Page 92 - Environment
After a year's search, tiger spotted in South Goa national park
In a development which has brought cheer to Goa wildlife authorities, a tiger has been spotted in the state's only national park in South Goa, an official statement said on Saturday.
Rain water harvesting must for commercial units in rural KTKA:
The Karnataka government is mulling over making it compulsory for commercial buildings in rural areas to implement rain water harvesting as part of its effort to build a water secure future for the state, Rural Development Minister Krishna Byre Gowda said Saturday. "Commercial buildings in rural Karnataka like factories, warehouses, buildings, we are trying to make rainwater harvesting compulsory for them. We are examining it legally also. We will issue a circular regarding this to get it implemented compulsorily," Gowda said. Currently such mandate making rain water harvesting compulsory exist for the areas that come under urban local bodies and not for rural parts. Referring to buildings constructed by Panchayat Raj Engineering divisions like schools, colleges, angavadi buildings, hospital buildings, Gowda said "We are changing the model estimates, making it mandatory to include rain water recharge in the building estimate, and an order to this effect will be issued ..
Env Min appointed panel clears 3 housing projects in Delhi as trees to be translocated
A government-appointed expert panel has recommended for environmental clearance three redevelopment projects in South Delhi, which have been lurking over the proposal to fell a large number of trees, after they were revised to translocate trees instead of cutting them. The expert appraisal committee (EAC) of the ministry of environment, forests and climate change (MOEFCC) has cleared the revised housing projects in Sarojini Nagar, Netaji Nagar and Kasturba Nagar colonies. According to the revised plans of these colonies, trees will be translocated/ transplanted instead of being cut, which the environmentalists feel will be a "failure". In Sarojini Nagar, out of 11,913 trees, 3,500 trees will be translocated and the rest will be retained at the project site. In Netaji Nagar, of the 3,906 proposed trees to be felled, 1,600 are to be translocated and the rest retained. In Kasturba Nagar, 405 will be translocated, and 798 retained, as per the EAC meeting minutes. The EAC noted that due to
Maharashtra not releasing water to Karnataka as promised: DK Shivakumar
As Karnataka reels under drought, state Water Resource Minister DK Shivakumar on Saturday alleged that Maharashtra was not releasing water to Krishna river despite an agreement reached between the two states."We requested Maharastra government to release water as they agreed after our continuous request, but now the government is not ready to release water to Krishna river," Shivakumar said.The minister informed that the Karnataka government will release one thousand million cubics (TMC) of water to help the people deal with the crisis.He said, "For the benefit of the farmers and people of Kagwad and Athani, we are releasing last one TMC live storage."The state government has, so far, declared more than 3,000 regions to be highly affected by drinking water scarcity.According to the Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, 138 out of a total of 176 talukas in Karnataka have a low groundwater level. Bagepalli, Chikkaballapura, Sidlaghatta, Bangarpet and Kolar are among the ...
UN chief's call to 'save the Pacific to save the world'
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was vital "to save the Pacific to save the world" as he wrapped up his brief South Pacific tour in Vanuatu on Saturday. Guterres has spent the past week in the region pushing for urgent action ahead of a UN summit in September billed as a last chance to prevent irreversible climate change. According to the UN, Vanuatu is the world's most at-risk country from natural hazards, but Guterres said it was also "leading the way" with is resilience. At a joint press conference with Vanuatu's Prime Minister Charlot Salwai, Guterres praised the way the country had bounced back from the catastrophic Cyclone Pam which lashed the archipelago in 2015. It claimed at least 15 lives, flattened villages and impacted nearly half the 300,000 population. "It is clear that the Pacific is on the frontline of climate change even though they don't contribute to climate change," Guterres told AFP, referring to low-lying Pacific islands which are threatened by ...
Dry for 20 years, experts seek reforestation to revive Badkhal lake (Delhi's Water Bodies-1)
Badkhal lake in Faridabad, which was once a popular tourist gateway for the people of the national capital, has turned into a barren piece of land for the past 20 years thanks to illegal quarrying and mining in the area.
Tiger presence recorded at Goa national park
Presence of a tiger at the Bhagwan Mahaveer National Park in south Goa has been confirmed for the first time by Forest department. The movement of a tiger was recorded through camera trapping method on May 14, a senior official said Saturday. Forest officials have been trying to record the presence of the elusive big cat since the last one year. "As a part of scientific management of the National Park, it was decided to record presence of mammalian diversity of Bhagwan Mahaveer National Park. Field staff were sensitised for carrying out observation and recording indirect evidences of wildlife during there routine field visit, based on which the strategic camera trapping was conducted," he told PTI. He said, "the presence of a tiger was recorded for the first time on May 14. According to the official, the presence of the striped tiger indicates that the level of protection, the quality of wildlife habitat and wildlife management practices in the National Park, which is ...
A quarter of West Antarctic ice now unstable: Study
Antarctica's ice sheet has thinned by up to 122 metres in places, with the most rapid changes occurring in West Antarctica where ocean melting has triggered glacier imbalance, scientists say. The UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) tracked changes in snow and ice cover across the continent, by combining 25 years of European Space Agency satellite altimeter measurements and a model of the regional climate. Researchers said this means that the affected glaciers are unstable as they are losing more mass through melting and iceberg calving than they are gaining through snowfall. They found that the pattern of glacier thinning has not been static. Since 1992, the thinning has spread across 24 per cent of West Antarctica and over the majority of its largest ice streams -- the Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers -- which are now losing ice five times faster than they were at the start of the survey. The study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, used over ...
Australians vote to elect PM in climate-dominated election
Australians on Saturday voted to elect their next parliament and prime minister, in what has been widely referred to as the climate-change election, with the first exit poll showing a victory for the opposition Labor Party. After five weeks long election campaigning across the country, around 16 million Australians swarmed to the polling booths across the country to elect the nation's prime minister. A Nine-Galaxy poll released shortly before the voting stations closed in the east of the country showed a victory for the centre-left Labor party and Liberal Party-led coalition losing its bid for a third three-year term. The poll showed the Labor winning as many as 82 seats in the 151-member House of Representatives, beating the governing Liberal coalition. To win a majority in the House of Representatives, either major party will need 77 seats. The Coalition currently holds 73 seats, while Labor has 72. Some 16.5 million Australians were enrolled to vote on Saturday, with more than 4.7 .
Odisha govt prepares massive plantation drive
Odisha government has prepared a massive planatation drive to create a green barricade along the coast as more than 20 lakh trees were destroyed in cyclone Fani that pounded the state at a wind speed of about 200 kmph, officials said Saturday. The Rs 188 crore five-year plan aims to create a green barricade along the coast and generate green cover in cyclone hit Puri, Bhubaneswar and Cuttack. The plan was approved at a high-level meeting held here under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary AP Padhi on Friday, they said. As per the plan, about 130.5 lakh trees will be planted in 2019-20. While 80.5 lakh trees will be planted by the Forest department itself, another 50 lakh saplings will be distributed among various educational institutions, industrial estates and other private land holders for plantation in their respective areas. Asking officials to take plantation drive in a mission mode, the chief secretary suggested to involve people, panchayats and civil societies ..
J-K admin orders proper maintenance of Jammu-Srinagar highway
Concerned over frequent closure of the Jammu-Srinagar national highway, authorities have directed the concerned agencies to ensure its proper maintenance so that transportation as well as tourism activities are not hampered, officials said on Saturday. Travelling on the 270-km highway, the only all weather road linking Kashmir with rest of the country, had turned into a nightmare for the commuters in view of the frequent occurrence of landslides between Ramban and Banihal stretch. Many have blamed the alleged poor planning and slow pace of the ongoing four-laning of the highway. An official spokesperson on Saturday said that Divisional Commissioner, Jammu, Sanjeev Verma had visited Ramban on Friday to review the ongoing highway widening and railway projects besides taking stock of arrangements for the Amarnath Yatra which is scheduled to begin in south Kashmir from July 1. "Verma discussed at a high level meeting, the issue of frequent blockage of highway due to landslides and long ...
State of Economy-IV: Farm distress among major challanges for new government
Once the high-voltage Lok Sabha polls come to an end, the new government will have a major challenge of getting rural economy back on the track, especially, in the wake of forecast of delayed, below normal monsoon this year with chances of drought parts of the country.
Coolers protect idols from heat at this Ayodhya temple
Coolers have been installed at a temple in Ayodhya to ensure that idols of deities do not get affected by the soaring temperatures here.The priest at Shri Sitaram temple, Rampriya Sharan Das Ji Maharaj, says they do whatever is needed to save the idols from heat."Temperature is high, so we have arranged coolers for the Gods. We bathe them with rose water, adorn them with cotton clothes, and offer them cool water," he said."Instead of 'deep aarti', we perform 'sheetal aarti' during summers," said the priest.The temperature in the temple town has touched 40 degrees and is likely to increase in the coming days.
In Leh, tree plantation drive to stem spike in pollution
To address increasing air pollution caused due to deforestation in the rugged terrain of Leh, local authorities are conducting a tree plantation drive."Hill Council has made a road map to save the environment by planting more trees on barren land and also stressed on the need of water conservation," said Hill Council Chief Executive Councillor Dr Sonam Dawa.Locals believe that since Leh is blessed with the suitable climatic conditions to grow trees like apple, apricot, poplar, willow and walnut they can clean the city's air by planting more of these shrubs."We have different types of apple trees. Due to the good weather conditions, the apple growth is very good in our village. Since the last few years, we have started to grow different types of vegetables also. Our people are trying to grow more and more trees and vegetables in the village," said of the local from Pheyvillage, Thubstant Dolma.Explaining the value of planting more trees, TsewangNorboo from Stakna village said, "We ...
People recycle more if they know what recyclable waste becomes: Study
In order to increase plastic recycling rates, we need to change the conversation from 'where does plastic go' to 'what does plastic create', as a new study has observed that consumers recycle more when they think about what such plastic waste can be transformed into.According to the study published in the Journal of Marketing, sustainability programs around the world are fast becoming a staple of the private sector. However, consumers' recycling habits have not kept pace. In fact, only 25.8 per cent of waste was recycled in the United States and only 13 per cent of municipal solid waste was recycled globally in 2015.The research team conducted six studies in which participants were asked to dispose of some scratch paper. Participants who saw paper being transformed into the same product or a different product recycled more than participants who saw a generic recycling message not involving product transformation.The second study showed that participants who viewed advertisements for ..
Lion cub found dead in Tulsishyam range of Guj's Gir forest
The dismembered body of a lion cub was found in the Tulsishyam Range of Gujarat's Gir, D T Vasavada, Chief Conservator of Forests, Junagadh Wildlife Circle said Friday. He said pug marks of lions were found on the spot and it appears the cub, around 4-5 months old, was killed in a territorial fight, he added. With this latest death, as many as five cubs, three lions and two lionesses have been found dead in Gir forest since February. The Gir forest, the last abode of the Asiatic lion, is home to around 600 big cats according to the latest estimate by the forest department.
Act on those responsible for dirty water in Vadodara: Guj CM
Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani Friday asked Vadodara civic authorities to take action against errant officials in connection with supply of dirty water in the city's eastern and southern parts for the past few days. Vadodara Municipal Commissioner Ajay Bhadoo suspended a civic engineer in this connection recently and served notices on two private firms tasked with maintaining the civic body's filtration plant. Water from Ajwa Lake is treated at the filtration plant before being supplied to the city.
China creates app to recognize Pandas
China has developed an app that allows conservationists to identify individual pandas using facial recognition technology, state-run Xinhua news agency reported Friday. Researchers have also built a database with over 120,000 images and 10,000 video clips of giant pandas that would allow them to correctly identify individual animals. "The app and database will help us gather more precise and well-rounded data on the population, distribution, ages, gender ratio, birth and deaths of wild pandas, who live in deep mountains and are hard to track," Chen Peng, a researcher at the China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Pandas, told Xinhua. China last year also announced plans to create a bastion for giant pandas three times the size of Yellowstone National Park to link up and encourage breeding among existing wild populations of the notoriously slow-reproducing animal, state media reported. At least 10 billion yuan (USD 1.6 billion) had been budgeted for the Giant Panda National ...
No green nod required for construction on 20000-50000 sq metre area: Env Min's new EIA notification
Construction in areas between 20,000-50,000 square metres will not require environment clearance from the government anymore, the Centre has said in its modified notification on the environment impact assessment (EIA). The notification, recently issued by the Ministry of Environment, states that it has decided to "re-engineer" EIA rules based on amendments and the experience over the years in its implementation. "As the principal notification has undergone substantial changes over the years, the Ministry has decided to re-engineer the entire notification in line with the amendments issued...and circulars issued from time to time and experience gained over the years in implementation of the EIA notification," it said. Under the new notification, the process of clearances granted for sand mining and construction activities have been eased out, a decision that has not gone down well with environmental activists who claim that the EIA notification compromises public hearings. The draft ...
Electric cars can help you live longer
Migration from polluting vehicles that burn fossil fuels to electric vehicles, ideally using electricity generated sustainably could significantly reduce the incidence of cardiopulmonary illness due to air pollution, says a study.