Judgment of the Supreme Court in the matter of In Re: Zudpi Jungle Lands. A batch of applications involved a peculiar issue concerning the situation prevailing in the six districts of eastern Vidarbha region namely Nagpur, Wardha, Bhandara, Gondia, Chandrapur and Gadchiroli. The issue pertains to the status of the …
Giyasilal Saini is a marginal farmer who has market savvy. It comes from experience. Living in a semi-arid area like Alwar in Rajasthan, he always knew he could not depend on farming alone. So he would keep some goats, like others in village Jaitpura. Then three years ago the pond …
Goats give good returns only as long as fodder is free. Unlike cattle that are fed crop and crop residue, goats and sheep graze in wasteland, common grazing land and forests. In western Rajasthan, where degrading farm land and feed shortage forced people to abandon farming and cattle and turn …
Goat rearing is the poor’s survival response to an ecological crisis. It has turned out to be an economic success. But the goat economy has the potential to precipitate an ecological crisis if grazing is not ensured. Options before India are very few: shrinking grazing ground, restricted forest land and …
Although ecological restoration is widely used to combat environmental degradation, very few studies have evaluated the cost-effectiveness of this approach. We examine the potential impact of forest restoration on the value of multiple ecosystem services across four dryland areas in Latin America, by estimating the net value of ecosystem service …
Today, goats ensure income to five million households in India. But goat rearers face an opportunity and a threat as the demand for goat meat is set to shoot up, while grazing land is shrinking. If India does not secure its pastures, goats might turn from an asset to a …
THE Great Indian Desert, Thar, is expanding, swallowing and degrading about 12,000 hectares of productive land every year. An alarmed Rajasthan government recently asked the state pollution control board to suggest how to arrest the land degradation and soil erosion. The board reviewed about 200 research papers on the impact …
The livestock sector globally is highly dynamic. In developing countries, it is evolving in response to rapidly increasing demand for livestock products. In developed countries, demand for livestock products is stagnating, while many production systems are increasing their efficiency and environmental sustainability. Historical changes in the demand for livestock products …
Sunny Sebastian JAIPUR: Raikas, the community of herders, have sought the application of Forest Rights Act and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity(CBD) in ensuring grazing rights to their animals in the forest land. The monsoon season is a testing time for these livestock keepers who graze large herds of …
If you're a typical westerner, you ate nearly 100 kilograms of meat last year. This was almost certainly the costliest part of your diet, especially in environmental terms. The clamour for people to eat less meat to save the planet is growing ever louder. "Less meat = less heat", proclaimed …
Birmashri Rathore knows exactly how much water to add to milk so that it can still be accepted as milk. As the price of this essential commodity shot up across the country over the past two years, so did the level of dilution in the family’s daily milk. Three years …
Tejpal Mehta, former sarpanch of village Dighariya, is well known all over Thana Gaji tehsil of Rajasthan’s Alwar district because he is among the rare few who possesses 100 milch animals, both indigenous and crossbred. He also owns eight hectares (ha) of land. But that does not seem enough in …
First pulses, now milk. The common household is compelled to give up on its easy sources of protein. This special report by Down to Earth finds that rise in fodder prices, not rise in demand, is pushing up the cost of milk. To read the full story click on the …
The genus Quercus (oak) is a large group of hardwood trees with about 600 species worldwide1. In the Himalayan region, extensive oak forests (35 species) occur between 1500 and 3300 m elevations. Of the various species of oaks, the white oak or banj (Q. leucotrichophora) forms an extensive belt along …
www.pastoralists.org Ecologists recognize that pastoralism represents a sustainable method of utilizing ecosystems such as deserts, steppes and mountains. Continued utilization of the world’s arid lands depends on viable pastoral systems. But pastoralists are under pressure due to a variety of circumstances that include population growth, environmental degradation, unsound development and …
Sangeetha Neeraja SCREAMS of disapproval and disappointment filled the air at Thervoy Kandigai village in Gummidipoondi taluk of Tiruvallur district, as around 1,000 people gathered on Friday to protest the proposed SIPCOT Industrial Park. The protest was registered in a public hearing in their village. The public hearing was organised …
Levels of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide have increased since pre-industrial times, mainly because of agricultural activities. Among these changes it has been reported that livestock grazing substantially increases nitrous oxide emissions from temperate grasslands. New data obtained from year-round monitoring at ten steppe grassland sites in Inner Mongolia, China, …
C Shivakumar | TAMIL NADU is facing acute shortage of green fodder with the degradation and depletion of grazing land. Based on the 2004 livestock census, the animal husbandry department puts the overall deficit of green fodder in 2008-09 at 21.25 per cent. With the production of a large num- …
