Reply by Army in OA No 782 of 2023 (News item titled Forest Department sends notice to Army HQ for tree offences, which appeared in The Times of India dated 18/12/2023). The report of December 23, 2024 was uploaded to the NGT site on April 17, 2025. The affidavit was …
"Help save rhinos,' a poster appealed. A photograph of a severely-bloodied rhino loomed out of it. We were at Jakhalbanda, a regular halt for buses taking visitors to the Kaziranga National Park. It was peak tourist season, visitors were there in droves but the atmosphere seemed tense. I did not …
Gir maybe the last abode of the Asiatic lion, but the authorities couldn't care less. Even after reports that most of the 359 lions reported in the last census in Gir sanctuary were straying out and spotted in Dhari and its surrounding areas, there is no full-time deputy conservator of …
Forests officers writing about conservation issues is nothing unusual. However, rarely does a forest officer write ethnographical accounts. C K Karunakaran, former chief conservator of forests, Kerala, has done just that. Adivasikalude lokam vanavasikal seeks to correct some popular misconceptions about tribal people. The book analyses the lifestyles of 21 …
The Union ministry of environment and forests wants media-savvy forest officers. Concerned at the "negative coverage' of forest, wildlife and environment-related issues, it organised a training programme for Indian Forest Service officers at Bhubaneswar in the second week of September. Thirty officers from 17 states underwent a five-day course at …
all encroachments in the eco-sensitive zone around the Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan will be removed following a court order. The encroachments include residences, hotels and other commercial establishments. The Jaipur bench of the High Court of Rajasthan gave the verdict on May 25: "All encroachments in the eco-sensitive zone …
Ahad Miah has come a long way from his tree felling days. He is now one of the custodians of the Lauachhara protected forest, working shoulder to shoulder with government appointed forest guards. "Now we can sleep in peace. The police and forest gaurds are not after us,' says the …
with the killing of three forest officials in Orissa's Kandhar forests in Dhenkanal district triggering panic over the past fortnight, forest officials in the state are queuing up for voluntary retirement from their services. The forest officials were reportedly killed by Naxals in the last week of January. The Naxals …
A forest officer "Untouchability has not been eradicated from the country. There still exist classes of people who have to perform chores for their lords with unquestioning servility. Any attempt at protesting means a long exile in jungles with very little facilities for families of the banished,' says a forest …
One of the common engagements that the public has with wildlife is reading about wildlife or ecological research in newspapers and magazines. Exploration of remote areas, the discovery of new species, and testing of new hypotheses help to promote the mindset required for supporting conservation. While a good deal of …
The case of the effort to build a small dam in Bhulaveda in Paschim Midnapur district of West Bengal shows that in struggles between government agencies and local self-government, the losers are often the villagers themselves.
on january 18-19, 2006, the administration and the municipal authorities of Sawai Madhopur district in Rajasthan demolished 25 illegal properties around the Ranthambore national park. These properties had violated the Rajasthan Land Revenue Act, 1956. The structures razed included Anokhi, a shop run on the premises of Fateh Singh Rathore, …
thirty-three-year-old Prahlad Goala, a Golaghat-based reporter, was killed on January 6, 2006, at Thuramukh near Nambar reserve forest, around 300 km east of Guwahati. A car knocked down Prahlad while he was returning home on his motorcycle. A local scribe later spotted his body. The body showed many wounds, probably …
The main objective of this study in Kaziranga National Park (Assam) was two fold: 1) Review of protection strategies and suggestion to enhance their effectiveness and 2) Development of a comprehensive capacity building plan for frontline staff.
Forest officials at the Melghat tiger reserve (mtr) have a strange predicament: the management plan of this 1,676.93 square kilometre (sq km) reserve in Maharashtra’s Amravati district cannot be executed, even though the state’s chief wildlife warden gave it his assent way back in November 2003. The plan waxes eloquent …
In 1985, 1,315.65 sq km of the mtr was notified as a sanctuary and people in the 61 villages within this protected area lost all their traditional rights over forests. After the 1994 mua notification, 22 villages were left within the sanctuary. In 2001-2002, three of them
On April 4, 2005, Sunda Bawariya and his son Kailash, who live on the fringes of Mundawara village at Viratnagar in Rajasthan's Jaipur district, were beaten up and arrested by a group of forest guards, officials and two female police personnel for tiger poaching. Sunda's wife Dholi alleges the attackers …
In September 2004, a group of students from the Wildlife Institute of India (wii), Dehradun, went to the Sariska Tiger Reserve of Rajasthan for training. Excited about their work, they painstakingly trekked through the hilly 866 square kilometres (sq km) reserve. They couldn't spot a single tiger. Alarmed, they informed …
Madhya Pradesh started its Joint Forest Management (jfm) programme in the early 1990s. Its stated intentions were quite noble: village-level institutions were to be involved in forest management; elaborate benefit sharing mechanisms were outlined; non-governmental organisations (ngos) were identified to provide an interface between forest departments and village communities. These …
the Deputy Conservator of Forest (dcf) of Mysore's Hunsur Wildlife Division, A M Annaiah, has been held responsible "for causing loss to the public exchequer to the tune of Rs 6.14 crore'. The Karnataka Lokayukta, Justice N Venkatachala, has recommended disciplinary action against him. Even as environmentalists point out they …
Corruption charges are flying thick and fast against Kerala forest minister K Sudhakaran and the state forest department (fd). The opposition Left Democratic Front (ldf) has accused Sudhakaran of accepting bribes worth Rs 5 crore in a softwood auction involving the now defunct Mavoor unit of Grasim Industries Limited (gil). …
