Category: Conservation

Krithi Karanth’s dream to re-wild India – we second!

Bijoy Venugopal

Every now and then I delight in a moment where I can introduce my daughter to something alive and wild — the birth of a butterfly, a sisterhood of elephants, the jawbone of a monitor lizard, the nest of a carpenter bee, the bill of a pelican, the colour of a fruit bat’s fur, the proud puff of a baby cobra’s hood… And when I meet parents who, like me, revel in the moment they introduce their own children to these fast diminishing joys of nature, I can sense their wonder and share their delight. And rest, at least for a wink, in the comfort that our tribe will increase. Thanks to Krithi Karanth for this innervating talk about her dream to re-wild India. Watch, share and teach your children well.

Wanted – Tiger-friendly ID cards for tourists!

Bijoy Venugopal

The wildlife resort business in India, modeled on African game safaris, has taken off in the last decade, and tiger reserves have been under the most pressure to entertain their guests. And it has been the beholden duty of these businesses to stuff into eco-sensitive zones vanfuls of tourists who pay stiff fees to enjoy intimate encounters with the big cats and who, sadly, almost always miss the forest for the trees, and the other joys that the forest inevitably offers. What makes this any more than trophy hunting, albeit in a modern sense?

All is not well with Alleppey

Sandeep Somasekharan

The Vembanad Lake in Alleppey, once praised by Lord Curzon as the “Venice of the East”, is a Ramsar Wetland and a Birdlife Important Bird Area. But those tags have not stopped greedy and exploitative tour operators from turning it into a sickening playground of hooligans and a dumping ground for trash. Here’s a horror story that will turn Stephen King’s stomach.

100 tigers, but where’s the forest?

Bijoy Venugopal

The Chinese, in all their ecological ignorance, have reason to be proud. After systematically decimating all things living from their once-bountiful land, they now expect to be felicitated for their ‘conservation’ efforts. China announced on May 22 that it expects the birth of 100 Siberian Tigers at the Manchurian Tiger…

Death to Diclofenac

Bijoy Venugopal

The ban of the veterinary drug Diclofenac comes as a relief to conservationists. The drug, administered to domestic cattle and water buffalo, has been blamed for the Great Asian Vulture Crisis. Diclofenac enters the food chain when vultures feed on livestock carcasses, causing kidney failure. Ornithologists the world over have…

When a green finger hurts

Bijoy Venugopal

I have lived all my life with a green finger. Now scurvied by years of abuse in the urban wilderness, it joins my palsied lungs in an anguished cry. For clean air. For fresh water. For uncontaminated soil. For quiet. Around me, the poisoned land is fast losing the battle…