Affidavit filed by the Chief Wildlife Warden, Assam in the matter of news item titled "the last feral horses in India" appearing in Mongabay, November 5, 2024. The matter relates to the critically endangered status of feral horses in the Dibru-Saikhowa National Park as well as of smuggling of these …
April 2, 2001 will go down as a sad day in the history of India's environmental movement. Four tribals were shot dead by the police in Dewas district of Madhya Pradesh ( mp ). Their crime: cutting trees for beams to support the roof of their house. The firing took …
The red alert in Corbett after the killing of five tuskers is only fuelling the growing cynicism over state managed conservation programmes in India. It is only giving more credence to the school of thought that insists that only poachers will thrive in an era of wildlife rules and regulations …
a thriving timber trade business is taking its toll on the forests of North West Frontier Province ( nwfp ) in Pakistan. Manshera district in Hazara division, one of the two main forested areas of nwfp , had a forest cover of 83,966 hectare (ha) in 1979. The cover had …
The Karnataka government has expressed optimism about the safe release of Kannada screen idol Rajkumar, who is being held hostage by sandalwood smuggler Veerappan. Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi said that a four-member team of negotiators, including R R Gopal, editor of Tamil bi-weekly Nakkheeran, was negotiating with Veerappan …
Sanjay K Srivastava IFS The article by Anil Agarwal is atrocious with heinous flavour and needs to be debated upon. We have umpteen number of officers who have served in such difficult areas where ‘Veerappans’ operate. Anil Bhardwaj IFS Anil Agarwal’s article is not at all a responsible statement. He …
Excerpts from letter to the editor from M Mahmood Husain, Chennai Forty years ago, Veerappan's haunts in Tamil Nadu forests were mine too, almost every one of them. Every nook and corner was intensely familiar for ten years or more, right from probationer days in the Forest Service. What memories …
Since forest-dependent communities in India are amongst the poorest people, any bottom-up poverty reduction strategy will have to take forest management into account. Madhya Pradesh ( mp ) chief minister Digvijay Singh's letter to the prime minister asking for a review of the Forest Conservation Act ( fca ) has …
The Cambodian government has alleged that a Malaysian company is illegally logging in the country's hardwood forest. The accusations have been made on the basis of aerial inspections and onsite visits. The activities of Grand Atlantic Timber International, the company, have threatened the existence of commercially valuable trees, government officials …
Pakistan's Sindh forest department officials are destroying the green cover of the province, according to the Sindh Green Development Organisation. Officials of the forest department in collaboration with forest smugglers have looted 20,234 hectares of forest worth Rs 7 billion in Rajri, Shaghar, Manjhand, Unnerpur, Budhapur, Petaro, Sukhpur and Khipro.
The Allahabad High Court has directed inspector-general of police (criminal investigation department) to inquire into the alleged involvement of some police officials in illegal trading of forest woods in collaboration with wood smugglers in Uttar Pradesh's Gorakhpur area. The order was passed by a division bench in response to a …
Killer, brigand, elephant poacher, sandalwood smuggler, forest goon, Call him what you will but Veerappan - the grandson of a Mettur Dam oustee remains a creature of the law. The media has discussed the abduction of Kannada thespian Rajkumar by the brigand Veerappan ad nauseum but it has missed a …
Why is Veerappan popular with the residents of some 175 villages from where he operates? Simply because he not only gives them employment, but also facilitates smuggling of small amount of sandalwood in the nearby Salem market in Tamil Nadu. Considering that he has not been actively involved with smuggling …
it all happened on a dark Sunday night. The Kannada screen idol Rajkumar was in Doddagajanur village in Erode district, Tamil Nadu, for a house-warming get together with his family and relatives. The bandit was on the prowl. Before anyone knew what was happening, he had whisked away their dear …
Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley, ground to halt in the first week of August. The rich and the powerful of the software industry would probably have failed to understand why. Ironically, their operating systems have crashed under the collective burden of the cries of the thousands of poor villagers and tribal …
a huge illegal consignment of timber worth several crores has been seized by forest department officials at a number of railway stations including Nangloi (Delhi), Rajpura (Punjab) and Tinsukhia (Assam) recently. Of a total of 93 wagons carrying timber from the northeast, 27 were detained at Rajpura. Thirteen of them …
In Kesharpur, a tiny village in the foothills of Orissa’s Nayagarh district, villagers search for a baton in their frontyard every morning. Two families find a baton each. The batons decide their day’s work
In every village, a committee is elected by the people. There is a blanket ban on felling and stray grazing. The committee supervises these bans and resolves all conflicts. It also collects fines, decided by the villagers, for any violation of the protection rules. Similarly, it decides the village peoples' …
Orissa's forest protection movement, which started in different places at different times, has become so strong that neither do forest officials find it easy to enter the forests protected by communities nor has the government been able to implement its conservation programmes. But the government refuses to acknowledge their efforts. …
