Wildlife Institute of India

Not Enough Space in Kuno, MP Govt Wants Some African Cheetahs To Be Shifted: Report

South African cheetah expert Vincent van der Merwe said Mukandara in Rajasthan is the best possible site for cheetahs as it was also included in the risk management plan.

New Delhi: The BJP state government in Madhya Pradesh has asked the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) to find a new habitat in the wild for some of the cheetahs brought to Kuno National Park from Africa as they would not be able to monitor the movements of all of them living free, reports Hindustan Times.

Kuno National Park has received eight cheetahs from Namibia and 12 from South Africa, of which one died. Four of the cheetahs were released in the wild last month while the balance 15 remain in an enclosure of six sq km. They are scheduled to be released in the wild over the next three to four months.

An official of the Madhya Pradesh forest department told the newspaper that spread over 748 sq km, the Kuno National Park can accommodate only nine to ten cheetahs since a cheetah’s territory is spread over 300 to 800 square km. Of the four cheetahs released in the wild, two are exploring a large part of the buffer area, the official told Hindustan Times. Recently, one of them, Oban, had to be brought back to the park from a nearby village.

“We have deployed two teams of 18 officials around the clock to monitor cheetahs in the wild. For monitoring 17 cheetahs in the wild, we have at least 126 forest officials equipped with drones, vehicles, and wireless sets,” the forest official said. Having so many people inside the park for tracking would disturb the natural habitat, he told HT. A second official told the newspaper that the department has written to the NTCA “for arranging a second home for the cheetahs”.

South African cheetah expert Vincent van der Merwe said Mukundara Hills National Park in Rajasthan is the best possible site for cheetahs as it was also included in the risk management plan. “It would be a wise decision to send some cheetahs to Mukandara,” he told HT.

Wildlife Institute of India (WII) scientist Qamar Qureshi, who is in charge of the project, told Hindustan Times that releasing all the cheetahs in the wild in Kuno was never the plan.

“We know that Kuno does not have enough space for all cheetahs and that is why Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary [in MP], Mukandra Wildlife Sanctuary, and Gandhisagar Wildlife Sanctuary [also in MP] were selected as other possible homes for them,” he said. Qureshi added Mukandara in Rajasthan is ready for the introduction of Cheetahs and the Union environment ministry and NTCA will have to take a final decision.

Government Cuts Short Term of Biologist Y.V. Jhala, Who Brought Cheetahs to India

This is not the first time the Union government has overlooked or undermined Jhala.

New Delhi: The environment ministry has reportedly cut short the two-year extension granted to noted biologist and Wildlife Institute of India (WII) dean Yadavendradev Vikramsinh Jhala on his superannuation on February 28, 2022. His term has been cut short one year into the extension, the Indian Express reported.

This vacancy will be filled through the ongoing process of recruitment of scientists, the ministry’s order said.

Jhala has been at the helm of India’s Cheetah project for over a decade now and had escorted the Cheetahs when they arrived from Namibia. Jhala flew with the animals from Namibia to the Kuno national park in Madhya Pradesh and oversaw their quarantine in small enclosures, known as ‘bomas’, upon their arrival.

However, as The Wire has previously reported, this is not the first time the Union government has overlooked or undermined Jhala. In October 2022, he was left out of the nine-member task force to monitor the conditions of the eight Cheetahs flown in from Namibia earlier that month. This was particularly notable as Jhala had been involved in the project to bring the animals to India since its inception in 2009.

Conservationist M.K. Ranjitsinh told the Indian Express about Jhala’s ouster, “I’m very surprised and concerned. In the interest of the Cheetah Project, the government should clarify why this action was necessary.” Jhala himself told the newspaper that he would not comment.

Jhala had reportedly ruffled some feathers in the administration while bringing the animals to the country. An Indian Express report detailed a specific incident where he opposed the transport of the Cheetah’s from Gwalior to Kuno via the noisy ‘Chinook’ helicopters, noting that the loud noises would stress the animals. Further, Jhala was also not among those officials present during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the Cheetahs on his birthday, September 17.

“The fact that Dr Jhala rubbed the establishment the wrong way became very clear when he was dropped (from the task force) last year. He refused to compromise on science, and the situation only went downhill,” a colleague of Jhala’s at the WII told the Indian Express about his term being cut short.

Kuno Cheetah Was Pregnant but Lost Embryos, Possibly Due to ‘Stress’

Meanwhile, two cheetahs have been released into a larger enclosure and all eight are “healthy, active and adjusting well”, tweeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Kochi: One of the eight African cheetahs that reached Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh from Namibia as part of Project Cheetah was pregnant but lost the embryos possibly due to stress, as per news reports.

Earlier, reports had claimed on October 1 that one of the cheetahs was pregnant. However, some state forest officials and scientists with the Wildlife Institute of India (who are overseeing the implementation of the project) had denied these “rumours”.

Meanwhile, two cheetahs have been released into a larger, fenced enclosure in Kuno, tweeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the morning of November 6. He added that all eight individuals are “healthy, active and adjusting well”.

Cheetah ‘Asha’ was pregnant

On Modi’s 72nd birthday on September 17, eight African cheetahs arrived in India as part of Project Cheetah, a programme that aims to introduce the big cat in India to ‘bring back’ the species to the country. (India was previously home to the Asiatic cheetah but the last of them were hunted down in the 1950s.)

Modi had named one of the five females that arrived in India ‘Asha’ (which translates to ‘hope’ in Hindi).

This female was pregnant when she was translocated from Namibia to Kuno National Park, but lost the embryos possibly due to stress, a Times of India report quoted the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), an NGO which sourced the eight cheetahs from Namibia and has been involved in overseeing their health, arrival in India and quarantine, along with the Indian government, as saying, on November 6.

Laurie Marker, the founder and executive director of CCF, said that the cheetah was pregnant when the team captured her in Namibia. However, it was “early” and they “assumed” that she aborted due to stress, Marker told TOI. But now, it has been 100 days since her capture from the wild and since the cheetah gestation period is 93 days, it is “safe to say” that she will not have a litter anymore, Marker told TOI.

The newspaper had reported on October 1 that one of the female cheetahs, named Asha by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was pregnant. However, while the CCF maintained that it was too early to tell, there was “nothing to support the October 1 media reports” that one of the female cheetahs was pregnant, Madhya Pradesh principal chief conservator of forests J.S. Chauhan had told the New Indian Express on October 3. Both the Madhya Pradesh forest department and scientists with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) dismissed speculations that Asha was pregnant as being based on “rumours”. Additionally, the CCF did not confirm that any of the five female cats are pregnant, a top Madhya Pradesh forest official had said on October 2.

Two cheetahs released into larger enclosure

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister tweeted on the morning of November 6 that two cheetahs have been released into a larger enclosure after their mandatory quarantine. He also added that all eight cheetahs were “healthy, active and adjusting well”, in the video tweet which shows two individuals moving around in an enclosure.

“Great news! Am told that after the mandatory quarantine, 2 cheetahs have been released to a bigger enclosure for further adaptation to the Kuno habitat. Others will be released soon. I’m also glad to know that all cheetahs are healthy, active and adjusting well,” the tweet read.

Great news! Am told that after the mandatory quarantine, 2 cheetahs have been released to a bigger enclosure for further adaptation to the Kuno habitat. Others will be released soon. I’m also glad to know that all cheetahs are healthy, active and adjusting well. 🐆 pic.twitter.com/UeAGcs8YmJ

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) November 6, 2022

The other six would be released into the larger enclosures from their quarantines before November 10, but this is dependent on the recommendations given by CCF officials, WII scientists and state forest department experts, an official with the Madhya Pradesh forest department told Hindustan Times on November 6. A senior official with the Cheetah Task Force (which was put together in late September to oversee several aspects of Project Cheetah including their release into enclosures and later into the wild in Kuno) told Hindustan Times that prey species will be introduced here so that the cheetahs can hunt them down. In the quarantine enclosures, authorities have been feeding the big cats buffalo meat.

Also Read | Big Deal: Did Namibia Ask India To Pull Its Ivory Ban in Return for Cheetahs?

Leopard worry remains

However, state forest officials spotted a female leopard within one of the larger enclosures through camera trap images; pugmarks also revealed its presence, reported the Times of India on November 6. This is despite officials having ‘leopard-proofed’ the enclosures by erecting fences around, and removing three leopards from within the enclosures before the cheetahs arrived.

Leopards share space with African cheetahs in their native range, but they also prey on cheetahs. They are known to cause 9% of cheetah deaths in South Africa, animal conservationist Vincent van der Merwe, who flew with the eight spotted cats from Namibia to KNP in September, told the news agency PTI. Though cheetahs avoid leopards and sometimes even chase them away, cheetah cubs and sub-adults do fall prey to leopards, he added.

A leopard and cheetah staring at each other at a park in Botswana in Southern Africa. Photo: Photo: Jamie Hopf via PTI

“The high density of leopards is a matter of concern for cheetahs in KNP. But, two spotted animals have a history of co-existence in South Africa, Namibia and India for centuries,” van der Merwe, who has been given the responsibility to get 12 cheetahs from his home country to India, told PTI. The conservationist manages the Metapopulation Initiative, which offers service to metapopulation reserves in Africa, including identifying cheetahs for swapping or relocating surplus cheetahs to reserves where their population needs to be augmented. He has been managing the population of cheetahs in such reserves in South Africa for the last 11 years.

Director of Kuno National Park, Uttam Sharma, told PTI that there are 70-80 leopards in the park. Dean of WII, Y.V. Jhala had earlier told The Wire Science that he does not think leopards in Kuno will be a problem for the African cheetahs because cheetahs live with lions, leopards, spotted hyenas and wild dogs in Africa.

Y.K. Jhala, Scientist at Forefront of Project Cheetah for 13 Years, Excluded from Task Force

Apart from working to bring Cheetahs to India under various government’s since 2009, Jhala was the lead author of the 2022 Cheetah Action Plan and even led the technical negotiations with biologists in Namibia and South Africa.

New Delhi: On September 20, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) constituted a new nine-member task force to monitor the conditions of the eight Cheetahs flown in from Namibia earlier this month. However, according to a report in the Indian Express, this task force has one notable omission – noted biologist Yadavendradev Vikramsinh Jhala.

Jhala, the dean of the Wildlife Institute of India, has been at the helm of India’s Cheetah project for over a decade now and had escorted the Cheetahs when they arrived from Namibia. Jhala flew with the animals from Namibia to the Kuno national park in Madhya Pradesh and oversaw their quarantine in small enclosures, known as ‘bomas’, upon their arrival.

Going further back, Jhala has been involved in the project to bring the animals to India since its inception in 2009.

Under the last Cheetah Task Force, constituted under conservationist M.K. Ranjitsinh in 2010, Jhala served as the head of the project’s technical team. Jhala even prepared the first report on potential sites for the Cheetah’s release in 2009, after erstwhile Union environment minister of the UPA government, Jairam Ramesh, tasked them with the survey.

Coming back to the present, Jhala was the lead author of the 2022 Cheetah Action Plan and even led the technical negotiations with biologists in Namibia and South Africa. Yet, despite his key role in bringing the animals to India over the years, Jhala does not find his name among the task force members.

Also read: Project Cheetah Begins to the Trumpets of Hope, and Wariness

The present task force, constituted by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) on the orders of the NTCA, will be headed by Alok Kumar, former Madhya Pradesh principal chief conservator of forests, and comprises other members such as the current principal secretaries of forests and tourism, members of the NTCA and Wildlife Institute of India and other government officials.

According to a report in the Times of India, the group has been tasked with monitoring how the eight Cheetahs adapt to their new environment in Kuno, their hunting skills, their enclosures and will finally determine when the animals can be released from quarantine for the public to see them, among other responsibilities.

Given the technical mandates of the task force, the exclusion of Jhala appears all the more curious.

Sources cited in the Express report opine that Jhala may have been excluded because he ruffled some feathers in the administration while bringing the animals to the country. The report details a specific incident where he opposed the transport of the Cheetah’s from Gwalior to Kuno via the noisy ‘Chinook’ helicopters, noting that the loud noises would stress the animals.

Further, Jhala was also not among those officials present during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the Cheetahs on his birthday, September 17.

‘Minimum Government’: Centre to Cut Funds to Five Premier Environment Bodies

The finance ministry has recommended a gradual reduction of government support to a bunch of institutions over three years.

New Delhi: Plans are afoot to disengage the Centre from the functioning and financing of five premier environment-wildlife-forest institutions currently under the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC), the Times of India has reported.

The disengagement plan, proposed by the Ministry of Expenditure (under the finance ministry), will affect the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun; Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM), Bhopal; Indian Plywood Industries Research and Training Institute, Bengaluru; CPR Environmental Education Centre, Chennai; and Centre for Environment Education (CEE), Ahmedabad.

According to the Times of India, joint secretary (cabinet), Ashutosh Jindal, has issued a memorandum to this effect, dated October 9, and marked it to the secretary, MoEFCC, after a review of 16 autonomous bodies under the environment ministry.

“The report has been prepared in accordance with the guidelines prescribed under rule 229 of General Finance rules 2017. The purpose of the report is to make specific and actionable recommendations for rationalisation of autonomous bodies with a view to furthering the aim of ‘minimum government, maximum governance,’ ensuring efficient use of public funds,” Hindustan Times quoted expenditure secretary T.V. Somanathan as saying.

Also read: Draft EIA Notification – a Unique Text That Places Violators Front and Centre

According to the memorandum, the disengagement is to be carried out in two phases: a phasing out of government support to institutions in a time-bound manner, and enabling relevant industries/stakeholders to assume responsibility for them after. The recommendations further add that the Centre should withdraw from these institutions within a three-year time period, with a gradual budget reduction of 25% every year.

Per the text, the WII and IIFM “may be converted into an autonomous institution or a deemed university”. The note also recommends that the CPR Environmental Education Centre and the CEE be coupled completely from government as they haven’t received any government funding since 2017.

A gradual reduction of 25% budget each year over the next three years has been proposed in the case of Indian Plywood Industries Research and Training Institute, Bengaluru, since – according to the memorandum – the body is largely industry-driven.

Finally, the memorandum notes that the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History, Coimbatore, which is under the MoEFCC, should be brought under the ministry’s regular functioning.

In addition, other notable MoEFCC bodies, including the Central Pollution Control Board, the Central Zoo Authority, the National Tiger Conservation Authority and the National Biodiversity Authority, can continue to function under the government but they should be encouraged to become “self-financed”.

Birds vs Hydropower Project in Arunachal Pradesh: Who Will Win?

The proposal for the 3,097 megawatts hydropower project in the biodiversity-rich Dibang valley of Arunachal Pradesh has once again been postponed for lack of clarity on its environmental impact.

The proposal for 3,097-megawatt Etalin hydropower project in Dibang valley of Arunachal Pradesh in India’s northeast region has been pushed back yet again as questions regarding the project’s impact on biodiversity are yet to be answered before it gets clearance.

Considered among the most biodiversity-rich areas of the world, the region where the project is proposed is reported to have 680 bird species – more than half of India’s total bird species. Rare birds, as well as other important animals like the tiger, are found here.

The hydropower project, which has been awaiting forest clearance for years from the Indian government’s ministry of environment, forest and climate change (MoEFCC) was once again discussed during the meeting of ministry’s expert forest panel, the forest advisory committee (FAC), on October 17, 2019. It had first come to the FAC in 2014 and since then it has been discussed by the committee in 2015 and 2017.

First envisaged in 2008, the Etalin hydropower project is proposed to be developed as a combination of two run-of-the-river schemes and involves the construction of concrete gravity dams on the Tangon and Dri rivers. It seeks diversion of about 1,165.66 hectares of forest area from the environment ministry. However, the area that is sought for diversion is classified as an “inviolate area” as prescribed by the environment ministry which is an area where no developmental project is allowed. Of the total forest area proposed for diversion for the Etalin project, 134 hectares are very dense forest and 267 hectares are moderately dense forest. If the project gets clearance, it would result in the felling of at least 280,677 trees.

Also read: Explainer | The Controversy Surrounding Dibang Dam, India’s Largest Hydropower Project

In the minutes of its 2017 meeting, the FAC had noted that the proposed project falls under the richest bio-geographical province of the Himalayan zone and one of the mega biodiversity hotspots of the world.

“The proposed project location falls at the junction of the Palaearctic, Indo-Chinese, and Indo-Malayan bio-geographic regions having luxuriant forests and plethora of flora and fauna. About six globally threatened mammal species are found in this region of which three are endangered and three are under the vulnerable category,” the minutes noted.

Project area is home to rich biodiversity

The FAC observed that about 680 bird species have been recorded from this region which is about 56 percent of total bird species of India and among them, 19 are globally threatened and 10 near threatened. It has four critically endangered, two endangered and 13 vulnerable species. It also has 3 very rare restricted range endemic bird species.

“This makes this area a very important place in terms of conservation of globally threatened bird species,” noted the FAC while adding that the entire region falls under “the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) management categories III and IV, Endemic Bird Area, Global Biodiversity Hotspot, and Key Biodiversity Area indicating its importance at global scale.”

The project envisages a concrete gravity dam on Dri river in Dibang Valley in Arunachal Pradesh. Photo: Goldentakin/Flickr

It is also a vital tiger area of the region and FAC had noted that the area has more biodiversity than any other part of India.

The forest panel quoted a study that used camera traps and captured “a total of 12 individual tigers and eight individual clouded leopards at various locations in Dibang Valley.”

“A large majority, above 60 percent, of the camera traps were placed outside Dibang Wildlife Sanctuary which shows that both species are not only abundant but also very widespread in the district,” FAC had noted in 2017. At that time it had recommended conducting multiple seasonal replicate studies on biodiversity assessment by an internationally credible institute noting that the current environmental impact assessment study was “completely inadequate” in this regard.

The minutes reveal that during the last few years, FAC had sought views of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), India’s nodal body to ensure protection and welfare of tigers, several times – in 2017, 2018 and 2019 – but has not received a response so far.

A subcommittee formed to check further assess the project

In its meeting on October 17, 2019, the FAC once again discussed the issue and noted that the “recommendations of last FAC meeting has not been complied with fully and the replies submitted in compliance of all observations are not satisfactory.”

Also read: Activists Continue to Protest Dam Being Built on Brahmaputra

Moreover, the FAC could not obtain viewpoints of representatives of user agency or state government, as no one was present at the meeting for consultation and clarification of doubts, the minutes said.

The FAC, therefore, recommended that a subcommittee “shall visit the site and check if the total land requirement could be further reduced.”

“The subcommittee may also look into the concerns highlighted by regional office in its site inspection report especially related to tree enumeration process and the aspects highlighted in biodiversity assessments study by the WII (Wildlife Institute of India). Report of subcommittee shall be exhaustive with appropriate recommendation so that the FAC could take appropriate decision,” observed the minutes.

One of the concerns raised by the FAC in its 2017 meeting was that the project proposes a huge area for construction and dumping and thus had noted that the Arunachal Pradesh government shall explore the possibility to reduce area.

Tiger, which is India’s national animal, is also found in the region. Representative picture of a tiger in hills. Camera trap image by Global Tiger Forum/World Wildlife Fund/Sikkim Forest Department

Environmental lawyer Ritwick Dutta said that the “principal concern with the recommendation of the FAC is the fact that the mandate given to the subcommittee is only to look at whether the area can be reduced or not.”

“In a biodiversity-rich area the entire thrust of the forest advisory committee should be to avoid diversion of the forest land. The subcommittee’s mandate is extremely limited and all that you can do is to reduce the area. Given the fact that India is committed to the Paris Agreement for reducing deforestation and adding additional forest areas, the first task of the forest advisory committee should be to protect the area in accordance with the National Forest Policy 1988,” Dutta told Mongabay-India.

The regional office of the MoEFCC in its site inspection report had not recommended the proposal in the present form for forest clearance. It had raised concerns that the enumeration of the trees has not reflected the ground reality as huge trees (old-growth) are not reflected in the final list.

Also read: What Use Is Dredging the Brahmaputra?

The project’s estimated cost is about Rs. 252.96 billion (Rs. 25,296.95 crores) and it has already been recommended environment clearance in January 2017. The MoEFCC’s Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) for River, Valley and Hydroelectric Power Projects in its meeting in January 2017 had recommended the environmental clearance to the project, which is being developed by the Etalin Hydro Electric Power Company Limited which is a joint venture company of the Jindal Power and Hydro Power Development Corporation of Arunachal Pradesh Limited (HPDCAPL).

Hydropower development is of significance in Arunachal Pradesh with its hydropower development potential estimated to be about 50,000 MW. However, not even 10-20 percent of the potential has been realised so far as the biodiversity-rich state attempts to balance out infrastructure projects with environmental concerns.

The development of hydropower in the northeast has been on the agenda of the central government. In July 2019 the government had approved various clearances for the 2,880 MW Dibang hydropower project in Arunachal Pradesh. In the past six months, it has also declared that large hydropower projects have renewable energy status and pushed for the enactment of a dam safety bill.

This articles was published on Mongabay. Read the original here.

How Does Plastic Pollute the Ganga? An All-Women Scientists’ Expedition Is Looking for Answers

India and Bangladesh are battling plastic build-up through legislation and policies. The research expedition could help inform pollution management practices along the Ganga.

Under the scorching summer sun, a motley crew of women scientists, engineers and explorers armed with a range of scientific equipment, emerged from a boat and fanned out in different directions, along one of the world’s most iconic waterways – the Ganga.

“It was quite the showstopper,” recalled marine biologist Heather Koldewey who co-leads this women-led team studying plastic pollution in the Ganges river in India and Bangladesh in the National Geographic-backed “Sea to Source: Ganges” river expedition.

Koldewey and environmental engineer Jenna Jambeck, are leading an international team (both culturally and scientifically diverse) of 20 to trace and document how plastic waste travels from source to sea and to fill critical knowledge gaps around plastic flow, load and composition.

In partnership with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), the University of Dhaka and WildTeam, the expedition travelled upstream with the Ganga-through the Bay of Bengal where the river drains into the sea to its origin in the Himalayas to characterise plastic waste in the river. After entering Bangladesh, the main branch of Ganga is known as the Padma.

Having completed the first round of their expedition in June, the team plans to repeat the exercise after the monsoon season in October to capture seasonal variations in mapping plastic pollution in the air, water, land and aquatic species.

“Starting at the ocean end we know there are 8 to 12 m metric tonnes of plastic coming into oceans every year and that rivers are sources of that plastic but the data on rivers are based on models of population and waste management (how many people there are and what is the waste management structure) and there is sort of extrapolation of that but we don’t exactly know what is going on, on the ground,” Koldewey told Mongabay-India.

Wildlife Institute of India’s Anju Baroth says this expedition will serve as a model for other such expeditions across the world.

“Given the global theory of rivers acting as a carrier for plastic waste to oceans, this expedition is world’s first ground-truthing effort to actually verify the plastic load that a freshwater body carries to the sea and verify the theory as well as models proposed in various studies,” Baroth told Mongabay-India.

Also read: Mining and Brick Kilns Hasten Ganga’s Shift From Patna

The 2,525 km-long Ganga binds five Indian states along its main stem and 11 in her entire basin that is home to 625 million people. Despite its cultural and religious importance, the river has rapidly degraded since the 20th century due to human activities. Ganga is one of the 10 rivers responsible for around 90 percent of the plastic that ends up at sea.

Koldewey notes the timing is right for an elaborate and targeted expedition as their’s, referencing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s commitment to clean the Ganga and his pledge to end single-use plastic by 2022.

“The political framing was good and there are a lot of good initiatives already happening for cleaning up the Ganga and tackling single-use plastic in many Indian cities,” said Koldewey.

For Bangladesh, which prides itself for its riverine nature (with one of the largest networks in the world and a total of about 700 rivers including the Ganges-Brahmaputra River Delta), the plastic pollution problem has a geographical context.

The country’s precarious position along the long Bay of Bengal coastline means it is at the receiving end for transboundary movement of numerous pollutants, Gawsia Wahidunnessa Chowdhury of the department of zoology at the University of Dhaka, who leads the Bangladesh team, told Mongabay-India.

The sea-based sources of plastic in the country’s waters include merchant ships, ferries, fishing vessels, offshore oil and gas platforms, and fish farming installations, while the land-based ones include municipal and industrial wastes. “Most of the industries in Bangladesh are situated near the major river systems such as the Buriganga, Shitalakkhya, Balu, Turag, Karnaphuli, Rupsa and Meghna rivers all of which end up in the Bay of Bengal,” said Chowdhury.

The country was the first in the world to ban polythene bags in 2002 and production, marketing, carrying, and use of plastic bags were made a punishable crime.

“The ban was implemented for the first couple of years smoothly and appeared as a success for the time being but have not followed through with appropriate enforcement,” said Chowdhury, adding the country has aligned itself to global commitments to reduce marine pollution by 2025 as also introducing reuse and recycling strategy for waste management domestically.

How the expedition works

The scientific expedition moved through 10 sites by boats, train, boat and road, across seven weeks, spending three days per site.

From backstreet fish markets to local scrap dealers, colleagues from India, Bangladesh, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, worked with communities along the Ganga to understand the waste infrastructure and challenges.

They split into three teams to cover land, water, and people. The land team tracked land-based litter, waste management infrastructure, and understood the dynamics of the informal recycling sector. The water team went into the river and collected air, water, and sediment samples to analyse both micro- and macro-plastics.

The socioeconomics team organised community focus-groups to discuss perceptions of plastic and the relationship between plastics and poverty among villagers and shopkeepers.

Also read: Ganga May Still Be Dirty, But the Modi Govt Spent Crores Advertising Its Cleaning

They used land-debris trackers, community surveys, drones and water-air-sediment sampling to map plastic debris in the Ganga.

“We combined the simplest of methods with the newest innovations for science and solutions. We used a range of technology-from the lowest to the highest,” noted Koldewey with a laugh.

For instance, scientists dropped over 2500 wooden drift cards along the Ganga with the help of local communities to track litter with the Marine Debris Tracker app designed by the University of Georgia. Each one has a unique number and a message to Hindi and Bangla text in if found so we can record the location.

The team also deployed a new technology to track and retrieve plastic bottles to understand how waste drifts through a river. They placed satellite/cellular tags in discarded bottles to follow its course along the river.

“We also documented the plastic items that we were carrying with us including what we were wearing because we did have plastic on in terms of life-saving jackets etc. We ensured that we didn’t leave behind the plastic we had brought with us to India and Bangladesh. We carried them out after the expedition was over,”

As an all-female team, security was probably the biggest concern but in general, logistics and working conditions kept the members on their toes.

“We had to do socio-economic surveys, and for the communities, it was less intimidating in opening up conversations with us as women. Expeditions can be strenuous and we were there during the worst time in terms of the weather so we had to work around that. The Bangladesh portion was mostly on a boat and some of the team had never been on a boat,” Koldewey said.

In India, the expedition built on the baseline data generated on biodiversity profile, toxicology, genetics, community engagement and other aspects for all the Ganga states as part of WII’s Biodiversity Conservation and Ganga Rejuvenation project funded under National Mission for Clean Ganga.

Also read: Why Is Narendra Modi Allowing Nitin Gadkari to Destroy the Ganga?

The involvement of the Indian scientific team eased the expedition’s selection of sites for surveys and leveraged support of local resources (Ganga Praharis or Ganga ambassadors) for the socio-economic and education component of the project.

A cadre of about 1000 Ganga Praharis is trained for spreading the message of biodiversity conservation and Ganga cleanliness. These ambassadors were selected from each Ganga state from every possible village establishing deep roots and links within the society, explained Baroth.

Women in nature conservation

Along the way, Koldewey and peers hope to change the face of expeditions and explorations.

“We are a very diverse group from different disciplines. The decision to be an all-female team was not explicitly deliberate in the beginning. We set off choosing the best people for the job, and they also happened to be women. We could change the face of what explorations and expeditions typically look like,” Koldewey said.

“Imagine we get to a place where 15 or 16 women get out which is a show stopper in itself and then we head into different directions. It was quite a sight and we did attract quite a lot of attention,” beamed Koldewey.

Baroth, like Koldewey, noted the coincidence that most of the members of this expedition happen to be women. “I consider science and scientists to be gender-neutral. However, the WII team had equal representation of women and men (out of four researchers two are men and two women; among six principal investigators, three are men and three women),” Baroth said.

Chowdhury feels this expedition provides a platform to inspire more women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) for nature conservation.

This article was originally published on Mongabay and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

How the Tiger Census Estimated India Now Has 2,967 Tigers

After the results of the census were announced on International Tiger Day, observers raised an important question: have the size and age bars of tiger cubs been lowered to inflate the number of tigers?

We were pleased to hear last month that the country’s tiger population has risen by 33% since 2014, signalling that tiger conservation is on the right track. We also need to be thankful to all those well-meaning critics across society who had cautioned in the late 1990s that tigers would go extinct from India by the turn of the 21st century unless the government took some urgent and bold steps. With 2,967 tigers, India now supports around 80% of the tigers occurring in the 13 Asia-Pacific tiger-range countries.

The new tiger estimation method has greatly evolved since it was first used in 2006, and is now more scientifically and statistically defensible, using contemporary animal abundance-assessment methodologies. Surveyors complemented this with a large number of camera-traps, GPS trackers and range-finders. This way, apart from counting tigers, surveyors have also estimated the populations of a number of co-predators and ungulate species throughout the country.

The old estimation method used to be blamed for inflated tiger numbers; when pushed, surveyors could only produce drawings and plaster-casts of tiger pug-marks to back up the declared number, and state forest departments would take much of the flak. However, the new method requires surveyors to have photographed the tigers – which they have to the extent of 83% – and the resulting 76,500+ pictures are catalogued in the tiger cell of the Wildlife Institute of India.

At the time of the St Petersburg tiger summit in November 2010, India was estimated to have 1,411 tigers – a number derived from an estimation exercise that had concluded in 2006. This is the source of the claim that the number of tigers doubled between 2006 and 2018. Officials would update the data to 1,706 only in March 2011, based on the results of another exercise in 2010.

Since 2006, experts have determined the ages of tigers based on the size of a tiger in relation to its mother. While it is difficult to assess a young tiger’s age in the wild, local forest personnel, mahouts and researchers working in a protected area can tell the age of a cub associated with a formerly pregnant tigress. Tigers aged 1-1.5 years almost always accompany their mothers, and experts can also estimate age based on the cub’s height relative to its mother’s. All of them use strategically installed camera-traps for these exercises. In case a mother has not been photographed, it becomes difficult to assess the size and age of a small tiger.

This way, tigers are categorised as small and large cubs, juveniles, sub-adults, adults, primes and old adults. These are not fixed classes and have some overlap since they are ultimately subjective.

Tigers need large forested areas and water. Photo: Sanjay K. Shukla

The census tracked the number and kinds of tigers from the same areas for 14 years. Some populations, especially the one in the Sunderbans, that weren’t sampled in the past were excluded from the growth rate calculation. The technique has also applied the same criteria to exclude cubs from the count consistently since 2006. This way, the inclusion or exclusion of any tigers in the count does not influence population estimates. I hope the detailed report to be published soon by the Wildlife Institute of India will further explain these intricacies.

As expected, some of the best protected areas and their surrounding territorial forests in the country reported major population growth. Some of these include Bandhavgarh, Ratapani, Pench, Tadoba, Bandipur, Nagarhole, Mudumalai and Manas tiger reserves. However, surveyors did not record tigers in the Buxa, Dampa, Indravati and Palamau tiger reserves.

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The tiger has had a checkered conservation history in India, and there is still a lot we have to do to ensure its numbers recover in a sustained manner. We should at no point become complacent, and continue to increase and maintain the population of tigers for posterity.

To the extent possible, the government needs to declare only large areas as ‘protected areas’. Such areas make for robust wildlife ecosystems and are more likely to support sizeable tiger populations, co-predators and prey, and are less affected by the biotic pressures of humans and cattle. In the case of a tiger reserve, the core and buffer zones should be simultaneously notified and controlled by the tiger reserve management. We also need to build capacity at all levels in protected areas, and make conservation more professional.

The axis deer (chital) is the most common prey species. Photo: Suresh Deshmukh

Protection needs to be the top priority in tiger conservation. India has lost around 470 tigers between January 2015 and May 2019 to natural causes as well as poaching. The Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, responsible for combating organised wildlife crimes in the country, needs to be strengthened to directly intervene in major tiger crimes in the states and take them to their logical conclusion.

Finally, the judiciary also needs to be sensitised through close discussions and workshops regarding the methods and circumstances of tiger crimes in the wild.

There are still a large number of villages inside the core zones of tiger reserves. Tigers need inviolate space and a good prey-base, and human and cattle populations impose on the area’s habitability. The government needs to revise its relocation policies by offering more attractive monetary and employment packages to villagers.

Rakesh Shukla is research officer at the Kanha Tiger Reserve in Mandla.

Great Indian Bustard Eggs Being Collected to Kick-Start Captive Breeding

The critically endangered bird is down to just 160-odd individuals, most of them surviving in the Thar Desert in Rajasthan.

The great Indian bustard has been in deep trouble for a while. Once found across India’s grasslands and dry landscapes, the critically endangered bird is now down to just 160-odd individuals, most of them surviving in the Thar Desert in Rajasthan state.

Even in this last stronghold, survival is hard. Agricultural fields and a growing network of power lines and wind turbines have taken over their habitats, while predators like dogs destroy the eggs that the ostrich-like birds painstakingly lay down. In a last ditch effort, wildlife researchers along with the forest department have started a hunt for the birds’ eggs in Rajasthan to begin the process of captive breeding. On June 20, they managed to collect two bustard eggs from the wild.

“A beginning has been made and I hope we are able to save the bird,” Arindam Tomar, the state’s chief wildlife warden, told Mongabay.

The Wildlife Institute of India, Rajasthan forest department and India’s environment ministry have entered into an agreement to build two captive breeding facilities for the great Indian bustards (Ardeotis nigriceps). The main, bigger facility is being constructed in the village of Sorsan in southeast Rajasthan, while a second, smaller facility is being built in Jaisalmer, in the west, close to where many of the wild birds breed.

Also Read: One in Eight Bird Species Facing Extinction Worldwide: New Report

The buildings will take a year or two to come up, Tomar said, but the hunt for eggs is on because the teams “did not want to miss this year’s breeding season.”

“That was the urgency of doing it,” he said. “There are only 150 great Indian bustards surviving in the wild, so every day is precious. We don’t have any captive population of great Indian bustards at all, we don’t have them in any zoos or anywhere else.”

Mongabay contacted two experts from the Wildlife Institute of India involved in the project; one declined to comment and the other did not respond.

A long and challenging road

Tomar said the road ahead was going to be very long and challenging. This is the first time that Indian bustard eggs have ever been collected from the wild for the purpose of captive breeding, and protocols ranging from the incubation of the eggs to rearing any chicks that hatch are still being figured out.

“It’s going to be very difficult first to incubate the eggs, then to rear the chicks,” Tomar said. “Then there’s the next challenge of whether the birds are able to breed or not. If they start breeding, then we might have a population that we can start releasing in the wild again. The effort now is to create a founder population of breeding birds, chicks of which can probably be rewilded. So it’s going to be a very long process.”

Also Read: Human-Wildlife Conflicts Could Consume the Forest Department in the Long Run

For now, the teams have permission to collect up to six eggs from the wild per year, Tomar added.

A lot still needs to be figured out, but the teams have help from the International Fund for Houbara Conservation (IFHC) in Abu Dhabi, an organisation that’s had some success with the captive breeding of the Asian houbara (Chlamydotis macqueenii), a bustard species found across northeast Asia, central Asia, the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula, and nearly hunted to extinction in the past.

In general, though, bustards are difficult birds to breed in captivity, Nigel Collar, a bustard expert and Leventis Fellow in Conservation Biology at BirdLife International, said in an earlier interview with Current Conservation. So it remains to be seen if collecting eggs from a tiny population of an imperiled species actually translates to a group of breeding individuals, ones that can later survive in the wild.

Some experts are hopeful.

“We’re only hearing gloomy news of the great Indian bustard,” Sumit Dookia, a wildlife biologist working in Rajasthan’s Thar Desert and an assistant professor at Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi, told Mongabay. “We need stories of success as well – that at least we’re moving in the right direction. There is a chance of predation of the eggs on the ground also. But the two eggs that have been collected are under controlled conditions now. Although we cannot expect anything right now, it is one step towards the right direction.”

This article was originally published on Mongabay.

Four Stories That Captured India’s Environmental Zeitgeist in 2018

2018 was the year when environmental protest filled the streets, even as the government stayed unmoved and dark predictions by biologists came true. Here are four big moments from the last 12 months that captured this spirit.

1. Gujarat’s lions

In 1994, a canine distemper epidemic killed a third of the lions in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. It alerted biologists to the perils of having large wild-animal populations together. Disease and epidemics are a form of biological population control – until the populations and habitat are already small. Then it becomes a disaster.

In 2013, the Supreme Court of India had asked Gujarat, home to the world’s only wild Asiatic lions, to give some of them to a second habitat in Madhya Pradesh. But Gujarat didn’t comply, asserting that the animals were its pride. And then what biologists had been saying for years came true.

First it was just a few lions. But soon after, in October, at least 23 died in Gir, many from the canine distemper virus (CDV).

In India, wild and domestic animals mix freely. Among them, dogs carry a host of deadly pathogens, including the CDV. A rabid dog bit a tiger in the Panna reserve in 2013. The latter received two anti-rabies shots and had to be monitored, in case other cats were exposed to the disease.

The second, and exacerbating, problem with the Gir and Girnar sanctuaries is that they seem to have reached their holding capacities. In recent years, lions have walked up to the coastline, fallen in wells and have been mowed by trains. On December 18, a train ran over three lions in Amreli.

Gujarat’s response to the disease outbreak has gone against the known principles of conservation – exemplified by its continued refusal to part with the lions. The state may believe its own sense of majesty arises from its stewardship but when it chose to vaccinate them instead of letting them found a second home, it’s hard to believe it doesn’t think of the lions like it does cattle.

2. Our biological resources

Baba Ramdev. Credit: Facebook/Patanjali Products

Who owns biological resources? If Meghalaya has endemic orchids, should the state have first right to the profit, or local communities, or whichever company gets to the orchids first?

International conventions like the Convention on Biological Diversity are clear on the matter: local people should be the first beneficiaries of profit-sharing for biological resources. Indians famously begrudge foreign companies for patenting what they think is their property, e.g. basmati rice. Many Indian and foreign companies sell herbal, ayurvedic and organic products. Although the Biodiversity Act 2002 would technically have a say on how their profits are split, it hasn’t been implemented well.

So it was remarkable when, earlier this month, the Uttarakhand high court ordered Divya Pharmacy to pay part of its revenue as fees to the state’s biodiversity board for using the state’s biological resources. The company had contended it does not need to do so because it is Indian: Divya Pharmacy is owned by Baba Ramdev.

The judgment observed: “Biological resources are definitely the property of a nation where they are geographically located, but these are also the property, in a manner of speaking, of the indigenous and local communities who have conserved it through centuries.”

3. Keep trees standing

A creeping tide of densification has already occurred across Delhi with the Master Plan 2021. Credit: Juhi Saklani

What should your city look like, and who gets to decide? Citizens have engaged in several debates on sanitation, the beauty of public art and effective municipal administration. Next up: preserving the last green spaces in cities and keeping them breathable.

After NBCC (India) Ltd. announced it was going to cut 16,000 trees for a redevelopment project in what was then one of the world’s most polluted cities, thousands of people hit its streets in protest. The NBCC’s environmental impact assessments also hadn’t included proper species lists and contained plagiarised text. People also found that the redevelopment may have been a ploy to create commercial spaces.

In Mumbai, people protested a variety of transportation projects that will demolish natural infrastructure. The Navi Mumbai airport is to come up over a wetland and an area where 266 species of birds have been spotted. A new trans-harbour link in Sewri will cut through an another area teeming with greater flamingos.

For over two years, citizens from all walks of life have been protesting the metro rail yard at Aarey, which will destroy the Aarey forest. Earlier this year, a huge fire broke out in the area, inviting suspicion that it had been set off to damage the flora. The Maharashtra government has ordered an enquiry into the incident.

Pune’s residents have been protesting the metro and a new road, both of which will run close to the Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary. Some 169 trees have already been cut. Experts have stressed that green belts are the only places left to damage and so have asked for an underground metro. While they have found a civic voice, whether agencies will adapt their plans is unclear.

All of these are battles in a war to keep trees standing and to keep greenery from being commercialised.

4. Killing tigers

Tigress Avni, T1 tigress, Asghar Ali Khan, National Tiger Conservation Authority, NTCA, Arms Act 1959, Wildlife Protection Act 1972, Shafat Ali Khan, Yavatmal, standard operating procedure, Devendra Fadnavis, Maharashtra,

Representative image of a tigress and cub. Credit: Waldemar Brandt/Unsplash

Avni, a tigress in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region, had been labelled a ‘man-eater’. The Supreme Court okayed a proposal to solve the problem: to capture the animal, failing which forest officials could kill it. But the attempt eventually made to capture Avni was riddled with so many problems that it might as well have been premeditated murder.

Protesters spilled out on the streets to try to save Avni’s life, alleging that the part of forest where Avni lived was being diverted to industry. The tension mounted but the Maharashtra government didn’t relent. It eventually showed it would rather break protocol than uphold it.

Going against guidelines set by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), Avni was shot at night by a professional hunter on contract. The hunting party didn’t have a veterinarian. A post-mortem negated its claim that it attempted to tranquilise the tigress first. The bullet was lodged in the animal’s body in a way that suggested she’d been shot from point-blank range.

All this after scores of people, dogs and drones had been dispatched to track her and her cubs down. Experienced trackers have said this was all fire and smoke, and not an honest endeavour to capture her.

The ghastly episode unmasked the callousness with which a carnivore is dealt outside a protected area or tiger reserve. The Maharashtra government refused responsibility for the lapses and seemed interested only in a cover-up.

Its counterpart in Odisha behaved similarly. In November, a male tiger brought from Madhya Pradesh was found dead in Satkosia. Observers suspected a poaching snare had caused the fatal wound around its neck. However, the state insisted the tiger had been killed by a maggot wound.

A fact-finding mission by the NTCA and Wildlife Institute of India settled the question. The tiger had indeed been poached, and the team declared no more tigers could be introduced to the area till proper monitoring systems were put in place.

Let’s hope the headlines in 2019 are less distressing.

Neha Sinha works for the Bombay Natural History Society. The views expressed here are personal.