Short-'CITE'd

China rejects CITES' appeal to ban tiger farms saying that "there is no evidence that tiger farms are encouraging poaching of wild tigers". I don't know if China loves to be ignorant, or just has a wacky sense of humour, or if the delegate was high on Tiger Bone Wine, that the Chinese sell with such aplomb!

Read more on http://www.tigertime.info/tiger-blog.php?entry_id=1343384881&title=china-rejects-cites-call-for-tiger-farm-ban

This work by Rohan Chakravarty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The Coral Calamity

Corals are among the most fragile of ecosystems. Coral bleaching is a phenomenon in which corals expel their colour-producing algae, due to external stress that may be caused by global warming, unsustainable fishing and harvesting of sea food. Visit http://blog.conservation.org/2012/07/the-state-of-the-worlds-reefs-a-coral-scientist-explains/ for information on the current state of the world's coral reefs.

This work by Rohan Chakravarty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Batman meets Chiropterologist!

Bats form the order Chiroptera, the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight owing to the fact that their forelimbs are modified into webbed 'wings'. They are broadly classified into Megabats that eat fruit and nectar; and microbats that are carnivores and insectivores. Their secretive nature and the difficulty in accessing their roosts has made them among the most difficult creatures for biologists to study, although there have been tremednous advances in Chiropterology in the recent years.

Just catching up with The Dark Knight Rises fever !

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Arcticitis!

The Arctic is in pain. Shell is all set to drill the extremely fragile polar biosphere for oil, with its ridiculous claims of 'exploiting climate change for mankind's benefit'!  Join Greenpeace's war against the Arctic Oil Rush now if you still haven't- http://www.savethearctic.org/

PS- Turtles do not live in the Arctic. I have used what I call a 'cartoonist's license' to a small extent :-)

This work by Rohan Chakravarty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Tigers and Social Networking

Tigresses don't need dating sites or social media to advertise that they're ready to mate. Just a piece of rock or the bark of a tree is enough. She leaves behind her scent on these objects which then have the same effect on an interested male as cheese vapours had on Jerry in Tom and Jerry.

Tigers are solitary cats that come together only duringthe breeding season. Olfaction plays a very important role in tiger communication.

This work by Rohan Chakravarty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Catch Green Humour cartoons in Saevus Magazine

Received my copies of the latest issues of Saevus yesterday, and I can't get my hands off them. Beautiful pictures by some of the best photographers in the business and some great content. Watch out for the Green Humour page (top left) that appears in the main magazine. Also don't miss the kids' supplement provided with this month's issue, which provides exclusive coverage on the incredible Snow Leopard. Here are the cover illustration, illustrations for the cover story and the trivia section I did for Saevus. Visit http://www.saevus.in/ to subscribe.

This work by Rohan Chakravarty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Narcon-doom!

Narcondam Island, a tiny island in the Andaman & Nicobar Island group is a notified wildlife sanctuary sheltering 300 Narcondam Hornbills, an endangered species of hornbill found nowhere else in the world. A proposal from the Indian Coast Guard to build a radar installation and diesel power generation station on the island will prove to be a major peril for the island and its residents, owing to the large scale destruction that would follow it inevitably. The campaign initiated by conservationists to save Narcondam is gaining momentum. Visit http://www.conservationindia.org/front-page-featured/narcondam to add your voice.

This work by Rohan Chakravarty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Arctic Agony

The 'Arctic Oil Rush' is threatening to cause unprecedented devastation in the Arctic. Shell, BP, Exxon, Gazprom, Rosneft and others want to risk a devastating Arctic oil spill for only three years’ worth of oil. In the last 30 years, the world has lost about 3/4th of the ice cover in the north. As global warming goes on, the Arctic ice continues to melt bit by bit and several endangered animals like the Polar Bear cruise towards extinction.

 Join Greenpeace's initiative here http://www.savethearctic.org/ called 'Let's declare a global sanctuary in the Arctic'. It sure is a now-or-never situation.

This work by Rohan Chakravarty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Cat Campaign

What would happen if the big cats were to do a campaign such as this? Habitat destruction, poaching, mining, hunting, dams, pollution, plastics, industrial waste, man-animal conflict, unsustainable tourism, over-grazing, loss of habitat to agriculture- the list just doesn't end.

Well, well...

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