27-Aug-2018: BNHS opens its first regional centre at Chilika

The first regional centre of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) would be operational in Chilika from today. The regional branch of country’s premier wildlife research organisation would be inaugurated in the premises of the Wetland Research and Training Centre (WRTC) of the Chilika Development Authority (CDA) at Chandrapur in Chilika.

Although the BNHS is closely associated with Chilika since 1967, it is going to open its own regional centre for the first time at Asia’s largest brackish water lagoon.

The BNHS, the CDA and the Forest Department have been conducting bird census jointly in the past 15 years during winter in Chilika.

With opening up its branch in Odisha, the BNHS would be engaged in identifying the air route of the foreign birds flocking the Chilika lake during winter, sample collection, training related to bird census, publishing bird migration atlas books, examining various diseases among the birds and to review the condition of the Nalabana bird sanctuary along with counting the birds.

29-Jan-2017: Bombay Natural History Society launches climate change programme in Central Himalayas

The Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) has launched climate change programme under which the first study funded by Oracle and facilitated by CAF-India, will assess the status, distribution and conservation of pheasants and finches in the Central Himalayas.

The Himalayas hold a rich natural heritage with diverse flora and fauna enhancing the beauty of the region. The study will focus on their conservation in the context of climate change with the help of community participation.

The Indian subcontinent is home to nearly 50 species of pheasants and 62 species of finches, with several species listed in ‘Globally Threatened’ category by IUCN. Both these groups are spread across the Himalayas. Shrinking habitats combined with several biotic factors, along with trapping and poaching pressures in many areas have pushed several of them to near extinction.

Climate change can highly influence vertical and horizontal distribution of these groups making boundaries of protected areas fuzzy. The species that can adapt will survive but habitat specialist and species sensitive to temperature will suffer. The major aim of this project is to assess the status of Phasianidae's and Fringillidae's, particularly globally threatened species found in Himalayan region and evaluate their distribution.

This long-term monitoring project also aims to assess the socio-economic activities of local communities and involve them in conservation efforts and sensitize the local forest department staff.

This project is part of a long-term programme of BNHS which intends to understand the impact of climate change on biodiversity of the Himalayan region. In order to conserve biodiversity, the local communities play a crucial role and hence their involvement is important for the success of this project.

The project will contribute in making an inventory of pheasants and finches, documentation of local specific conservation issues, and designing local as well as species specific conservation action plan with the community participation.

The conservation action plan of these sites is a first step towards the protection of the ecosystem which benefits both biodiversity as well as the people in the system.

BNHS has been promoting conservation of nature in India since its establishment in 1883.

28-Jul-2018: India to give flash flood warning to Asian nations

India has been designated as a nodal centre for preparing flash-flood forecasts by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). That means India will have to develop a customised model that can issue advance warning of floods in Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand.

Like India, several southeast Asian countries depend on the monsoon and are prone to its vagaries. The WMO says flash floods account for 85% of flooding incidents across the world, causing some 5,000 deaths each year. The proposed model would provide forecasts by computing the likelihood of rainfall and the soil moisture levels to warn of possible floods.

13-May-2018: 4th meeting of SAWEN held in Kolkata, India.

The South Asia Wildlife En­force­ment Net­work (SAWEN), an in­ter-gov­ern­men­tal wildlife law en­force­ment agency, in its first ever meet­ing in In­dia, adopted many res­o­lu­tions to curb wildlife crime in the re­gion.

At the two-day con­fer­ence held here from May 8 - 10, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of seven out of eight countries par­tic­i­pated, and the mem­bers agreed on hav­ing an op­er­a­tional frame­work for strength­en­ing the re­gional body to com­bat wildlife crime.

Un­der­lin­ing the fact that wildlife crime is one of the ma­jor con­ser­va­tion chal­lenges for the world, Man Ba­hadur Khadka, chief en­force­ment co­or­di­na­tor of SAWEN, said that dur­ing the meet six pro­pos­als, in­clud­ing track­ing of wildlife smug­gling route, re­view of ex­ist­ing laws and a struc­ture for the or­gan­i­sa­tion were tabled. Mem­bers have given their views at the meet­ing, the SAWEN sec­re­tariat will look into their sug­ges­tions and af­ter tak­ing them into con­sid­er­a­tion, make these doc­u­ments pub­lic.

Mem­bers of all par­tic­i­pant coun­tries — In­dia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan —ex­cept Pak­istan par­tic­i­pated in the meet­ing.

SAWEN was launched in Bhutan in 2011 and in 2016 the Union Cab­i­net gave per­mis­sion to adopt the statute of SAWEN.

The most smug­gled wildlife items in the re­gion are leop­ard skin and bones, pan­golin scales, rhino horns and en­dan­gered birds.

In­dia is a source coun­try for smug­gling of species of both plants and an­i­mals. Most of these wildlife prod­ucts are smug­gled to South East Asia and China and the route goes through the coun­try along with neigh­bour­ing coun­tries.

  1. Botanical Survey of India (BSI)
  2. UN Environment Management Group
  3. Belmont Forum