Livestock Census is a regular quinquennial exercise of Department of Animal Husbandry & Dairying (DAHD). The first Livestock Census was conducted in the year 1919 and last census i.e. 20th Livestock Census was conducted in 2019. The 21st Livestock Census exercise has been launched across the country on 25th October, …
Two years ago, Andhra Pradesh (ap) and West Bengal (wb) imported a herd of pedigree cattle from Australia for a government cattle breeding programme. Since April 28, 2002, the cattle have been quarantined in Chennai. Today, only 102 animals are alive; 116, including calves born in quarantine, have died. Probable …
A giant panda in Berlin's zoo might finally conceive if Chinese experts' efforts bear fruit. Six earlier attempts to impregnate 19-year-old Yan Yan with sperm from her Berlin zoo companion, Bao Bao, 26, have failed. As a last resort, scientists are now trying to artificially inseminate the animal with a …
Durjan Singh Soda remembers how, two decades ago, he used bullocks to plough his fields in village Minjrad in the Chohtal tehsil of Rajasthan's Barmer district, bordering Pakistan's Sindh province. "In this part of the Thar desert, it is much better to plough the fields with bullocks. The spacing of …
THERE has been an alarming rise in the incidence of dengue fever in Bangalore this year. The trend is being attributed to the 200 or so abandoned quarry pits, tanks and other receptacles, and numerous unused household wells in Karnataka's capital city. These are proving to be ideal breeding grounds …
On the eve of his retirement on June 29, director general of forests M K Sharma announced that the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) was going to let private parties breed and harvest wild animals
USUALLY, the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) does manage to stick to its guns in the face of adversity, or even rationality. But June 30, 2003 has changed all that. In a media statement, the director general of forests declared that the MoEF would soon allow captive breeding …
You have been described as the father of dna fingerprinting technology. Can you tell us the genesis? It all happened the way things usually happen in the field of science. By sheer accident. In 1977, I decided to move to the University of Leicester (in the uk). The primary area …
In 1957, Sri Lankan naturalist Parakrama Kirtisinghe published a monograph titled The Amphibia of Sri Lanka. In it, he recorded the presence of 35 species on the island nation. Over the next three and a half decades, with new species being discovered on a fairly regular basis, this number had …
The dwindling wild elephant population in Thailand may soon see a turnaround with the world's first elephant sperm bank opening for business in Bangkok. Following a series of trials, Thai veterinarians have solved the problem of keeping pachyderm sperm viable after long periods of freezing. Artificial insemination of elephants with …
union health minister C P Thakur recently announced a plan to commercialise the farming of musk deer for medicinal purposes. To execute this plan, he proposes to set up captive breeding centres in Jammu, Himachal Pradesh and in certain areas of Uttaranchal. Musk, an aromatic secretion from the male Himalayan …
Theirs is no romantic tale of the desert. Rather the plight of camel herders of Rajasthan today is that of an endless struggle for survival. Time was when Virma Ram proudly watched his herd of camels stretch in an endless line along the dusty horizon. Today, his gaze has turned …
Acting on the petition filed by All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) professors, the Delhi High Court has stayed the directions of the Committee for Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals (CPCSEA) to close down the laboratory of AIIMS. The petitioners challenged the provisions of the …
Early morning twitter is music to ears. But soon this melody may turn into a requiem with the bird community slowly being driven out of its natural surroundings. Constant human encroachment on the forest cover is forcing these avian creatures to abandon their homes and explore alternate sites for shelter …
with an aim to save vultures from extinction, a novel programme to breed these birds has been jointly launched by the State Wildlife Preservation Department, Haryana and Bombay Natural History Society (bnhs) at Bir hunting ground near Pinjore. Haryana Chief Wildlife Warden R D Jakati said quite a number of …
the Olive Ridley satellite telemetry experiment of the Wildlife Institute of India (wii) has failed, with signals not being received from any of the four turtles involved. The experiment was launched in the last week of August 2001, to unravel the mystery surrounding the whereabouts of Olive Ridleys that come …
The government of the state of Jammu and Kashmir (j & k) is in a fix on the issue of trade in shahtoosh, high-quality wool from the neck-hair of the endangered Tibetan antelope, known as chiru. On May 1, 2000, the High Court of j & k had ruled that …
A revised law of the Thailand government banning the use of fishing gear during the peak breeding season cannot be enforced due to strong opposition from commercial fisherfolk, stated Dhammarong Prakobboon, the country's fisheries department chief. Studies by the department indicate that a ban on the use of fishing gear …
" what is the big fuss about 12 tigers dying?" This insensitive statement of A P Singh, Orissa's environment and forest minister reflects and adequately sums up the attitude of the bureaucracy towards wildlife in the country. With the authorities displaying such a total lack of concern for the animals …
the lion-tailed macaque (Macaca silenus) enjoys a unique place among the Indian non-human primates. But it may not enjoy this distinction for long as it has been placed very high on the endangered species list in the World Conservation Union (IUCN) Red Data Book. The international concern about its conservation …
nandankanan, immortalised as a symbol of life and love in Oriya literature and movie songs, stinks of death. On July 5th, this zoological park, situated on the outskirts of Bhubaneshwar, Orissa, became the cremation site for 12 Royal Bengal tigers, which died after contracting tripanosomiasis , a parasitic infection. The …
