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Cover Story

Poor enforcement, weak laws make poaching an easy game

Salman Khan might be in the arclights because of his poaching misadventures. But many people routinely get away with killing protected animals; none more so than the organised rings involved in poaching and the lucrative international trade in animal parts. To blame is a law that has myriad loopholes and an inadequate enforcement regime. arnab pratim dutta in Jodhpur and kirtiman awasthi in Delhi investigate

Editor's page

We don't smell the air

I smelled the air of Bangalore last week. It was foul. I remembered how in the late 1990s, when Delhi's air was dark and dirty, we had run an advertisement in the newspapers "Roll down the window of your bullet-proof car, Mr Prime Minister, the security threat is not the gun it is the air of Delhi." Since then Delhi introduced compressed natural gas, it increased the number of buses, it got better quality fuel. With all this, the air got less dirty and less toxic. But now with each passing day, the city adds just below 1,000 new private vehicles.

News

Dow Chemicals's Indian subsidiary under scanner

CEC to stay, says SC

Proposed Tata plant in Tanzania threat to flamingo habitat

Vienna climate change meet sets stage for Bali COP

Panchayat minister wants control of urban local bodies

Court orders miners to compensate Goa farmers

Post-floods, Orissa's tribal districts suffer cholera outbreak

Update

Punjab crop loss spurs debate on pesticide use

People feel cheated over government assurances on Pedhi dam

NREGA racket Chhattisgarh suspends officials

Mumbai gears up for green survey

Pak loses $30 million after EU ban on export of seafood

India to develop fuel economy standards

US, Mexico accuse China of unfair trade practices

In short

Science & Technology

Irrigation can't stave off global warming

New biomass model may help monitor crop damage, health

Medicinal plants help animals digest better

Fungi lend anti-microbial properties to neem

Ecotourism can backfire if mismanaged

A P Mitra practical professor

Eggplant controls type 2 diabetes

Diagnosis of Down's Syndrome can be more precise now

Bytes

Factsheet

Climate crime revisited

Feature

Some funds creating green portfolios, but investment routes won't change soon

Jharkhand tribals build their own government homes

E-waste posing health risks for workers in scrapyards

Arctic rush driven by desire to control hydrocarbon deposits, shipping routes

The Fortnight

Darfur displaced demand justice

In short

Norway's eco-friendly prison

Environmental organisation challenges US federal agency

Mumbai's fragrant dumping grounds

Japan blames China for smog

Colombian refugees demand compensation for destroyed coca crops

Iraq wants treaty on sharing river waters

APEC summit ends on lukewarm note

No respite from forest fires in Europe

Post-Katrina, arsenic contamination haunts New Orleans

South Asia

Falling demand saves whales

China lacks sewage facilities

UK won't meet CO<sub>2</sub> emissions reduction target

Australia to revive Murray-Darling basin

In court

Leader

Goa village wins compensation for fields scarred by mining

landmark is a much abused word when it comes to legal copy. But the Bombay High Court's recent order that six mining companies would have to compensate farmers in north Goa for rendering their agricultural fields unfit for cultivation through unchecked mining activities surely deserves this adjective. Mining has long been a problem in the hinterlands of the state, far from the national and international scrutiny that the influx of tourists into the coastal areas might conceivably provoke.

Will the Arctic be conquered?

the Arctic was a fashionable destination this summer. A team of Russian researchers planted their country's flag there in August. The Canadians went there, so did the Danes, even India sent an expedition recently. The Indians, though, do not claim any slice of the Arctic; not so far, at least. But Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the us do, and there is every chance that imperialist designs over the North Pole have been rekindled.

Crosscurrent

Global warming can't be fixed without egalitarian ethic

Review

Piecing together problems with conservation in India

Citizens' reports indict Gujarat government for Surat floods

The floods of August 2006 are among the worst Gujarat's Surat city has experienced in recent times. The sudden release of a huge amount of water from the Ukai dam led to over 80 per cent of Surat going under water. More than 2 million people were incommunicado--trapped in their houses without food and drinking water for four days and four nights.

Tribals continue to be robbed of land in Erode

On August 28, senior police officers and forest department personnel of two contiguous districts in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka held a joint meeting to combat the growing Naxal presence in forest areas. Erode in Tamil Nadu, one of the two districts in question, had not far back been the hunting grounds of the forest brigand, Veerappan. It has also seen extensive adivasi land alienation in the last few decades.

Media

Aboriginal art tells hidden stories

Barely a month goes by without a painting by an Australian aboriginal artist selling for a record price. But the beauty of those paintings that frequently grace Australia's art galleries and corporate board rooms mask the often complex stories they tell. The dots and lines that represent sand hills and water holes in the desert may also depict a massacre. That's true of the Cross Country Project as well.

Indian film on wild dogs wins award

Two Indian film-makers who had braved forest brigand Veerappan to shoot a film on wild dogs were feted at a recent Japanese festival. Wild Dog Diaries, made by the Mysore-based filmmaker-photographer duo S Krupakar and Senani Hegde, has bagged the Best of the Festival Grand Award 2007 at the Japanese Wildlife Film Festival held at Toyama, Japan.

BBC won't telecast TV special on climate change

The bbc has scrapped plans for Planet Relief, a tv special on climate change. The decision came after the corporation's executives said it was not the bbc's job to lead opinion on climate change. Environmentalists slammed the decision.

News snippets

>> Ullas Karanth, the Indian wildlife biologist, best known for his prolific research and writing on tigers, has been given the
prestigious J Paul Getty Award for Conservation Leadership for 2007-- an annual award conferred by the Los Angeles-based Getty Centre to "honour outstanding contributions to international conservation".

In UK, images to accompany anti-smoking warnings

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It's just a game

A pestilence spread by travellers, pets and curious teenagers may show that experts have not taken everything into account when planning for an outbreak of disease, according to us researchers, writing in the medical journal, The Lancet. But luckily they are talking of a computer game gone awry. And more significantly it could prove clues to human behaviour during epidemics.

Musical critiques US corporations

The cultish power of big corporations has found expression in films, even angry documentaries. It's theatre now. But Walmartopia, a musical satire travelling to towns in the us, is meant for an upscale audience that would never set foot in a Wal-Mart. But its point is well made only because Wal-Mart has become a symbol of corporate venality.

Online Come, know the toad

http//www.amphibiaweb.org

Call it a virtual initiative to help a variety of animals, many of whose ancestors shared space with dinosaurs. The decline of amphibians has spurred a group of volunteers who run www.amphibiaweb.org an online system that enables anyone with a web browser to look up information relating to amphibian biology and conservation. The site was developed in conjunction with the Digital Library Project at the University of California, Berkeley.

Letters

Whose certificate?

This is in response to the cover story 'How green is your building' (August 31, 2007). The article is quite informative.

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