Winged guests start arriving at Hirakud reservoir

SAMBALPUR (ODISHA): With the winter setting in, migratory birds from far-flung areas have started arriving at the Hirakud Dam Reservoir in Odisha's Sambalpur district.

"The migratory birds have just started arriving. The number will increase in eight to ten days. We have already spotted nine varieties of migratory birds in the reservoir area," divisional forest officer of Hirakud wildlife division, Manoj V Nair said.

The number of the migratory birds at the Hirakud dam reservoir was 60,806 in the last season. Around 52 kinds of species had arrived last year, a senior official said.

The soothing climate and the clean water of the reservoir attract the birds to the Hirkud reservoir spread over 746 sq km and Debrigarh sanctuary area every year.

The birds start arriving from November mainly from Caspian Sea, Baikal Lake, Aral Sea, Mongolia, Central and South East Asia and Himalaya region.

The birds are spotted in the areas along the Hirakud Reservoir, Lakhanpur, Kamgaon, Rengali, Govindpur and Debrigarh sanctuary area.

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J&K's Nowshera belt to get environment park soon: Minister

JAMMU: An environment park will be set up soon in Nowshera belt of Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district, minister Mian Altaf said here today.

"An environment park will be developed in Nowshera belt. This will serve as a potential tourist attraction and further economic activities," he said.

Detailed discussions were held on various aspects of the project at a meeting presided over by Altaf, the forests and environment minister said.

The minister directed the officers to start work for the project at the earliest.

The meeting also reviewed the progress of construction work of Manigam Park in Kangan constituency, officials said.

The park offers a beautiful view to visitors including the Amarnath pilgrims.

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Polar bears could be extinct in 25 years: Experts

NEW DELHI: For a millennium, the majestic, lily-white polar bear has lorded over the frozen wastes of the Arctic. But if two Russian experts are to be believed, the enigmatic "monarch of the ice" could be extinct in 25 years due to global warming and human incursions into their traditional habitat.

"If current policies are not changed, we can lose polar bears, which currently number 20,000-25,000 globally, within one (human) generation," Nikita Ovsyanikov, member of the polar bear specialist group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), told IANS.

Ovsyanikov and his compatriot, Masha Vorontsova, director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare in Russia, were here for the 21st International Conference on Bear Research and Management organised by the environment and forests ministry and many wildlife NGOs.

The polar bear (or Ursinus Maritimus), the largest member of the Ursidae (bear) family, is also the largest terrestrial land carnivore and is found largely within the Arctic Circle encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and land masses.

"Today, this area belongs to five nations: Denmark (which administers Greenland), Norway (which administers the Svalbard archipelago), Canada, the United States (of which Alaska is a part) and Russia," said Ovsyanikov.

So, why is the polar bear in grave danger? "It mainly faces threats such as habitat loss due to global warming and continuing human incursions into the Arctic, pollution, hunting for sport and subsistence as well as trade in body parts," he added.

Both scientists feel that hunting and the trade in body parts are the most serious threat facing the polar bear.

The bear has been hunted since times immemorial by indigenous Arctic people, including the Inuit and Eskimos in Alaska and Canada and Yupiks, Nenets, Chukchis and Pomors in Russia. But they never hunted the species in excess of their requirements.

Trouble started with white European expansion and colonisation of the Arctic. The Europeans brought modern hunting practices and the notion of supply and demand of bear parts dictated by market forces. Everything has gone downhill after that.

In the later part of the twentieth century, the five nations finally woke up to the threat.

"The Soviet Union banned all hunting in 1956," Vorontsova told IANS.

Canada began imposing hunting quotas in 1968.

"Norway passed a series of increasingly strict regulations from 1965 to 1973 and has completely banned hunting since then. They only shoot some bears in conflict situations," said Ovsyanikov.

"The United States began regulating hunting in 1971 and adopted the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972. In 1973, the International Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears was signed by all five nations," said Vorontsova.

The treaty was a landmark in polar bear conservation, but loopholes remain and have morphed into big threats.

"The treaty allows hunting by local people using traditional methods. And that is the most tricky part. Because the aboriginals, mostly in Canada and Alaska, lease out their hunting quotas to foreign hunters, who in turn indulge in overharvesting polar bears for trading their body parts in foreign markets," said Vorontsova.

According to some estimates, each year, approximately 600 polar bears are hunted in Canada and the parts of 441 are internationally traded.

"There is a growing market for bear pelts in Russia and China. What adds to the problem is that the polar bear is listed in Appendix 2 of CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species), rather than Appendix 1 which would have guaranteed that there was no commercial trade in its parts," said Vorontsova.

The other threat facing polar bears is global warming.

"It is impacting populations in the Russian Arctic," said Ovsyanikov.

"A high percentage of cubs are lost. Females can't breed. Individuals become famished. They have to survive on land as coastal refugees, instead of pack ice lost to warming. Also, there is pollution, oil drilling and increased susceptibility to diseases."

Still, global warming would not make the polar bear extinct.

"These bears have survived six global warmings since they first appeared on earth. They won't disappear by global warming alone but by a combination of factors," said Ovsyanikov.

What is needed is more lobbying for the endangered animals, said Ovsyanikov.

"We need a broad international lobbying and consensus to save the bear. If we don't do that, we will have only ourselves to blame."

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Poachers shoot elephant in Assam, hack it to pieces

JORHAT: An adult male elephant was shot dead and its flesh cut away in Dulung reserve forest in Assam's Lakhimpur district after it was shot dead by poachers late on Thursday. Poachers also beheaded the elephant and took away its trunk, tusks, and limbs before escaping from the forest. Forest officials said efforts were on to nab the culprits.

"We're looking for the poachers, but no one has been arrested so far," an official said. "A preliminary probe suggests that three people sneaked into Dulung forest to kill the reserve's only elephant on Thursday. They shot it dead and cut it into pieces at night. Although we got the information about the gang's operation, they managed to escape."

Locals said that forest officers arrived 10 hours after the incident. "The incident happened only because of the forest department's failure. We condemn both the incident and official negligence," a villager said, adding that they were saddened there was no elephant left in the forest.

Several regional organizations, like AASU and KMSS, too, condemned the incident and demanded a high-power inquiry. AJYCP's Lakhimpur general secretary Saurav Das said, "We strongly condemn this inhuman act and demand a high level probe in to the matter. This happened due to the failure of forest minister Rockybul Hussain and his forest officials. "

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He compensates farmers to save the tiger

HASSANUR (SATHYAMANGALAM): B Govindan, a small scale farmer from Itarai has lost 22 cows in the last three years to tigers straying out of Sathyamangalam forest in search of prey. Despite a loss of Rs 15,000 for each cow killed, Govindan never thought of poisoning the big cat. Neither did he approach the government for help to gun down the tiger. After each loss, he simply took the bus to Hassanur where he informed B Krishnakumar, an entrepreneur and conservation activist, about the loss. After verifying the incident, Krishnakumar gives him some money from his own pocket which at least partially compensates for Govindan's loss.

"While forest laws limit compensation only to human death caused by wild animal, the privilege has not yet been extended to domestic animals owned by farmers living in forest fringes. Krishnakumar is a rare example of conservation, as he spends his own money for the environment. So far, he has given Rs 70,000 to my brothers, sister, uncles and me," said Govindan.

Now in his late fifties, Krishnakumar has paid a total of Rs 10 lakh so far as compensation for the deaths of 350 cattle attacked by tigers in the 30 km radius of Hassanur. He initiated this mission five years ago. To support the poor farmers in the region, he runs a small resort and a drive-in restaurant. Hailing from Thudiyalur in Coimbatore, Krishnakumar also has a plantation in Hassanur which brings him some money. To Krishnakumar, who earlier ran a textile mill in Coimbatore and a granite quarry in Thalavadi, his interest in conservation began five years ago. He pays enough compensation that keeps farmers and tribal people from poisoning tigers. Consequently, Sathyamangalam has become a safe haven for tigers.

"It is a simple model which can be replicated in places like Wayanad, Kerala, where a tiger that had killed several cattle, was gunned down last week. Farmers have no aversion to tigers. They just want to protect their livelihood. If the government is interested in conserving the tiger, all it has to do is pay farmers adequate compensation. India's tiger conservation effort has failed to take farmers and forest dwellers in confidence. This is why tiger reserve projects across the country are facing resistance,'' points out Krishnakumar.

Hearing about Krishnakumar, a group of youths in Coimbatore under ACME Round Table 133 have recently developed a corpus to support his initiative. They have also paid compensation worth Rs 2.5 lakh based on recommendation made by Krishnakumar. "With the compensation, farmers can replace their losses. In this way, farmers indirectly aid conservation efforts," said K S Sundararaman, president of the Round Table.

Krishnakumar pays the owner of a buffalo killed by a tiger Rs 4,500 while the compensation would be Rs 3,500 for a cow. Compensation for a calf is Rs 2,500. "We ensure the compensation reaches the farmer within 20 days of the incident. The forest department was earlier apprehensive about the project but now they feel it offers some resolution to the man-animal conflict. If similar organizations taking this up in other forest areas, the tiger population can be enhanced while protecting the livelihood of farmers," says Krishnakumar.

According to forest department estimate, Sathyamangalam has 25 tigers now. Ironically, it was Veerappan who helped increase the tiger population here. As his focus was just on elephants and sandalwood, other animals were safe. Fearing him, no other poacher went inside the forests,'' he said.

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Doha talks on climate change to overshoot Friday deadline

DOHA: The ongoing UN negotiations on climate change are all set to stretch beyond the scheduled deadline of Friday, thanks to the developed world, which has refused to deliver on finance, equity, adaptation and even extending the Kyoto Protocol's shelf life beyond 2013—a pledged that was made last year.

And the bid to evolve a consensus looks at least 48 hours away.

Here, the prickly negotiations stretched in more than half a dozen meeting rooms through Thursday evening, with developing countries pushing hard to extract commitments from the developed world. But the US and European Union (EU) kept singing the same tune that there was nothing else that could be done on financing the developing nations, or helping them adapt to the issue of equity in reducing emissions that had not been done already and the process should be summarily junked.

The frustration peaked when the Philippines' lead negotiator Naderev Sano broke down in his speech on Thursday evening before the gathered 194 countries.

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Troubled UN climate talks enter final day

DOHA: UN talks seeking to halt the march of global warming entered their final day in Doha on Friday with key points outstanding: extending the greenhouse gas-curbing Kyoto Protocol and funding for poor countries.

Delegates are preparing for a long day and night of final haggling to find consensus on interim ways to rein in climate change and smooth the way to a new deal that must enter into force in 2020.

"We woke up today and found ourselves no closer to addressing climate change, and possibly considerably farther from this imperative than when we started here" 11 days ago, said Kieren Keke, chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States.

Funding to help poor countries deal with the fallout from global warming and convert to planet-friendlier energy sources remains a key sticking point between negotiators from nearly 200 countries gathered in the Qatari capital.

Developed countries are being pressed to show how they intend to keep a promise to raise climate funding for poor countries to $100 billion (76 billion euros) per year by 2020 -- up from a total of $30 billion in 2010-2012.

Developing countries say they need at least another $60 billion between now and 2015 to deal with increased droughts, floods, rising sea levels and storms.

But the United States and European Union have refused to put concrete figures on the table in Doha for 2013-2020 funding, citing tough financial times.

NGOs and delegates have expressed frustration at the pace of negotiations that coincided with a slew of fresh scientific warnings that Earth faces a calamitous future of more frequent extreme weather events.

"Political negotiators need to realise urgently that the climate does not negotiate," Greenpeace chief executive Kumi Naidoo told AFP in the final hours of the talks.

"Negotiations are out of touch with scientific reality. This is about human survival."

Another point of contention was "hot air," the name given to Earth-warming greenhouse gas emission quotas that countries were given under the first leg of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and did not use -- some 13 billion tonnes in total.

The credits can be sold to nations battling to meet their own quotas, meaning greenhouse gas levels decrease on paper but not in the atmosphere.

Poland and Russia emitted much less than their lenient limits, and insisted in Doha on being allowed to bank the difference beyond 2012 -- a move vehemently opposed by most other parties.

Agreement on hot air is key to the Doha delegates extending the life of the Kyoto pact, whose first leg expires on December 31.

The protocol is the world's only binding pact on curbing greenhouse gases, but locks in only developed nations and excludes major developing polluters such as China and India, as well as the United States, which refused to ratify it.

A new 2020 deal, due to be finalised by 2015, will include commitments for all the nations of the world.

Draft conference texts drawn up so far "fail to meet the basic requirements of the countries facing an existential threat" from climate change, said Keke, but stressed "the day isn't over yet".

The Philippines urged bickering climate negotiators Thursday to take heed from the deadly typhoon that struck the archipelago this week and wake up to the realities of global warming.

"As we sit here, every single hour, even as we vacillate and procrastinate here, the death toll is rising," climate envoy Naderev Sano told delegates.

German environment minister Peter Altmaier has predicted that the talks, notorious for running way over schedule, "will be on the knife's edge up to the last moment".

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South Africa enlists surveillance aircraft to combat poaching

KRUGER NATIONAL PARK (SOUTH AFRICA): Faced with a dizzying spike in the rate of rhino killings, South Africa announced on Tuesday it was deploying a reconnaissance aircraft to combat poaching.

The military aircraft to be initially deployed to the internationally-famed Kruger National Park, is equipped with highly sophisticated surveillance technology — including thermal imaging — to detect poachers looking for rhino horn.

The aircraft was donated to South African National Parks (SANParks) by the Ichikowitz Family Foundation, whose chairman also runs a defence company.

"You have to fight fire with fire," said Ivor Ichikowitz, chairman of the foundation and also chair of Paramount Group, Africa's largest privately held defence and aerospace outfit.

Poaching has reached epidemic levels this year, with a record 598 rhinos killed so far, largely to meet booming demand for rhino horn in Asian.

In countries like Vietnam the fingernail-like substance is falsely believed to be an aphrodisiac or a cure for cancer and is literally worth its weight in gold.

Park rangers have struggled to keep pace.

Some 364 rhino have been slaughtered in the Kruger National Park this year, a vast reserve that is around two million hectares, four times the size of Yellow Stone park in Wyoming.

The park accounts for 40 percent of the world rhino population.

With their new tool, the authorities will be able to gather intelligence and pass it on in real time to rapid response ground patrols.

The blue-and-black camouflage painted craft can fly for up to seven hours and at slow speeds with a 270 degree visibility, to allow it to gather robust intelligence. It will be manned by a pilot and spotter.

SANparks chief David Mabunda said instead of "fishing in the dark" as his rangers previously did against a "well-oiled machinery", the new aerial policing craft will help with "early warning."

"We are in a state of war, low intensity war," he said. More than 80 percent of the world's last rhinos are in Africa.

The government is also mulling the introduction of drones and is to deploy in coming days.

"We have already tested the efficacy of unmanned aerial vehicles with the state-owned Denel Dynamics company and in this first week of December we will be deploying that capability... to complement what we have already," Mabubnda told AFP.

"Warfare has become sophisticated and advanced, therefore we needed to scale up," he said.

On an average day rangers chase after around 20 groups of poachers with the most culprits entering through the 400 kilometres long park's border with neighbouring Mozambique where rhino poaching is en vogue.

"It's fashionable in that country. People aspire to be poachers" making the villages there a fertile recruiting ground for runners, said Abe Sibiya, Kruger Park managing executive.

"The benefits are visible" in the poverty-stricken villages which can suddenly acquire truckloads of cash and cars.

At the same time the South African authorities are also working to weaken demand from the east Asia.

Next week South Africa's environment minister is expected to sign a memorandum of understanding in Hanoi, aimed at improving cooperation with Vietnam against rhino poaching.

"To effectively deal with the current scourge of poaching, and with illegal hunting largely driven by international demand for the rhino horn, these international engagements and agreements are crucial," the ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

A Thai national was this year jailed for 40 years for running bogus rhino hunts as cover to sell horns on the black market, in the stiffest ever sentence handed down by the South African courts.

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Principle of equity threatened at Doha climate talks

DOHA: The endgame of climate negotiations here began on Wednesday with India and China yet again getting sucked into the vortex of the fight. The small island nations and least developed countries (LDCs) began to target equity as the obstacle to a better climate deal even as they lowered their pitch for finances from developed countries.

Equity remains a non-negotiable issue for larger developing economies, including China and India, who would be expected to take greater action to reduce emissions in the next round. Both Beijing and New Delhi are worried about the burden being shifted unequally from those who have emitted greenhouse gases historically to those who may in the future.

Till the early part of the second week the small island nations and LDCs had publicly aligned closer to the other developing country partners in the G77+China group to make the developed countries spell out how they would ramp up finance from now to 2020 when they need to deliver $100 billion every year.

But on Wednesday, these countries, who had formed an alliance with the European Union (EU) at the Durban meet last December, seemed to shift their focus away from finance, claiming even a fuzzy notion of funds would make them happy. But they warned that equity could not be used to distract from increased emission reduction targets for all the countries between now and 2020.

The small island countries and LDCs tried to sell the idea that equity in burden sharing came in the way of increasing countries' commitments and should be put aside for now. Decoded, countries should not bother about comparing who was required to act and who actually was undertaking more emission reduction.

Countering the move, India and China both warned that a deal without equity and the principle of common but differentiated responsibility (CBDR) for any future arrangements would not be acceptable. Both pointed out that studies showed the developing world had already committed greater reductions between 2012 and 2020 than the rich countries.

"When we talk of equity, it is often perceived as something opposed to ambition. Future arrangements must be built on this principle. How can we advance an ambitious global regime in the post 2020 period if it is not anchored in Equity and does not have assurance of access to financial resources and technologies?" asked Mira Mehrishi, who is leading the Indian delegation here.

Joint secretary R R Rashmi explained, "The idea of equity finds its place in two tracks of the negotiations but we have to make sure it is articulated in a manner that it gets operationalized and does not remain just as an ideal."

The Chinese head of delegation, Xie Zhenhua, too, reiterated that under future arrangements now under discussion the two principles were non-negotiable for his country.

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Doha climate talks: India not to enhance its pledge of reducing emissions

Nitin Sethi, TNN Dec 4, 2012, 05.01PM IST

(The government has ordered…)

DOHA: The Union environment and forests minister Jayanthi Natarajan may not come to the climate talks but the Indian delegation here led by special secretary M Mehrishi has got the nod from the cabinet to draw its strong redlines at the Doha round of UN negotiations.

The government has ordered the Indian delegation at Doha to not enhance its pledge of reducing emissions intensity at Doha and reiterated that the three critical issues of equity, intellectual property and unilateral actions by governments remain steadfast on the table.

It has approved the note which criticized EU for shifting the goal post yet again and resell the commitment to operationalise the Kyoto Protocol's second commitment period. The delegates are now empowered to negotiate an un-conditional approval of the protocol's second phase starting 2013.

The formal approval from the government comes at a time that the Doha talks have got log-jammed with the developed countries refusing to even discuss issues of value to the developing world, such as a timeline for delivering finance, adaptation, equity and unilateral actions under what is called the Long Term Cooperation Action (LCA) track. The track is to shut down this year and the developing countries want to move the unresolved issues from the track to the future talks which the rich nations have blocked so far.

The cabinet orders, unlike previous years come with no caveat or space for flexibility for the Indian delegation at Doha. They have commanded the delegation to ensure the pending issues find homes in future negotiations.

The orders prohibit the delegation from agreeing to any new obligations in the guise of supplementary actions unless they are taken in keeping with the provisions of the convention and only when the means of implementing such actions - finance and technology - are made available.

All commitments for future, the cabinet order requires, must be made realizing the historical responsibility and the principle of equity.

The Cabinet has also decided that any new obligation to reduce emissions through 'supplementary actions' should only be undertaken in adherence to the existing UN climate conventions and on availability of funds and technologies.

The cabinet has asked the delegation to work closely with the G77 plus China group, the BASIC formation and the new configuration called the Like Minded Developing Countries.

On the Durban Platform negotiations, the cabinet has approved that the Indian team secure a plan of work guided by the fifth IPCC review, the review of the convention itself, international consultation and analysis, international consultations, the biennial reports and updates and the national communications.

With the minister missing in action as the government fighting off the challenge from the opposition in the Parliament on the issue of foreign direct investment in the retail sector, the firm and unconditional orders from the cabinet are expected to steer the Indian position at Doha.

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