Q & A with Mongabay

I had a short but fun Q & A with Rhett Butler, founder of Mongabay.com which was published on their website today. You can go through it on http://news.mongabay.com/2013/0729-chakravarty-interview-environmental-cartoons.html.

World Tiger Day 2013

One visit to any forest in Central India is enough for you to guage the seriousness of the issue I am talking about here. Reserve forests are beginning to serve as habitats more to tourists than to wildlife. Studies have suggested several negative impacts of tourism on wildlife, including perturbance, hindrances in animal movement and migration and direct accidents. Not very long ago, a park in Central India lost a tiger cub to a rashly driven tourist jeep. Unless a balance is struck between eco-tourism and wildlife management, the impacts of tourism on the health of a reserve forest generally prove to be negative.

29th July is being celebrated as World Tiger Day this year. Veteran actor Om Puri stands up for tigers in the 'Leave Me Alone' campaign initiated by Sanctuary Asia to mark World Tiger Day. Watch the video here- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBXT1VyJlh8

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

Tahr-mented?

The home of the Nilgiri Tahr, the Shola grasslands are fast being replaced by tea estates. This member of the goat family is a precious Western Ghats endemic, listed as endangered by the IUCN with a current population of about 2000.

The Nilgiri Tahr or the Nilgiri Ibex is an endemic of the Western Ghats. It has been discovered to be a closer relative of sheep rather than its namesake. Classified along with the Himalayn and the Arabian Tahrs earlier, the Nilgiri Tahr has now been accorded its own genus. 

The tahr is fast losing its habitat to tea and spice plantations across its range. Eravikulam National Park in Kerala has the highest density and largest surviving population of Nilgiri tahr. 

First published in Saevus in the May-June 2013 issue.

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

Delete Folder Permanently?

Sir David Attenborough has referred to our species as a plague on earth and said that limiting population growth is an urgent need to give the biosphere an opportunity to bounce back (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9815862/Humans-are-plague-on-Earth-Attenborough.html). I personally, am strongly in favour of Attenborough's opinion, as well as a supporter of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (http://www.vhemt.org/). What are your views?

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

Poacher to be set free?

Sansar Chand is widely considered to be India's deadliest poacher accounting for the deaths of 250 tigers, 2,000 leopards, 5,000 otters, 20,000 wild cats and 20,000 wild foxes. These numbers aren't just staggering, but still counting as poaching nexi established by Chand continue to operate along Indian forests. Chand had managed to evade the law for years, and was unrepentant when questioned about his crimes, maintaining that poaching is a hereditary profession. His eviction is sure to spell doom for India's remaining tigers.

Read the news here- http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/jailed-for-killing-hundreds-of-tigers-sansar-chand-to-walk-free-392809

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

World Population Day

According to projections, the world population will continue to grow until at least 2050, with the population reaching 9 billion in 2040,and some predictions putting the population in 2050 as high as 11 billion. These numbers make it obvious that the effects of overpopulation on the environment will get even more pronounced in the coming years, such as depletion of natural resources, inadequacy of fresh water, increased levels of air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination and noise pollution; deforestation and loss of ecosystems, loss of arable land, global warming owing to increasing emissions, and mass species extinctions.

To everyone who has or is planning to participate in populating the planet- Happy Population Day.

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

The Gobi Bear

The Gobi Bear is a sub-species of the Brown Bear (Ursus arctos gobiensis), known in Mongolia as the Malazai. Recent population estimates claim that their may be just about 22-31 individuals remaining in the wild. Competition with cattle for the scarce vegetation that they consume, the effects of climate change, and poaching are the main conservation threats the Gobi Bear faces.

More on the conservation of Gobi Bears- http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/2012/11/20/last-22-gobi-bears-endangered-climate-change-mongolia/

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