In Re: News Item titled "Nayar river is vanishing - a yatra reveals conservation goes beyond science and policy" appearing in ‘The Down To Earth’ dated 03.06.2025. The original application was registered suo-motu based on the news item titled "Nayar …
Our syllabi (for training forest officials) still have manuals written during the Raj S K Mukherjee Acting director, Wildlife Institute, Dehradun Why do you still train foresters in horseriding and shooting, 5 decades after the British have left? Surely, that's teaching them to charge against us. Nanakram Gujjar, a villager …
IT'S a bit less than a conspiracy, a bit more than a fetish. Five international organisations have made forest conservation their overriding priority. The gigantic United Nations bureaucracy based in New York, Washington, Tokyo and Rome is breathing in carbon dioxide, breathing out oxygen. First came the International Tropical Timber …
A RICH forest supporting the survival of the local tribal populace, a city girl in empathy, forest contractors and a foreign company eyeing the woods, and a young, diligent forest officer... the setting for conflict is ideal in Sai Paranjpye's film Papeeha. The girl agitates for the tribals' right to …
COLONIAL forest administration, which didn"t give a damn about the fecund land it was so easily reducing to cinders and stumps, lasted almost a century. The sad thing is that even after Independence, the imperial order of green decimation refused to come unstuck and is now almost pathologically entrenched in …
One fine morning in 1990, forest officials informed tribals in Thakkarwari in the Pune district of Maharashtra that they had no right to plant trees in the forest they inhabited. The baffled tribals, of course, had no clue to the fact that the MEF had just issued guidelines for joint …
IT WAS icing gone sour on a cake you can break your teeth on. On January 4 this year, the Madhya Pradesh food and civil supplies minister, Ramesh Solomonand, griped to the press about his disapproval of the state forest department's decision to impose a total ban on the collection …
Salient points • The village or hamlet should be the operational unit for managing their resources • Village communities should haw enough powers and control over natural resources to plan and develop such lands. Community institutions will ensure equitable sharing of benefits • Local institutions for the management of natural …
• The state governments have the right to declare any government land as "reserve forests". The Centre will monopolise the decisions directed towards the state government to constitute reserve forests • No people's rights will be enteriained in the reserved forests • The state governments can bypass procedural necessities in …
AS A professional forester, I feel that the draft Forest Bill is a highly progressive document. The Act, which will come out after the Bill is passed, will greatly improve upon the existing Indian Forest Act of 1927. It is a comprehensive piece of legislation dealing with the preservation of …
IN THE face of mounting public criticism of the Union ministry of environment and forests' draft Forest Bill, environment minister Kamal Nath's quick sidestep to dismiss the document as a "non-paper" is nothing if not adroit strategy. Only this move could have saved his "green" ministry the embarrassment of getting …
The forest protection initiatives of villagers in Bihar and Orissa, while arising out of crises, are marked by pragmatism. The people have realised that protection is possible only once their often-conflicting needs have been met first, which is why villagers' committees closely regulate the use of forest resources. Unfortunately, for …
THE powerment of people living in and around national parks and sanctuaries seems a distant dream as the divergent views on wildlife conservation of the parties involved belie all hope of consensus. This discord came into sharp focus when environmental activists, wildlife experts and forest officials met in Delhi recently …
When a village watchman self-righteously stopped Navlibehn from cutting firewood in the forests adjoining Kotha village, she retorted, "To kya main apne haath jala kar roti pakaun (Should I burn my hands to cook food)?" In Boriya village, Manibehn and her sister-in-law were caught redhanded cutting wood. The watchmen seized …
President Suharto of Indonesia is under fire for allegedly diverting $189 million intended for the forestry ministry's rainforest preservation programme to the state-owned aircraft maker, Industri Pesawat Terbang Negara, as an interest-free loan. Suharto now faces a legal challenge from 11 Indonesian environmental groups who plan to take their case …
"I CAME to Los Haitises in 1951 when I was abruptly evicted from my farm by the government to make way for a sugarcane plantation. One day I was in my farm, the next day I had to leave. I established a farm in the area the logging companies had …
RICHARD Leakey, director of the Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS), resigned again on March 24. Leakey had earlier stepped down from office in January this year, responding to a campaign spearheaded by the minister for local government, William Ole Ntimama and the minister for tourism and wildlife, Noah Katana Ngala, who …
People's action in West Bengal have been commended in the form of the J Paul Getty conservation prize to the forest Protection Committees (PFCs) of the state by the World Wide Fund for Nature, "in recognition of their efforts to ensure community-based conservation through sustainable management". At a ceremony in …
A RECENTLY developed species of a native Australian tree -- the northern black wattle (Acacia auriculiformis) -- may save the precious tropical teak forests from being wiped out by offering high-quality furniture wood. Already well-established in China, India and south-east Asia, the black wattle is not a favourite for good-quality …
What have been Finland's major environmental concerns? How has your government responded to global environmental issues in general? Finland and other industrialised countries use 80 per cent of the world's resources. We are part of a problem and are responsible for it. That's why our emphasis has always been on …
FIVE YEARS ago, the social forestry department in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra cleared several trees from a forest near Nandivse village to plant acacia trees. It did not know that the 4-ha patch was a sacred grove surrounding the temple of a powerful local deity, Kal Bhairon. The villagers, too, …
