Environmentalists oppose Assam govt's move to dehorn rhino

GUWAHATI: The Assam government's move to explore trimming of horns to save rhinos from poaching was opposed by an environmental activist body which said it will affect biological growth of the animal and the risk from poachers will continue.

"The horn of a rhino is a part of its biological growth. With the help of the horn, the animal selects a mate for breeding. So removing the horn will be detrimental to the rhino population," Nature's Beckon Director Soumyadeep Datta told reporters here.

The rhinos use their horns also for behavioral functions like defending territories, protecting calves from other rhinos and predators, maternal care, digging for water and breaking branches.

Datta said a study by environmentalist Janet Rachlow revealed that 90 per cent of the dehorned white rhinos were poached within 18 months as the horns grow back very quickly.

If the horn is cut too close to the germinal layer, this could damage the horn base and lead to deformed horn re-growth or death of the individual rhino due to blood loss or shock, he said and cited the instance of a rhino death at Majuli after its horn was surgically removed by forest authorities in March 2013.

Last month, Assam Forest and Environment Rockybul Hussain had said the government will set up a committee to study if the horn of a rhino could be trimmed without any harm to the animal to save it from poaching.

Nature's Beckon also opposed to translocation of rhinos saying it was against nature.

"So far eight rhinos have been killed in Manas National Park by poachers. Before we translocate rhinos, the security aspect should have been checked properly," he said.

According to the NGO's estimates, about 12 rhinos have been translocated to Manas from Kaziranga National Park in the last three years. Coupled with natural breeding the rhino population at Manas had increased to over 20, of which eight had been killed by poachers for their horns.

"We have been demanding a CBI enquiry into rhino poaching for a long time. But the government is not accepting it," Datta added.

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100 cameras to track tiger movement in UP forests

BAREILLY: Nearly 100 cameras will soon track the movement of tigers in the forest range adjoining the UP-Uttarakhand border. The state government has recently initiated the project near the Corbett Tiger Reserve to bring down human-animal conflict as well as make an attempt to trace the elusive man-eating tigress of Bijnor.

The Uttar Pradesh forest department is also planning to attach GPS-enabled collars on the necks of tigers to make it easy to identify and locate them. Kamlesh Kumar, conservator of forests, Moradabad division, said the move will be of great help to forest officials. "The cameras will enable us to know about the behavioral changes in tigers. For instance, it will help in knowing which resident tiger of Corbett Tiger Reserve (CTR) is moving out for a new territory and we would be able to avoid animal and human conflict."

Forest officials also plan to attach collars fitted with GPS technology on tigers which move constantly. "It is a long process as first we need to tranquilize the animal. This would be done only when it is most needed," Kumar said.

The installation of the large number of cameras is also expected to help in locating the maneater tigress which has killed at least seven persons in west UP in about two months. "We have launched an extensive campaign to trace the tigress but she has not been sighted anywhere.

With no fresh attacks, it seems that she has entered CTR, but now, if she comes back, we would be able to track her," a senior forest official said.

The process of installing the cameras has been started at Nazirabad forest division which is connected to CTR. "Around 100 cameras have to be placed in the forest. We are getting them in small quantities from Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun," Kumar said.

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China declares war on pollution with $35 billion fund

BEIJING: China on Wednesday declared a war against chronic pollution choking the booming nation, allocating about $35 billion for environmental protection this year to combat toxic smog that frequently engulfs Chinese cities.

The government will take strong measures to prevent and control pollution with the focus on mega cities and regions with frequent occurrence of smog, Premier Li Keqiang said in his first government work report at the annual session China's legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC) today.

Hazardous smog, several times dangerous than that of limits fixed by WHO continues to engulf capital Beijing and a host of top Chinese cities for the best part of the year raising concerns of pulmonary infections including lung cancers among public.

Li allocated 210.909 billion yuan ($35 billion) for energy conservation and environmental protection this year, a 7.1 per cent increase compared to last year.

The government will start by reducing PM10 and PM2.5 emissions, and focus on improving the industrial structure, raising energy efficiency, reducing vehicle exhaust emissions, and preventing and monitoring wind-borne dust, Li said.

Miao Xuegang, NPC deputy and head of environmental protection department of east China's Anhui Province, said Li's declaration is "a letter of commitment from the government".

A total of 50,000 small coal-fired furnaces will be shut down this year and cleaning technologies, including desulphurisation, denitrification and dust removal, will be introduced at coal-burning power plants, Li's report said.

Six million old high-emission vehicles will be removed from the roads, and diesel fuel for vehicles that meets fourth-stage national standards will be provided nationwide this year, Li said.

The government will also implement the clean water action plan, strengthen the protection of sources of drinking water, prevent and control water pollution in key river basins, and carry out land restoration.

Smog is affecting larger parts of China and environmental pollution has become a major problem, which is nature's red-light warning against the model of inefficient and blind development, Li said.

Ai Nanshan, a professor at Sichuan University in southwest China's Chengdu city, said the government shoulders a major responsibility in dealing with pollution.

"You cannot get a beautiful GDP figure at the cost of environment," state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Ai, a researcher of environment studies as saying.

Local officials would have no desire to tackle pollution if gross domestic product (GDP) remained a solely important element in the evaluation of their performance, Ai said.

Zhang Wenxin, deputy head of Xinbin county of northeast China's Liaoning Province, said an effective official assessment mechanism should be established to encourage local officials to put more efforts in environmental protection.

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Global warming may threaten World Heritage sites

LONDON: Some of the world's most recognizable and important landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty and Sydney Opera House could be lost to rising sea-levels if current global warming trends are maintained over the next two millennia, a new study has warned.

The study calculated the temperature increases at which the 720 sites currently on the list of Unesco World Heritage sites would be impacted by subsequent sea-level rises.

The Statue of Liberty, Independence Hall, Tower of London and Sydney Opera House are among the 136 sites that would be impacted if the current global warming trend continues and temperatures rise to 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in the next 2000 years - a likely and not particularly extreme scenario, according to the researchers.

Also impacted would be the city centres of Brugge, Naples, Riga and St Petersburg; Venice and its Lagoon; Robben Island; and Westminster Abbey, they said.

"Sea-levels are responding to global warming slowly but steadily because the key processes involved?ocean heat uptake and melting continental ice - go on for a long while after the warming of the atmosphere has stopped," lead author Professor Ben Marzeion, from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, said.

"After 2000 years, the oceans would have reached a new equilibrium state and we can compute the ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica from physical models. At the same time, we consider 2000 years a short enough time to be of relevance for the cultural heritage we cherish," co-author of the study Professor Anders Levermann, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said.

As a proxy of where cultural heritage may be currently developing or set to develop in the future, researchers also calculated the percentage of currently populated places that would be living below sea-level if temperatures increased above pre-industrial levels by 3 degrees Celsius in the next 2000 years.

They found that seven per cent of the current global population would be living on land that would be below sea level and that the distribution of the affected population was uneven - more than 60 per cent of the affected population would be in China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Indonesia.

The researchers also calculated the percentage of global land that would be below sea-level under the same scenario.

They found that seven countries — including the Maldives, and Bahamas — would lose 50% of their land and a further 35 countries would lose ten per cent of their land.

"Our results show that if there is a 3 degrees Celsius temperature increase over the next 2000 years, which seems likely to be reached and is generally considered not to be an extreme scenario, the impacts on global heritage would be severe," Marzeion concluded.

The study was published in the Institute of Physics (IOP)'s journal Environmental Research Letters. SAR AKJ SAR

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Flutter of joy in Delhi park as rare birds back

NEW DELHI: Scientists at Aravali Biodiversity Park have recently documented the diversity of avian species here, soon to be published in a birding journal. The list is long; it also has several species that are rarely seen in Delhi. Scientists claim that manmade forests in the park with their own micro-climates may have led to revival of these species. Some birders are pleasantly surprised with the list.

According to M Shah Hussain, scientist-in-charge at the park, the number of species has gone up from 60-70 in 2005 to 190 now. "There could be many reasons for this rise. One of them is that we have insects for insectivorous birds and lots of fruiting trees for frugivores. The park now has micro-habitats like grasslands, there is some moist vegetation in the depressions which earlier used to be mining pits and there are many native trees," Hussain said. Before 2005, the area had almost a monoculture of Prospis juliflora (vilayati keekar), an invasive weed.

Park authorities claim that not just birds that had long disappeared from Delhi are being seen again, some belonging to other climate zones like moist deciduous forests have also been spotted here. Indian Pitta for instance, a bird usually found in Western Ghats and Himalayas was seen here recently. "Passage migrants" like red-throated flycatcher, orange-headed thrush, canary flycatcher, and some warblers migrate annually from the Himalayas in winters and white-eyed buzzard, common hawk cuckoo, pied-crested cuckoo, and blue-cheeked bee-eater visit the park in summers.

Among birds that have surprised birders and scientists at the park is the oriental pied hornbill that is usually seen in moist deciduous and evergreen forests of southeast Asia. "I don't think the oriental pied hornbill has been seen in Delhi any time recently. If the park authorities have really spotted it, it's surprising. I think it's a lovely park and their list of sightings is impressive. But the park is not open to birders or general public. I think they should let in interested people. The fact that the park is secure and undisturbed by other urban pressures is great for the birds," said author and birder Bikram Grewal.

Hussain said, "It's not easy to open the park for public because we need certain infrastructure. We do get students regularly. We have also proposed guided nature trails so that people understand how the area has been revived."

The list of birds is likely to be published in a couple of months.

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Deep sea species make 95% of world's fish

SYDNEY: Fish that live in the mesopelagic zones constitute 95 per cent of the world's fish biomass, marine biologists have found.

Mesopelagic fish live between 100 and 1000 metres below the surface.

The discovery highlights that mesopelagic fish in the earth's oceans constitute 10 to 30 times more biomass than previously thought.

"This very large stock of fish that we have just discovered that holds 95 per cent of all the fish biomass in the world is untouched by fishers," said the researchers.

Scientists have attributed the secret behind their vast population to their capacity to avoid fish nets and prowling eyes of the birds.

They have large eyes to see in the dim light, and also enhanced pressure-sensitivity.

"They are able to detect nets from at least five metres and avoid them," noted professor Carlos Duarte of University of Western Australia.

Duarte led a seven-month circumnavigation of the globe in the Spanish research vessel Hesperides with a team of scientists collecting echo-soundings of mesopelagic fish.

He said most mesopelagic species tend to feed near the surface at night, and move to deeper layers in the daytime to avoid birds.

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Hoolock gibbon translocated to Mehao wildlife sanctuary

GUWAHATI: A hoolock gibbon which was stranded in Dello village of Arunachal's Lower Dibang Valley district has successfully been translocated to Mehao wildlife sanctuary in the state recently.

This was the seventh gibbon, out of twenty stranded hoolock gibbons, to be translocated in an exercise by the state forest department and the International Fund for Animal Welfare-Wildlife Trust of India (IFAW-WTI).

The Hoolock gibbons, the only ape species found in the sub-continent, were stranded due to increasing deforestation in the area.

Hoolock gibbons use contiguous forest canopy to move, and the lack of adequate forest cover in the village forced them to come down to land, putting their lives at risk.

"The translocated hoolock gibbons have a chance of survival if they are placed in suitable habitats," IFAW's vice president of program and international operations, Ian Robinson said.

Mehao wildlife division (MWD)'s divisional forest officer, Keijum Rina said the translocation would go a long way in strengthening conservation efforts for the species.

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Russian team being trained in Panna to boost tiger conservation

NAGPUR: In a bid to boost tiger conservation efforts globally, International Fund for Animal Welfare-Wildlife Trust of India (IFAW-WTI) in collaboration with the Global Tiger Forum (GTF) has hosted a two-member team of Russian forest officers in India under the 'Tiger Watch Programme' that kicked off on February 24. It will continue till March 4.

"While there are 13 countries with a naturally occurring tiger population, with India hosting more than half of the world's wild tiger population, the country has become a popular site for spotting this magnificent beast in the wild. While in certain areas tiger density can be as high as one for every 10sq km, in Russia forest officers may sometimes go a considerably long duration or even their entire career without actually seeing a tiger in the wild, given the sparse population in the ranges," said J K Kishwan, chief of conservation, WTI.

Having started in 2005, 14 Russian forest officials have visited India so far under the programme which has always concentrated on giving the officers a compact training on the conservation of this species. This year as well, as part of the training and capacity building programme a workshop is being held in Panna tiger reserve in Madhya Pradesh where officials will be oriented on basic management practices of monitoring tigers in one of the more high density ranges of the country.

The officials will be accompanied by Skripnik Tatiana (deputy director of department of RosPrirod Nadzor) and Dr Anna Fillippova (Campaigner, IFAW-Russia) during their journey, where they will also be interacting with representatives from the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), the Global Tiger Forum (GTF) Secretariat and Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB).

Dr Fillippova commented on the training saying, "Such trainings are very crucial and help the officials become more devoted to the cause. It forms an excellent basis for the Russian rangers, who're some of the best the country has to offer, to learn about the different modes and methods being applied for conservation, expanding their horizon and in turn improving conservation efforts in Russia."

Kishwan elaborated on the choosing Panna as the location of the orientation saying, "After the entire population was eradicated from the area in 2009, this area has had an extremely successful reintroduction programme which has now become a globally acclaimed and renowned model and will serve well for practical exposure in this field. With wild tiger numbers dwindling at an alarming rate nationally and globally such workshop and training efforts go a long way in helping the field of tiger conservation."

Dr Aniruddha Majumder, technical officer for the GTF from WTI, commented on the visit saying, "Such interactions form an excellent basis for exchanging valuable information from both sides where both countries stand to benefit from each other's experiences on multi-fold levels - practical, theoretical as well as in policy level. Formed under an aegis of the ministry of external affairs (MEA), the sub-group formed between the countries has for almost a decade now contributed significantly, enhancing each others' knowledge base."

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Baby shark breathes life into aquarium project

SURAT: The state-of-the-art aquarium at Jagdishchandra Bose Udyan in Pal, which will be inaugurated here on Saturday, will help the people of the city realize their long-held dream of 'walking with the shark.'

Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) has managed to procure a blacktip reef shark (Carcharhinus melanopterus) for its aquarium from a Chennai-based agency. Unfortunately, 12 sharks that SMC earlier brought for the aquarium had died in the shark pool one after another. This forced the municipal authorities to postpone the inauguration of the aquarium from February 14 to March 1.

The blacktip reef shark was shipped in an air cargo from Chennai to Mumbai and then brought in a specialized air-conditioned vehicle to Surat on Wednesday night. Utmost care was taken by the experts of the Chennai-based agency and the aquarium staff to transport the four-month-old shark after it was caught from the Indo-Pacific region, safely to Surat. The shark is very healthy and responding well to the conditioning process in the 22x15 feet shark pool of the Rs 19-crore aquarium.

The Chennai-based Star Agency has been contracted to provide 30 sharks in a phased manner to the aquarium. SMC has not incurred any monetary loss due to the deaths of the sharks as the contract mentions that the big fish will have to be alive for a certain period of time post transfer.

Zoo superintendent and head of the aquarium project Dr Prafful Mehta told TOI, "The reef sharks are very sensitive and sometimes do not survive in the new habitat because of transit shock. But, the one brought two days ago is responding well to the new environment at the shark pool. The conditioning of this shark will go on for another 15 days."

He said, "Visitors coming to the aquarium from Saturday will be able to see the blacktip reef shark zipping through the confined netted area of the shark pool. There are over 150 fish species in the aquarium and around 50 aquarium tanks. More sharks will be brought soon."

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Mysore zoo loses 16-year-old giraffe

MYSORE: The Mysore zoo's celebration at the birth of two giraffe calves in quick succession turned into gloom as a giraffe died suddenly on Friday.

Chamaraja, hand-reared at the zoo when he was born 16 years ago, died at his enclosure next to that of Lakshmi, who delivered the calf a fortnight back.

The veterinarians, who conducted a post-mortem, believe that the male giraffe died due to hypovolemic shock because Chamaraja fell to the ground early morning and couldn't stand up despite best efforts.

Around 6am, the animal keepers noticed that Chamaraja had fallen to the ground and alerted the authorities. Vets' efforts to revive the animal failed, and declared him dead at 10 am. "We were treating Chamaraja for ortho problems," chief vet Suresh Kumar told The Times of India.

When an animal suffers hypovolemic shock, it suffers severe loss of blood and fluid, leading to dysfunction of the heart. The amount of circulating blood may drop due to diarrhea and excessive perspiration.

Chamaraja's samples are sent to Bangalore's Institute of Animal Health and Veterinary Biologicals for further examination.

The tallest animal in the world has a lifespan of 15 years in the wild and 20 years in captivity.

Chamaraja was hand-reared

The zoo's stock of giraffe was wiped out in 1980s due to an epidemic disease when the conservation centre got Honey and Henry from Germany Zoo in 1987. Though Honey delivered a male calf in May 1992, it died as mother rejected it. This continued with two other calves - born in October 1993 and in April 1995 - worrying the officials. The zoo got lucky when a male calf was born on October 6, 1996 as they were successful in hand-rearing the newborn. The zoo got guidelines for hand-rearing of giraffe calf from Los Angeles Zoo after Honey delivered her fourth calf. In fact, Krishnaraja, the first successfully hand-reared giraffe calf in India is said to be the fourth in the world to hand-rear two giraffe claves when Chamaraja was born on August 27, 1998. The experience the animal keepers had got when they nursed Krishnaraja proved handy as Honey rejected him too.

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