conservation Archives - Page 3 of 3

Education/Awareness

Watch: How the return of wolves rejuvenated an entire ecosystem

6th November 2016

When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. after being absent nearly 70 years, the most remarkable occurrence of a “trophic cascade” – a single change in a food chain that transforms an entire ecosystem. How exactly did the wolves change the river? Author and environmentalist George Monbiot explains in this video….

The White Rhino - one of many endangered large animals

Conserve/Resist

Report: World on track to lose two-thirds of wild animals by 2020

2nd November 2016

The Guardian reports: The number of wild animals on Earth is set to fall by two-thirds by 2020, which a new report attributes to an ongoing mass extinction. The analysis, the most comprehensive to date, indicates that animal populations plummeted by 58% between 1970 and 2012, with losses on track to reach 67% by 2020….

The Bramble Cay melomys is the first mammal recorded extinct due to climate change.

Conserve/Resist

Ecologists are fiddling while our natural heritage burns, says Harvard scientist

21st October 2016

Aaron M. Ellison writes in Nature: Better data will not save elephants, rhinos or any other species. Countless individuals, institutions, governments, and multinational and non-governmental organizations have been collecting, assimilating and organizing such data for decades, essentially fiddling while our biological heritage burns… I suggest three crucial actions that scientists can take, beginning right now….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Report: Soaring ocean temperature is ‘greatest hidden challenge of our generation’

9th September 2016

The Guardian reports: The oceans have already sucked up an enormous amount of heat due to escalating greenhouse gas emissions, affecting marine species from microbes to whales, according to a report involving the work of 80 scientists from a dozen countries. The profound changes underway in the oceans are starting to impact people, it states….

The White Rhino - one of many endangered large animals

Conserve/Resist

Warning from 40 top scientists: Tigers, elephants may go extinct by 2100

16th August 2016

40 scientists from across the world have recently announced that megafauna – large animals like elephants, lions, tigers, cheetahs, rhinoceroses – will not survive much longer if we don’t act fast. Examining population trends, the scientists said that human activities like deforestation and hunting can wipe out their populations by the end of this century….

Elephants raiding a banana plantation near Bannerghatta, Karnataka

Nishanth Srinivasaiah

Conflict/Dispossession

Debate: Is the ongoing culling of wild animals necessary?

17th June 2016

The Centre has endorsed various states’ move to list wild animals – elephants in Bengal, monkeys in Uttarakhand, peacocks in Goa and nilgai in Bihar – as ‘vermin’, allowing them to be culled. With human-animal conflict once again in under the lens, we present a selection of articles that examine both sides of the story….

ALTERNATIVES

Bastar: Conservation in the time of conflict

18th May 2016

Madhu Ramnath reports: Unknown to the rest of the country, a small group of adivasis from the forested villages in central Bastar have been busy doing work that would make conservationists proud. People from Sandh Karmari, Kakalgur, Kangoli and nearby villages have been gathering native seeds and raising them in nurseries in fairly large numbers….

ECOCIDE/EXTINCTION

Marine parks in India – a case for maritime environmentalism

22nd February 2016

Aarti Sridhar writes: It is in the ordinary everyday life of fishers and in the political strategies of their leaders that one finds the outlines of a new kind of environmentalism which’s fluid and defies water-tight categorisations. This ethic suggests that it is futile to remain wholly preservationist or utilitarian, or entirely biocentric or anthropocentric….

CLIMATE CRISIS

News update

20th October 2015

‘Capitalism is Mother Earth’s Cancer’: World People’s Summit Issues 12 Demands Common Dreams Decrying capitalism as a “threat to life,” an estimated 7,000 environmentalists, farmers, and Indigenous activists from 40 countries convened in the Bolivian town of Tiquipaya for this weekend’s World People’s Conference on Climate Change, aiming to elevate the demands of social movements…

CLIMATE CRISIS

Long reads: a selection of articles

25th September 2015

The Colonial Origins of Conservation: The Disturbing History Behind US National Parks Stephen Corry, Truthout Conservation’s achievements don’t alter the fact that it’s rooted in two serious and related mistakes. The first is that it conserves “wildernesses,” which are imagined to be shaped only by nature. The second is that it believes in a hierarchy,…

ENERGY

Peak oil and wildlife

10th October 2013

By T. Vjayendra and Shashank Srinivasan ABSTRACT Wildlife across the world is endangered due to habitat loss caused as a by-product of modern human society in the past 200 years. Most attempts at conservation have been unsuccessful in the face of the consumerist juggernaut because they are being carried out without questioning industrial society or…