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 …
The Japanese passion for golf is on a new course. Since 1987, 20 districts covering 32,000 sq km were earmarked for resort development. The total area covered by the resorts will eventually touch 60,000 sq km -- 16 per cent of the country's land area. A private study asserts the …
FOREST officials in Himachal Pradesh are apprehensive about the environmental costs of a recent court judgement allowing a private forest owner to fell trees to make way for apple orchards. The forest department, fearing a deluge of applications for orchards, has challenged the September 30 Himachal Pradesh high court decision …
INDIA'S politicians and bureaucrats have often been compared to the five blind men and the elephant, with the difference that they have consciously chosen to be blind. For years, they have woven a shroud of secrecy over the state of the country's natural resources and every bit of relevant data …
Bamboo roofs, floors, and even doors: that's the style of houses in the northeastern states, home to more than 50 per cent of the genetic resources of Indian bamboo. Of the nearly 100 species belonging to 19 genera in the country, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Assam together account for 16 …
COMMERCIAL felling of trees and forest management techniques are threatening birds that nest in cavities of tree trunks. Such birds prefer diseased, dying or dead trees because it is easier to find or excavate' cavities in such trees. However, forest management requires the removal of all dead and diseased trees …
VILLAGERS in Uttara Kannada district are waging a battle against Karnataka Forest Department officials who are allowing contractors to fell trees in the betta lands -- tracts of forests sanctioned to farmers of the region during British rule. The trouble began in March when villagers in Adnalli gheraoed a contractor …
IRONICALLY, trees are now a security problem for the army. The armed forces are seeking urgent permission from the environment ministry for selective tree-felling in the thickly wooded areas under their control, for security reasons. They claim, while trees were earlier planted as camouflage, now the areas have started sticking …
AT 52, Ramachandra S Hegde is a broken man. After more than 25 years as a primary schoolteacher in Karnataka, he recently became a headmaster of a primary school in Kumta, about 150 km from Mangalore. But, at the fag end of his career, this talented teacher and rural technologist …
FOUR million ha of the Siberian coniferous forest, the taiga, are cut down every year, and it is feared that this may shortly increase as controls on logging disintegrate after the break-up of the former USSR, says a report prepared by Armin Rosencranz and Antony Scott of the Pacific Energy …
DURING the dissemination of an improved, smoke-removing chulha (called nada chulha to honour the women of Nada, a harijan village, who developed it), I visited hundreds of rural kitchens in seven northern states to train local women as chulha mistris (stove repairers). In talking with the Nada housewives using the …
ARAKHAKUDA is a fishing village in Brahmagiri block of Puri district and its residents have been fishing in Chilika lake for generations. What makes Arakhakuda significant is that it is the last village on the Magarmukh channel that links the lake to the Bay of Bengal. Hence, the villagers know …
AT THE rate at which the world's forests are disappearing, it would appear that the price for human development is the destruction of forests. This is true wherever civilisations have risen and flourished, observes author and amateur explorer John Perlin, in his new book A Forest Journey, brought out by …
IF SO-CALLED ecological subsidies were halted in India, the true cost of paper would double immediately and the price of thermal power would soar an electrifying 60 per cent. These are the findings in a study __ the first of its kind in India -- sponsored by the Administrative Staff …
ASIA TOPS the list of continents with the highest deforestation rate. The initial estimates of the 1990 tropical forest resources census show about 3.6 million ha -- or about 1.2 per cent -- of forest land are cleared each year in Asia. This is much higher than in either Latin …
ECONOMICS is going green. According to a growing band of experts, now labelled "green economists", sustainable development can only be achieved if economic theory can be utilised to determine sustainable natural resource use patterns. Oscar Wilde once alleged that while economists may know the price of everything, they know the …
HOW DO you value a tree? Do you account only for the timber and fruit that a tree bears or are there other intangibles that have a value, for instance, the carbon dioxide that the tree fixes, the oxygen that it releases, the soil erosion that it checks or even …
Norwegians now maintain regular "resource accounts" for energy, minerals, fisheries, forests, agriculture, land use and air emissions. Each account contains information on the state or quality of the resource at the beginning and end of a time period, together with information explaining any change that has taken place. Energy forecasting …
THIRTY years of deforestation in the temperate regions has caused more pollution than 140 years' use of forests in the tropics. When' temperate forests were cut down in the 19th century by the colonial Europeans 12 North America, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and East Europe, they put into the …
FOR the first time possibly since independence, the forest cover in India has recorded an increase. The green cover has gone up from 19.47 per cent to 19.49 per cent, with an annual incremental growth of- 28,000 ha, says the latest issue of The State of Forest Report, prepared by …
THE spotted owl is creating a flap in USA. A bitter fight over its habitat has driven everyone from President George Bush to the common environmentalist and loggers barmy. This fortnight, the spotted owl lost over 680 ha of its forest habitat in the Oregon region of western USA as …