NHAI moves Supreme Court over environment clearance delays

NEW DELHI: National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) moved the Supreme Court on Wednesday seeking relief for delinking of forest and environment clearance for highway projects and to get exemption from norms of the Forest Rights Act for linear stretches falling outside forest areas.

TOI has learnt that the Prime Minister's Office on October 30, 2012, had agreed to the proposal of NHAI/ highway ministry knocking on the SC door in case the environment and forest ministry (MoEF) did not provide requisite relief.

Sources said that the decision was taken at a meeting attended by senior officials from highways and finance ministries, Planning Commission and NHAI. No representative from MoEF or tribal affairs ministry was, however, present in that meeting. In November, two committees under the Cabinet secretary and the law secretary had supported highway ministry's case and the NHAI Board also approved the proposal of moving to the SC to seek relief so that projects clearance can be expedited.

NHAI officials said that 17 projects already awarded are awaiting final green clearance on account of the pending forest clearance. Besides, several projects have been bagged by big private players quoting high premium to NHAI. Companies exiting from projects at this stage are going to have big impact on the Authority's long-term financing plan and also construction target over the next two-three years.

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Six injured in leopard attack in Nilambur

MALAPURRAM: A straying leopard disrupted normal life in Konnampotti region of Chunghathara in Nilambur for over five hours before it was successfully tranquilized and caged on Wednesday evening. Six persons, including a woman, were injured in the leopard attack.

The animal was first seen in a rubber plantation at Vadakkekkara, Konnampotti around 1.30pm. Suni (35) of Mangedath, who was collecting firewood from the plantation, was attacked by the leopard and she suffered minor injuries. Natives Raju of Pandakashala and Sahil of Thottassery were also attacked by the leopard while they were searching for it.

Later, forest, police and revenue officials along with veterinarians arrived at the spot. After an hour-long search, the leopard was found near a trench. When the traumatized animal was provoked by over-enthusiastic onlookers, it climbed on a coconut tree to evade the crowd.

Finally, a team of tranquilizing experts, who arrived from Kozhikode around 5pm, successfully tranquilized the leopard. But when the veterinary surgeon gave the tranquilizing shot, the animal fell asleep on top of the tree. Following this, members of the New Star Club, Palenkara carried the animal in a net and caged it.

Nilambur North DFO Rajan said the leopard was a full-grown male and it has shifted to Thrissur zoo. "It is for the first time such an incident has been reported in the area," said Mujeeb Palenkara, a resident in the area.

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Tiger cub dead in Kaziranga, rhino battles for life at Orang

JORHAT: A female tiger cub was found dead at Agoratoli forest range in Kaziranga National Park on Tuesday. Although the cause of the cub's death is yet to be ascertained, forest officials believe it might have died in an attack by a male tiger. The cub was about six months old.

"Preliminary investigation suggests that the tiger cub died after it was attacked by a male tiger. When the female tiger feeds her cubs, often the male tiger attack its own cubs for food. It is a regular and natural phenomenon among big cats," said chief conservator of forest (Kaziranga) N K Vasu.

He added, "On receiving the news, forest staff and veterinarians, alongwith officials of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, rushed to the spot to ascertain the cause of the death of the cub. Veterinarians also conducted an and the reports are awaited. The actual reason behind the death can be ascertained only after we receive the post-mortem reports." The incident occurred near Balipukhuri anti-poaching camp in Agoratoli forest range of the national park this morning.

Meanwhile, a one-horned rhino has been battling for life in Orang National Park after sustaining bullet injuries. Forest staff said poachers attacked the rhino when it strayed out of the park on Monday night. "The rhino was attacked by a group of poachers in the park early on Tuesday. According to the reports received from witnesses, a bullet hit the animal. But it is reported to be alive and battling for life," said a forest official. He added that the poachers managed to flee from the park before the authorities launched a search operation.

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Global warming has stalled since 1998: UK Met office

LONDON: Global warming has stalled since 1998, and in the next few years Earth's temperature will not rise as rapidly as feared, UK Met officials have claimed.

Over the next five years temperatures will be 0.43 degrees above the 1971-2000 average, instead of the previously forecast 0.54 degrees - a 20 per cent reduction, the Met office in UK has confirmed.

This rise would be only slightly higher than the 0.4-degree rise recorded in 1998, an increase which is itself attributed by forecasters to an exceptional weather phenomenon, the 'Daily Mail' reported.

With all but 0.03 degrees of the increase having occurred by 1998, it means that no further significant increases to the planet's temperature are expected over the next few years.

The figures have been seized on by sceptics of man-made climate change, who claim that global warming has flatlined despite a large rise in greenhouse emissions in recent decades.

"That the global temperature standstill could continue to at least 2017 would mean a 20-year period of no statistically significant change in global temperatures," Dr David Whitehouse, science adviser to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said.

"Such a period of no increase will pose fundamental problems for climate models. If the latest Met Office prediction is correct, then it will prove to be a lesson in humility," Whitehouse said.

"Global warming is not 'at a standstill' but does seem to have slowed down since 2000, in comparison to the rapid warming of the world since the 1970s," Dr Richard Allan of the University of Reading said.

"In fact, consistent with rising greenhouse gases, heat is continuing to build up beneath the ocean surface," Allan added.

He was backed by Bob Ward of the London School of Economics, who said it would be wrong to interpret that warming had stopped.

The Met Office said the updated five-year predictions were a result of a new modelling system, which takes into account changes in ocean surface temperatures, and was released as soon as practically possible.

It claims the slow-down in temperature rises after a steep increase in the 1990s could be explained by natural variability, changes in solar activity, and the movements of the oceans.

"A lot of people were claiming, in the run-up to the Copenhagen 2009 conference, that warming was accelerating and it is all worse than we thought," Professor Myles Allen of the University of Oxford said.

"What has happened since then has demonstrated that it is foolish to extrapolate short-term climate trends," Allen said.

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Monkey feeders in Melghat tiger reserve to face action

NAGPUR: The Melghat Tiger Reserve (MTR) in Amravati district has decided to act tough against those feeding monkeys along the tar road passing through the reserve.

Though feeding monkeys is illegal, it has become a common practice at many places in India. In Maharashtra's oldest tiger reserve it has now become a costly affair. One private and one state transport buses were detained and drivers booked under the Wildlife Protection Act (WPA) 1972.

Just three days ago, the state highway passing through the core area of MTR recorded the death of a sloth bear near Semadoh on Harisal-Semadoh stretch of the highway. However, the same patch has been known for accidental deaths of wild animals. A leopard, sambar, porcupine and even a Dharni-based resident have lost their life on the stretch, the last when his bike hit a sambar recently.

On Sunday, Kishor Rithe, president of Satpuda Foundation and member of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL), was travelling through the same patch when he saw a bus driver and passengers of Shriram Travels bus feeding bananas to monkeys.

Rithe warned the driver and was just 50 metres away when the driver started feeding the langurs again. He asked the driver to park the vehicle at Semadoh chowki and informed the staff about the offence.

However, the driver defied the forest staff and proceeded towards Paratwada. Rithe rushed to the gate after Semadoh village and stopped the vehicle. Range forest officer (RFO) MS Pachare and his squad immediately rushed to the gate and booked the vehicle and driver under WPA and conducted the spot panchnama.

In the second case, a ST bus from Burhanpur to Amravati stopped at the same spot in the core area and driver Yuvraj Sonune, who had specially bought bananas from Dharni for the monkeys, started feeding them.

The squad along with Rithe caught the ST driver red-handed while feeding the monkeys. The driver was booked under the WPA.

Rithe told TOI that many vehicles stop in this stretch and throw foodgrains and bananas for monkeys. Many wild animals including monkeys get attracted to the roadside. This has led to many accidents of wild animals, besides increase in monkey bites to passers-by.

"The issue has become very serious. We have put up display boards and signages but people fail to understand the problem," said K P Singh, chief conservator of forests (CCF) and field director of MTR.

The forest department's action has created sensation among the people who think that it is good to feed the monkeys. However, they have to understand that it amounts to hurting the animals as per the WPA and there is a provision for seven years imprisonment along with heavy penalty.

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States told to not grant permission for dolphinariums

NEW DELHI: A high-level environment ministry panel has asked the state governments not to grant permission for dolphinariums after animal rights organizations voiced concern about the welfare of wild species to be held captive in such proposed private facilities.

The Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI), the statutory body under the environment ministry, also asked the chief wildlife wardens of states to withhold permission to any persons, government or private players that proposes to import any Cetacean species for commercial exhibition or research purposes.

Dolphinariums are commercial captive facilities that house wild dolphins that have been captured "through cruel methods like drive captures", says FIAPO, an animal rights organization.

Recently proposals for dolphinariums had come up in Kochi, Sindhudurg and Noida and the animal rights organizations including FIAPO had presented comprehensive evidence based on scientific research on issues involved in keeping dolphins captive.

Welcoming the AWBI adivory, Puja Mitra, FIAPO's campaign manager said, "This move of the AWBI's is a big step forward to ensure that India never has captive dolphins - a barbaric practice that is fast being phased out internationally."

"Additionally, dolphinariums have absolutely no conservation or educational value," she said in a statement.

India's only brush with dolphins in captivity was in the late 1990's in Chennai's Dolphin City exhibit, where four dolphins were imported from Bulgaria and died within a few months due to lack of care and suitable infrastructure.

A number of countries such as United Kingdom, Brazil and Chile have banned Dolphins in captivity.

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MoEF sets February 15 deadline for eco-zones

NAGPUR: The ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has set February 15 as the deadline for the states to declare eco-sensitive zones (ESZs).

The MoEF has issued guidelines for notification of ESZs around national parks and sanctuaries on February 9, 2011. However, the progress is far from satisfactory. Only a few states including Maharashtra have come forward with proposals.

The Supreme Court is considering the ESZ issue in two writ petitions filed in 1995 and 2004. The MoEF is of the view that the states be granted one last opportunity to submit site-specific proposals for declaration of ESZs, latest by February 15. In this regard, all state chief wildlife wardens and chief secretaries have been issued letters.

It has been more than a decade since wildlife conservation strategy 2002 was adopted by the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL), envisaging declaring lands falling within 10km of the boundary of the national parks and sanctuaries as eco-fragile zones. However, due to reservations among states, the matter was examined by the NBWL in 2005, wherein it was decided to have site-specific ESZs.

As far as Maharashtra is concerned, the wildlife wing has sent five ESZ proposals to the state government. It includes Pench and Mansinghdeo (416 sq km) in Nagpur and Koyna (727 sq km) and Sagareshwar (3.68 sq km) in Western Maharashtra and Jayakwadi (141 sq km) in Marathwada. The proposals were submitted in December.

"The state government has sought some minor queries before sending these site-specific proposals to the MoEF," sources said. They added that ESZ proposals for Tipeshwar, Nagzira, New Nagzira, Navegaon, New Navegaon, Bor and New Bor are ready and will be sent soon.

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How private players grabbed forest land in the Aravalis

NEW DELHI: A law that was meant to reverse fragmentation of agricultural land, appears to have been rampantly abused in Haryana to allow influential private players get possession of hilly and non-agricultural common lands, including forests in the Aravalis close to the national capital.

The law in question is the Consolidation Act, enacted to consolidate agricultural holdings of farmers who own land in small patches spread over an area and for preserving the village commons. Officials said in Faridabad and Gurgaon districts of Haryana, this law had been twisted to give outsiders vast tracts of common hilly land and forests, including the pristine grove of Mangar Bani held sacred by villagers.

According to records accessed by TOI, the modus operandi was exposed a few months ago by Ashok Khemka, who, as the director general of land records had also cancelled an unrelated land deal involving Robert Vadra. For the first time in Haryana, Khemka challenged the practice of partitioning of common hilly land, via the consolidation process and denotified it in two cases - at villages Kot and Roz-ka-Gujjar - in August 2012.

The then director general of land records, in his order on Faridabad's Kot village, said the consolidation exercise carried out in the entire village, including its 'gair mumkin pahaar' (common hill), would wrongly benefit certain "influential outsider-purchasers".

"The aims and objects of the Consolidation Act are to consolidate agricultural holdings for the betterment of agriculture, for prevention of fragmentation of agricultural holdings and for reservation of land for common purposes of the village," the order said.

The officer wrote that of the total area of 3,184 acres notified for consolidation in Kot, 2,565 acres fell under common hill area and the inclusion of this portion would "defeat" the purpose of consolidation.

Even more blatant was the case of Roz-ka-Gujjar - an uninhabitated and mostly forested hill completely located in the Aravalis which formed the main catchment of the Damdama lake in Gurgaon. Of the 5,744 acres brought under consolidation in this village, close to 4,798 acres were notified under Sections 4 and 5 of the Punjab Land Preservation Act (PLPA).Under the Forest Conservation Act, land under these two notifications cannot be diverted for any use other than forest related activities without permission of the Union environment and forest ministry.

Khemka in his order had pointed out that quite a large portion of the land in Roz-ka-Gujjar had been mined for stone, ordinary sand and silica sand prior to 2002. There were 50-60 feet deep mining pits in certain pockets. In his order, the IAS officer also observed that the village was 'be-chirag' (uninhabited) and there was a single khewat (record) consisting of more 1,000 co-owners having joint share in the entire area of 5,744 acres. He also pointed out that not a single square inch of the land under consolidation had been cultivated for a long time.

Expectedly, hardly any locals figured in the names of the co-sharers. Almost the entire area had been purchased by the "powerful business-politico-bureaucratic-police nexus with ostensibly no interest in agricultural, cultivation activities". Moreover, some land transactions seemed benami on behalf of a few powerful politicians and bureaucrats, Khemka had pointed out.

The officer, who was allegedly shunted out for hurting higher-ups, had recorded in his order that since there was no land under agricultural activity, there was no fragment of land to consolidate. "On a perusal of the consolidation records, it is apparent that the scope of the Consolidation Act has been extended as a tool of partition. The single joint khewat has been divided into some 640 khataunis (accounts) and specific khasra numbers allotted to them," Khemka's wrote.

The order said the use of the Consolidation Act to partition a joint single khewat was "a grotesque abuse". Even retired officials from revenue department posted in the NCR said lands falling under hills or drains were nobody's property and could not be fragmented. This law has been violated in many cases including Mangar, which has a sacred forest protected by local Gujjar villagers. Sources said the process of consolidation and then division of this common land/hill was completed long ago, enabling several to buy huge chunks of land.

With the Mangar development plan 2031 likely to be notified soon, these players are expecting big gains in the form of escalated property prices."The Haryana government should review the status of the common lands in the more than 100 villages of southern Haryana and secure such land that should be preserved for future generations," said Chetan Agarwal, a forest analyst.

In the light of recent Supreme Court judgments that say common lands should not be privatized, the sale of lands around Mangar and other villages should be retrospectively reviewed and if necessary, reversed, said Colonel Sarvadaman Oberoi, a legal activist fighting to save the Aravalis.

With the Mangar development plan 2031 likely to be notified soon, these players are expecting big gains in the form of escalated property prices.

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German solar power installations at record high in 2012

BERLIN: New solar power installations in Germany hit a record high last year but tapered off in the fourth quarter as subsidies were cut to curb costs to consumers, environment ministry data showed on Saturday.

Capacity grew by more than 7.6 gigawatt (GW), breaking the previous records of 7.5 GW in 2011 and 7.4 GW in 2010, and far above the 2.5 to 3.5 GW Berlin would like to see each year.

The solar boom has been encouraged by generous feed-in tariffs, which are guaranteed to generators for 20 years to encourage carbon free power to gradually replace fossil fuels.

But renewable energy has become politically divisive as businesses complain the shift away from nuclear power towards subsidised renewables is adding to consumer costs and jeopardising economic growth.

The government agreed last year to cut the level of feed-in tariffs - the industry's lifeblood as long as solar power is more expensive than conventional forms of energy to produce - in order to reduce the pace of installations.

Tariffs were cut by 2.5 percent a month between Nov. 1, 2012 and Jan. 31, 2013.

An environment ministry spokesman said installed capacity in the last quarter of 2012 was less than a fifth of overall installations last year.

He said 611 megawatts (MW) had been installed in October, 435 MW in November and 360 MW in December. "This shows that the amendment is working," he said.

The ministry expects new solar power generating capacity of between 3.5 and 4 GW in 2013.

The share of renewable subsidies within the overall power bill rose 47 percent on Jan. 1, 2013, to 5.3 cents a kilowatt hour, raising the subsidising cost per average household by 60 euros ($79.10) to 185 euros for the year.

Private consumers bear the brunt of the costs of renewable energy subsidies after the government gave breaks to energy-intensive industry, cutting some of the green energy and network usage costs for companies.

The association of solar producers said on Tuesday its members supplied 8 million households with power, 45 percent more than in 2011, and accounting for 5 percent of total power usage.

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China to boost biotech industry

BEIJNG: The Chinese government proposes to boost the biotechnology industry to tackle problems arising out of population growth, food safety, energy conservation and environmental protection concerns, the State Council said Sunday.

By 2015, the government aims to double from the 2010 level the share of GDP that the sector's value-added output accounts for, according to a biotech industry development plan unveiled by the State Council, or China's cabinet, Shanghai Daily reported.

The sector will see its output surge at an average annual rate of more than 20 percent from 2013 to 2015, according to the plan. The government also plans to improve the sector's innovation and technological prowess to make it a pillar industry by 2020.

New medicines, crops, biofuels and environmental technology are needed to protect the health of an ageing population, ensure food safety and save energy, the plan says.

The government is targeting an annual production value of 150 billion yuan (about 24 billion) by 2015 for the biofuel sector.

The sector is one of seven emerging industries which the Chinese government aims to promote over the next few years to turn domestic consumption and technological innovation into driving forces for the economy.

The government has set a goal of ensuring that the combined value-added output of the sector will account for 8 percent of the GDP by 2015.

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