Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of In Re: News Item titled "Are missing palm trees causing more lighting deaths in Bihar appearing in ‘The Times of India’ dated 29.05.2025". The original application was registered suo-motu based on the news item titled "Are missing palm trees causing …
YET another instance of mindless destruction of forests: a pine forest, specially grown at a cost of Rs 10 lakh a decade ago, will be razed to make way for a VIP, complex close to the Raj Bhawan in Gangtok, Sikkim. More than 1,150 conifers, which formed a botanical garden …
A rare sudden spell of snow - nearly 12 inches - in central Mexico, has driven millions of Monarch butterflies, which have their winter sojourn in Mexico, to a cold death. The distinct orange and black insects fly every year from their summer haunts in Canada across the expanse of …
Fencing the Forest: Conservation and Ecological Change in India's Central Provinces 1860-1914 draws on archival and printed sources to shed new light on the ecological dimensions of the colonial impact on South Asia. The changing responses of rural forest users and the fortunes of the land they lived on are …
The Himalayan mountains constitute an ecological system naturally primed for disaster. The deep gorges through which the Himalayan rivers flow convey the impression that the Himalayan valleys would never face floods. Yet these very channels often fail to contain the fury of disastrous floods. Among the most affected valleys are …
ABOUT five krn off the one-time tourist spot, Kangan, on the S'rinagar-Leh highway etched out in one of Kashmir's several semi-denuded hills, there is hectic activity. Downhill, a platoon of the 11 th sector of the Indian Army's Rashtriya Rifles (RR) unit, armed with sub-machine guns and a rocket launcher, …
TWO large-scale forest projects slated to begin this year, aim to focus on Laos' forest resources more extensively. The projects - the World Bank's (WB) Forest Management and Conservation Project (FOMACOP), and the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) industrial tree plantations - are being criticised for posing serious ecological and social …
Kampuchea's logging concession to an Indonesian company - which covers nearly 19 per cent of the country's remaining forest - has raised the spectre of an environmental disaster in southeast Asia. To counter the ill-effects of logging, King Nordorn Sihanouk called on logging companies to plant three trees for each …
Amapa, one of the poorest states of Brazil, has won plaudits for its development model. Spearheading the change is Joao Alberto Capiberibe, a former guerrilla who is now governor of the state. Capiberibe's commitment to sustainable development has been described by the environmental group, Friends of the Earth as "unprecedented …
"LARGE parts of Uttarakhand now lie denuded ... the whole region is turning into a desert. If this trend continues for another 50 years, it will become impossible to save the Himalaya from total collapse," environmental activist Chandi Prasad Batt had said at a public rally in 1980. One could …
BATHED in a halo of neon and sodium lights, Port Blair looks very attractive at night. For a few undiscerning moments, you are impressed by the fruits of development. But it"s not long before the effect wears off, revealing the sordid picture underneath. The entire town draws its electric fuel …
The Central government's recent announcement that an action plan has been formulated to safeguard the pristine forests in the north-east -- in collaboration with the states of the region -- has not made any dent in the ongoing devastation in the picturesque valley of Barak near Silchar in Assam. Deforestation, …
A gigantic "tree-felling" scam has recently been unearthed in Indonesia. The government is furning against some forestry companies which, it claims, have used a e self-assessitrilent system to avoid paying the mandatory fees. This has resulted 3 in largescale fraud in the industry; the companies have used loopholes to cheat …
WE MAY all have telephonic links with each other but surrounding us will be barren land devoid of trees. This futuristic scenario may become a reality as rapid advances in the telecommunication industiy will encourage the publishing of more telephone directories and, consequently, the felling more trees. The introduction of …
Panama is reeling under a water shortage crisis that can attain monumental proportions in future, if the largescale environmental degradation resulting from indiscriminate commercial logging is not controlled. Since 1990, water has been rationed and hydro-power supplies have been reduced. Deforestation has disrupted the water-cycle and rainfall patterns, increased soil …
THE state of Rajasthan evokes images of camels loping over lifeless sand stretching to the horizon, without the welcome punctuation of green cover. So the state government's bid to denotify 3,500 sq km of forest cover for mining purposes sparked off an alarum. Rajasthan has hardly 9 per cent notified …
• The Neyyar, a small river in southern Kerala which originates from the famous Agastya hills, has been almost completely destroyed by merciless sandmining over the past few years. • The Bharathapuzha, Kerala's longest river, has been the font of inspiration to several Malayalam writers. Reams have been written about …
Pakistan's Kalabagh dam project has stirred up a hornet's nest. To counter hostile critics in the North West Frontier Province and Sindh, a new strategy, chalked out on the World Bank's guidelines, has been adopted. The gameplan is to use the success of the Ghazi Barotha dam as a springboard …
Deforestation of mangroves in the coastal areas of West Bengal is wiping out a large variety of snakes. The results of the Zoological Survey of India's (ZSI) first ever field study of snake habitats have raised much concern. The ZSI scientists have based their conclusions on the basis of repetitive …
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 …
THE colonial myth that shifting cultivation, a traditional farming practice, is the hangover of a dying past still finds devotees from among the Indian bureaucracy. The draft Conservation of Forests and Natural Ecosystems Act proposed in 1994 seeks to give more teeth to the prohibitory powers of forest officers to …
