Wildlife

Talking about the insufficient coverage of wildlife issues in the news media is akin to flogging a dead horse. Certainly in conservationist circles. Conservationists never mince words about what they think of the media per se. Having worked on both sides of this divide, with both wildlife organisations as well as in the news media, I feel conservationists too should start owning up to their faults. A journalist who reports or writes about wildlife faces a number of problems, apart from the well...

The clearance of 40 projects by the National Board for Wildlife in a matter of three hours may or may not mean something. What's more interesting and actually of more environmental significance are the voices of reason that went unheard in the bargain. The first concerned the diversion of 7.2871 ha of forest land for construction of a ropeway from Bhavnath Taleti to Ambaji Temple in Girnar Wildlife Sanctuary by Usha Breco Ltd, Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The Chairman of the Standing Committee of the...

In August last year, India’s beleaguered conservationists found something to cheer about after the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) announced that the elephant would now be declared the country’s National Heritage Animal. Whatever that meant. Minister Jairam Ramesh also declared emphatically that the ministry would constitute a National Elephant Conservation Authority (NECA) with the same degree of visibility, importance and criticality as accorded to the National Tiger...

A tiny bird that weighs less than 100 grams has completed a 27,000 km round trip migration for the second time. This is the first time a wader has been tracked with a geolocator on its complete migration in successive years. The bird in question was a ruddy turnstone ( Arenaria interpres), a small wader weighing less than 100 grams which spends the (austral) summer months on many of the beaches around Australia. They are one of the family of waders that migrate huge distances to Siberia in...

The tiger reserves of Asia could support more than 10,000 wild tigers – three times the current number – if they are managed as largescale landscapes that allow for connectivity between core breeding sites, a new paper from some of the world’s leading conservation scientists finds. The paper is the first assessment of the political commitment made by all 13 tiger range countries at November’s historic tiger summit to double the tiger population across Asia by 2022. “A Landscape-Based...

A four-member UNESCO-IUCN monitoring team is visiting Manas National Park in Assam for an on-the-spot assessment if the "danger" tag attached to the World Heritage Site should be removed. The outcome of the five-day visit will play an important role at the 35th World Heritage Committee meeting in Bahrain during June when the issue will be discussed. The last time that a UNESCO team visited Manas was in 2008. Manas National Park is India’s only World Heritage Site on the Danger List. It was...

It's an attractive, furry, and adorable creature. Ironically and unfortunately, that is what makes the red panda a vulnerable species. It is not critically endangered yet, but the potential threat posed to it is immense. TRAFFIC, the international wildlife trade monitoring network, has just released a report Sikkim—under the sign of the red panda that documents the potential threats posed to this mammal, described as the "most handsome mammal on Earth" by Frederic Cuvier, who is credited to have...

The Union Ministry of Environment and Forests has released a list of species that are Critically Endangered. Mentioned in the list are seven species of birds, one mammal and four amphibians/reptiles. There is also a sub-list of 22 species which are not endemic to India, but are Critically Endangered here. Conservation efforts often focus on large and charismatic animals such as the tiger and the elephant that are undoubtedly in urgent need of protection. However, there are a host of species that...

This is bad news for males. Female boa constrictors can produce babies without mating. Scientists have found that the babies produced from this asexual reproduction have attributes previously believed to be impossible. Males are not needed anymore. This is the first time that asexual reproduction, known in scientific terms as parthenogenesis, has been attributed to boa constrictors, according to scientists from the North Carolina State University (NCSU). They have published their findings online...

A dying mountain bear held captive at a cafe in Azerbaijan was forced to drink Coca-Cola for the amusement of customers. It died shortly, and was replaced by another bear. The incident came to light after a video of the cruel incident was released by Daryl Willard, a British sports coach who was working in the former Soviet republic. The pictures were taken last month in the city of Gabala. Willard told The Sun: "People cheered and shouted as they watched the starving bear drink from the cola...