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wildlife

Conflict/Dispossession

Kaziranga: The park that shoots people to protect rhinos

18th February 2017

In Kaziranga national park, rangers shoot people to protect rhinos. The park features in a new BBC investigation, which highlights some of the conflicts that characterise contemporary conservation, as the need to protect endangered species comes into contact with the lives and rights of people who live in and around the increasingly threatened national parks….

Conflict/Dispossession

The global road-building explosion is shattering nature

25th January 2017

Bill Laurance writes: An unprecedented spate of road building is happening now, with around 25 million kilometres of new paved roads expected by 2050. An ambitious new study that mapped all roads globally has found that roads have split the Earth’s land surface into 600,000 fragments, most of them too tiny to support significant wildlife….

Bramble Cay melomys’ is the first recorded extinction of a mammal due to human-caused climate change

Conserve/Resist

Paul Ehrlich: Radical overhaul needed to halt earth’s sixth great extinction

18th November 2016

Growing numbers of scientists have asserted that our planet might soon see a sixth massive extinction— driven by the escalating impacts of humanity. Others, such as the Swedish economist Bjørn Lomborg, have characterised such claims as ill-informed. We argue that the jury is in and the debate is over: Earth’s sixth great extinction has arrived….

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….

Actress Dia Mirza with forest rangers at the Rajaji National Park, Uttarakhand

Conserve/Resist

Dia Mirza on the Uttarakhand fires and how we fail our forests

11th October 2016

Dia Mirza writes: We cannot call this devastation of ecology and livelihoods ‘natural calamities’ anymore; it’s evident that there is a nexus of powerful people who are ignorant to the ramifications of their idea of “development” and “progress” that is gutting our forests, polluting our rivers and leading many states to a state of drought….

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….

Representational pic

ALTERNATIVES

The Chizami model of development

24th July 2016

Ananda Banerjee reports: Chizami village, located in Phek district of eastern Nagaland, has 600 households with a population of 3,000. Chizami is considered a model village for the quiet revolution it has led in the past decade in terms of socioeconomic reforms and environment protection. The village council imposes strict fines on those violating norms….

Anupam Nath/Associated Press

Conflict/Dispossession

Adivasi boy shot at by guards of ‘shoot-first’ Kaziranga national park

22nd July 2016

The Ecologist magazine reports: A 7-year old boy has been injured after getting shot by park guards in Assam’s Kaziranga national park, which operates a strict ‘shoot first’ policy. In the last nine years, an estimated 62 people have been shot dead by Kaziranga guards, four of whom were ironically arrested for alleged rhino poaching recently….

Conserve/Resist

The diversity of life across much of Earth has plunged below ‘safe’ levels

15th July 2016

Chris Mooney reports: In an ambitious study representing the latest merger between big data approaches and the quest to conserve the planet, scientists have found that across a majority of the Earth’s land surface, the abundance or overall number of animals and plants of different species has fallen below a “safe” level identified by biologists….

Elephants raiding a banana plantation near Bannerghatta, Karnataka

Nishanth Srinivasaiah

Conflict/Dispossession

The culling of wild animals herald future water wars in India

10th July 2016

Peter Smetacek writes: Culling wild animals that have come to depend on agriculture for sustenance is only a short-term measure. This was portrayed as a man-animal conflict rather than what it actually is: the conversion of our forests from rich storehouses of bio-diversity to green deserts by a combination of mismanagement, political expediency and ignorance….

Development/Growth

It’s raining big cats on dogged, destructive development

23rd June 2016

Irfan Syed writes: After it finished reclaiming land from water and then claiming the air (high-rises), the city of Mumbai, being a financial, marketing, and glamour capital and therefore having ceaseless immigration, has been devouring land, like a super-starved T-Rex. After eating up most of legit land, it’s been turning its attention to… the forest….

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….

The endangered white rhinoceros

Conserve/Resist

The illegal wildlife trade and the business of ecocide

16th June 2016

Colin Todhunter writes: Without addressing the impacts and nature of corporate greed and a wholly corrupt neoliberal capitalism that privileges corporations and profit ahead of people and conservation, regardless of any success in the area of the trafficking of wild animals or plants, much of the world’s wildlife and biodiversity will remain under serious threat….

Representative pic

Conserve/Resist

Norway becomes world’s first country to ban deforestation

9th June 2016

EcoWatch reports: Norway has become the first country to ban deforestation. The Norwegian Parliament pledged May 26 that the government’s public procurement policy will be deforestation-free. Any product that contributes to deforestation won’t be used in the Scandinavian country. Norway’s action plan also includes a requires the government to exercise due care in biodiversity protection….

Culture/Cognition

Who is the dumb primate, really?

8th June 2016

Aseem Shrivastava writes: A species that endangers other species endangers itself. This simple lesson in interdependence is the first principle of ecology, a commonsensical science of such far-reaching and enduring contemporary significance as to merit a compulsory education for all humans; for nothing is more perilous for human destiny today than ecological illiteracy and myopia….

Development/Growth

Spotlight: Prakash Javadekar@2 years of Modi Government

21st May 2016

India’s environment minister Prakash Javadekar has been constantly in news, and not always for the right reasons. Under fire for diluting environmental protection mechanisms, critics have in the past labelled him ‘minister for environmental clearances’ for favouring industry over the environment. As the Narendra Modi government completes two years, here’s a look at Javadekar’s chequered record….

ALTERNATIVES

How India’s forests have been lost in translation – in plantations

17th May 2016

Peter Smetacek writes: The question, naturally, is: What are we hoping to achieve by the process of planting forests? Because we don’t have a clear answer, it is no surprise that there is not a single success story in all the “watershed management” and “afforestation” drives that the public has paid for throughout the country….

Conflict/Dispossession

Modi government has launched a silent war on the environment

12th May 2016

Nayantara Narayanan reports: The UPA government left behind a legacy of weakened safeguards for India’s environment, forests and forest-dwelling people. The Narendra Modi government has lost no time in weakening them further. The process has been so accelerated that journalists have struggled to keep pace with them. Here is a look at seven reported changes….