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 …
ECOLOGICAL and environmental changes are a common cause of migration. These changes can be sudden and unpredictable like earthquakes, or gradual like desertification or land degradation. Environment degradation due to deforestation, soil erosion and land scarcity is often the root of refugee-producing conflicts. The Zapatista rebellion in Mexico and the …
IF AN agricultural idea finds favour with farmers, you scarcely need an extension service to ensure its spread. But if it does not find favour, then you can double the size of the extension service and it still will not work - Confucius. Soil conservation efforts started more than 50 …
a stretch of barren hilly land is called changar in Himachal Pradesh. Since it lacks irrigation, agriculture on changar is difficult. About 427 sq km land in the basin of the river Beas in Kangra district is changar . It is spread over 99 pancha yats and 570 villages where, …
whenever the season's crop is harvested, a part of the surface soil is swept away by the wind. In this process, the world is gradually losing fertile soil. Every year, farmers harvest their crops, they leave their lands exposed to rain and storm. Due to this, agricultural soil is being …
in the 1930s the Great Plains heartland of North America wasted away into the Dust Bowl. The eastern coast of the us was covered by 350 million tonnes of rich top soil, swept up from the Great Plains, half a continent away. Cattle died on the parched rangelands and thousands …
THE book is a compilation of 42 papers contributed by social, physical and environment scientists who are working with issues that confront the Himalayas. The first three papers deal with the conceptual aspects of human ecology in relation to the environment, from the past to the present, and the effects …
the Sagar dweep system (sds , or the Sagar group of islands) in the Bay of Bengal is teetering on the verge of total destruction due to massive soil erosion and other natural calamities. The issue has now become a matter of global ecological concern. Originally, the sds comprised about …
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ABANI KUMAR BHAGABATI, GUWAHATIthe Karbi Anglong district in Assam, the homeland of the Karbi tribe, is on the brink of an economic and ecological crisis. A high rate of population growth and overuse of land for shifting cultivation known as jhumming have led to alternative means of increasing productivity. While …
KERALA is a land of contradictions. While a mean rainfall of 300 cm lashes the state every year shortage of drinking water remains a perennial cause for heartache. The state government admits that the problem has become a permanent fixture since 1983 in the list of ills ailing the state. …
King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand has claimed to have found a solution to soil erosion. Vetiver grass ( Vetiver zizinoidis) boasts of the longest roots in the plant kingdom. A vetiver root can grow to a depth of 568 m in three years. Vetiver poses no threat to native plants …
THE various life-support systems and the socioeconomic development of a country depend majorly on the proper use of soil resources. Maintaining the quality of this resource base is therefore a key issue in ensuring sustainability in agriculture and food and nutritional security for the people of the country. In recent …
THE residents of the villages at the border of the Pilibhit and Lakhimpur-Kheri districts in Uttar Pradesh are at their are just about keeping afloat. For the 2nd year in succession, they watched in utter helplessness as the Sharda, a tributary of the Ghagra, washed away hundreds of hectares of …
There have been 180 landslides in Sri Lanka since 1945, says the National Building Research Organisation (NABRO), accroding to a Panos report. Indiscriminate tree-felling, poor drainage and unscientific construction have eroded the soil in areas like Nuwara Eliya, Kegalle and Kandy. With help from the United Nations Development Programme, NABRO …
WHEN you live on an island, rapid land erosion can spell doom. It can also mean an irreversible and mind-numbing change in the status of your assets from the time you go to sleep to the time you wake up. If this sounds stretches the limits of understanding, just watch …
A BARREN hillock in Agali village in Kerala's Palakkad district is now verdant with forests worth lakhs of rupees, as a result of natural farming -- farming without any external inputs -- by two school-teachers, Vijayalakshmi and Balakrishnan. They have made 8 ha of degraded land cultivable through mulching, water …
THE ANTI-GOLF movement is gaining momentum almost in tandem with the game's popularity. Anti-golf activists see the sport as "the most serious environmental problem in the world". Tricia Barnett, a British conservationist and supporter of the Global Anti-Golf Movement (GAGM) (Down To Earth, August 15, 1993), thinks the campaign has …
BOREAL forests -- consisting of mostly coniferous and some deciduous trees in the northern hemisphere -- are being destroyed faster than before and may be making the world a hotter place. Boreal forests comprise one-third of the world's forests and cover almost 8 per cent of the land surface. About …
SAVE WILD peanuts, enrich your soil. That's the latest slogan being drummed out by agronomists across the world. They have found that wild peanuts, most of which come from South America, are well adapted to the poor acid soils of the tropics and prevent erosion because they tenaciously cling on …
INDISCRIMINATE tree felling, construction, mining and quarrying, combined with heavy rainfall, have increased the fragility of the Himalayan mountains, leading to an increase in the incidence of landslides in the region. Of all the world's landslides, 30 per cent occur in the Himalaya, according to a South Asian Association for …
WESTERN nations are worried about increasing international migration. Says a 1992 document of Western nations, "Migration is now seen as a priority issue equal in political weight to other major global challenges such as the environment, population growth and economic imbalances between regions." The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in …
