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 …
MONEY grows on trees, especially teak trees. This concept made headlines in the early 1990s in India. The idea was to get people to invest in teak trees, which would be harvested in 20 years. The profit that would accrue from the harvested tree would then be shared with the …
IN THE last few years, scientists have come up with a novel method to fight pollution called bioremediation, or using biological means to clean up polluted lands and water bodies. It usually involves plants that have been geneticaily-modified to absorb a certain pollutant. Though still in its infancy, bioremediation can …
A TENTH of the world's known tree species face extinction, according to a recently published global survey called the "World List of Threatened Trees". The three-year survey found that more than 8,750 of the 80,000-100,000 identified tree species are on the brink of extinction. This is mainly due to the …
one area of research that has seen tremendous progress over the last few years is phytoremediation, or the use of certain plants to clean up toxic chemicals and elements. To give us a cleaner world, scientists are unleashing the amazing gene genie on these plants, genetically modifying them to fight …
DOES money grow on trees? The plantation companies' advertising blitz had the investors believe that it really does. But that, as an investigating committee of the ministry of environment and forests (MEF) found out recently, is very far from the truth: a huge gulf exists between the "real" profit figures …
The investigation by the committee revealed several surprises, one of which is that in a few cases, even the state governments approved of these companies' tactics. Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh, for instance, liberalised their land ceiling acts in the mid-90s to attract plantation companies. The Madhya Pradesh land ceiling amendments …
deodar defoliator ( Ectropis deodarae ), a forest pest has affected about one lakh cedar trees in Naganalli and Mihani ranges of Theog forest division of Shimla district, Himachal Pradesh ( hp ). An area of 60 hectares (ha) of cedar forests in Naganalli and 40 ha in Mihani had …
a microchip is helping people in Japan to deal with a crime wave that has hit the ancient Japanese art of bonsai. Bonsai is a Japanese practice of cultivating artificially dwarfed plants or small trees. Thieves have been stealing beautiful miniature trees that are very costly and take many years …
setting out on the Kudur-Hulikal road in Karnataka one is greeted by a lush canopy overhead formed by banyan trees on either side of the highway: the handiwork of a unique couple hailing from Hulikal village in Bangalore (rural) district. Thimmakka and her late husband Bikkalu Chikkaiah laboured over these …
The pilferage of teak trees in the reserve forests under Maulvibazar range and shed trees in various tea gardens in Bangladesh has caused ecological imbalance in the region. Though the district administration has filed more than 300 cases against nearly 500 offenders, the efforts to stop the felling of teak-trees …
bioindicators such as trees take note of many changes in the environment and will thus soon become valuable recorders of contamination, very convenient for environmental monitoring, reports D K Pandey et al of the Forest Research Institute, Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh. Tree bark remains in the environment for many years. …
• Plants control air pollution by taking in carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) from the atmosphere and releasing oxygen. A peepal tree with a crown spread of 162 sq km releases 1,712 kg of oxygen and absorbs 2,252 kg of CO 2 per hour.• Trees not only mechanically stop smoke …
DEFORESTATION in Pakistan has increased manifold in recent years. Over-grazing, taking over of forest land for cultivation and the increased demand for timber, have led to an increase in logging operations, which has resulted in the forest cover decreasing from 14 per cent to 5.2 per cent of the total …
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ornl) researchers in the US have theorised that mercury in soil gas is absorbed by plants when the plants ' mercury level is low. But when their mercury level rises and the level present in the air decreases, plants release some of their mercury into the …
Of late, the public and the private sectors saw a great deal of activism by the Supreme Court (SC) and high courts (HC). The injunctions were aimed at making procedural operations transparent and curbing environmental degradation. Some of the recent court orders are enlisted below: • Following an SC ruling …
Trees contaminated by radioactivity from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster are to be burnt to produce electricity. Scientists from the us and Belarus are planning to construct a power plant fueled by timber from around the crippled reactor. Larry Baxter, a chemical engineer working in the area claims that more than …
Spirogyra along with another algal species Cladophora, disrupts normal aquatic life and forces municipalities to spend enormous sums on declogging water bodies (Frontiers -Newsletter of the National Science Foundation. December. 1995). R Jan Stevenson of the University of Louisville in Kentucky. US. has reiterated the wisdom of following nature's ways. …
YET another instance of mindless destruction of forests: a pine forest, specially grown at a cost of Rs 10 lakh a decade ago, will be razed to make way for a VIP, complex close to the Raj Bhawan in Gangtok, Sikkim. More than 1,150 conifers, which formed a botanical garden …
IN KILLUKULAVAIPATTI village in the drought prone Pudukottai district of Tamil Nadu, M Thangappa - a 45 -year old marginal farmer - earns his livelihood from the thorny, bushy plant, Prosopis juliflora, popularly called Kattukaruvel. Like him, many subsistence farmers and landless labourers use juliflora not only as fuelwood, but …
