Panther dies after hit by vehicle in Sariska

Rajendra Sharma, TNN May 20, 2013
ALWAR: A two-year-old male panther died in Sariska reserve after being hit by a speeding vehicle on Sunday morning. The incident took place between Kushalgarh and Bharthari areas.

The animal suffered traumatic shock, cervical fracture and a head injury, says the autopsy report.

Though the state government had come up with a panther conservation committee recently, it still remains on paper, said sources.

Panthers are endangered animals listed under Schedule 1 of Wildlife Protection Act which gives them absolute protection. A separate area was to be developed for them so that they could roam safely. According to the census conducted in 2010, the number of panthers in the reserve was put at 45 but on an average one panther is killed in road accident, poached or attacked after straying into human habitats every two days, says a study.

Concerned over the rise in panther deaths, the state was to constitute a committee for panther conservation and develop a separate territory for them in Sariska Tiger Reserve. Wildlife experts and officials of forest department were to chalk out a plan for their safety in the reserve, but hardly anything has been done so far.

According to honorary wildlife warden Anil Jain, "It is difficult for Sariska to stabilize given the fact that the Ranthambore lobby plays a very predominant role in Rajasthan. They want tourists to be diverted from Sariska and the forest department just does what they want. It has been on record that the every three to six months a divisional forest officer has been transferred from Sariska and similar is the case with the assistant conservator of forests."

Besides since the reserve is big, there is a dire need of more rangers and forest guards. "At the moment there are only six rangers which ideally should be double the number. The number of forest guards is just 110 while it should ideally be nearly 300," said Jain.

Source: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-05-20/jaipur/39392193_1_sariska-tiger-reserve-forest-guards-panther

Tamhini is newest sanctuary in Maharashtra

Vijay Pinjarkar, TNN May 20, 2013
NAGPUR: The state government on Friday completed protected areas' (PAs) half century by notifying Tamhini Wildlife Sanctuary in Pune and Thane districts.

The 49.62 sq km Tamhini has been carved out by taking 12 compartments of reserved forest from Paund and Sinhgad ranges in Pune forest division while 8 compartments belong to Mangaon range in Roha division in Thane.

Located 65km west of Pune, Tamhini is a hilly place near Mulshi dam. The area is blessed with waterfalls, verdant valleys and lush evergreen forests. The temple dedicated to Vinzai Devi and the beautiful Devrai (sacred grove) full of some interesting flora adds to the charm of the place. The forests are rich with bird life, including insects and endemic Indian Giant Squirrel.

"Considering its ecological, faunal and floral significance the government decided to declare Tamhini a sanctuary. The area will help protect, propagate and develop wildlife therein and its environment," said Praveen Pardeshi, principal secretary (forests).

Since November 2010, the government has notified five wildlife sanctuaries viz Mansinghdeo (183 sq km), New Bor (61 sq km), New Nagzira (152 sq km), Navegaon (123 sq km) and Umred-Karhandla (189 sq km) and a conservation reserve for endangered wild buffaloes in Kolamarka (189 sq km) in Gadchiroli.

The Maharashtra Government denotified 8,496.44 sq km GIB sanctuary at Nanaj in Solapur to 1,222.61 sq km. Due to this decision, there was drastic decrease in the area under PA network in the state from 4.97% to 2.6% i.e. from 15,332.49 sq km to 8,058.66 sq km, a sharp drop by 60.55%.

Source: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-05-20/nagpur/39392290_1_gib-sanctuary-nanaj-mansinghdeo

25 Years of student volunteering

Prema Naraynen, TNN May 20, 2013
A student volunteer group in the city has now thrived for a quarter of a century. We find out what makes it tick
"People call me a founder of the SSTCN, which is okay, but the truth is that the group has had to find a founder every year!" says Tito Chandy with a laugh. And he's right... this is one of the more extraordinary facts about the "Students' Sea Turtle Conservation Network” a student volunteer group that has been active in Chennai now for 25 years.

'Turtle walks' have been synonymous with Chennai for decades now. From December to April, every night since 1988, school and college students have walked the seven-kilometre stretch from Neelankarai to Besant Nagar, scouring the beach for freshly dug nests of the endangered olive ridley sea turtle before the eggs can be taken away by poachers for the market. When found, the eggs are relocated for their safety to a shelter or 'hatchery', and monitored there; weeks later, when the tiny turtle hatchlings emerge, they are released into the sea.

But, it wasn't students who began this conservation trend. In the 1970s, the first such walks were started by herpetologist Rom Whitaker and S Valliappan along the beach between Madras and Kalpakkam. Whitaker writes about this first effort in 1974, when he and a bunch of enthusiasts "rescued 14,000 olive ridley eggs from poaching and released the 9000 that hatched". This was also around the time, 1973, when the spectacular mass-nesting or arribadas of olive ridleys along the Orissa coast was first reported to the world.

By the 1980s, olive ridleys became mainstream news and the WWF and the Forest Department took on the role of monitoring the beach and popularizing the walks among Chennai's nature lovers. "But, a few years later, in 1987, the state-sponsored hatchery was shut down," says Tito Chandy, "which was when the idea for a volunteer group to carry on the work materialized. Someone had to do it."

The Students' Sea Turtle Conservation Network, or SSTCN, was therefore created by Chandy, along with friends Arif Razack and Sudhakar Muthyala. He says, "I was a post graduate student at Madras Christian College then. We met with the Chief Wildlife Warden to get permission to set up a hatchery on the beach at Neelankarai. And printed and sold about 900 'Save the Ridley' stickers for ten rupees each, collecting about 10,000 rupees to buy the material to build the hatchery."

Satish Bhaskar, an IITian who spent years studying sea turtles in the Andaman and Lakshadweep Islands, was an early mentor to the group. "We also learned a lot from the poachers, especially one called Mayavan” simply by trying to beat him in getting to the nests!" chuckles Chandy.

Autonomy and shared leadership

What makes the SSTCN unique is that in these 25 years, its existence has depended entirely on a small army of student volunteers. It's not surprising that for the young students, a form of 'anarchism' was an appealing idea while laying down the rules. The protocol in those early years was ” no one person would be considered a 'leader' or face of the group and all work was to be entirely voluntary.

This has helped the group to thrive even when dedicated volunteers moved out of the city. When Chandy left, for instance, in 1990 to pursue a PhD in wildlife management, Kartik Shanker, another young student, took over coordination for the next few years. Since then, senior volunteers have been taking up the baton at every stage when a student has left the city to pursue higher education or a career outside.

Which explains why the group needs a new 'founder' every year! Arun V, who has now been shepherding the group's activities for 15 years, says, "There's the fear that no volunteers will turn up for a season. But there are always some really dedicated students who take this work very seriously. Some years ago, Sanjiv Gopal used to walk the stretch six days a week and even attend college alongside! In 1992-93, the entire season was managed by girls, with Nina Subramani as the co-ordinator."

A career builder

Shravan Krishnan has just finished a B Com from Loyola College and is this year's hatchery co-ordinator. He says, "Almost a 1500 people have come just to see the hatchlings being released this year and another thousand people signed up for the walks earlier. Only about 60 or so are regular walkers however."

Ten thousand hatchlings have been released into the sea off Madras by the SSTCN in the last few months. Going by the prevailing scientific belief that only one in a thousand hatchlings will survive to adulthood, it's possible that only ten of the ridleys released this year will head back to these beaches to mate and nest when they reach sexual maturity around fifteen years from now.

With the conservation problems that these reptiles are up against, this is, at best, a trifling effort to save the species, despite the long hours of rigorous work put in by the students. So why do they continue to do this?

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/people/25-Years-of-student-volunteering/articleshow/20136519.cms