Environment India

  Vultures in Assam die by pesticide poisoning targeting stray dogs On March 17, carcasses of 100 Himalayan griffon vultures and one steppe eagle were found in Assam’s Chaygaon. Pesticide poisoning is suspected to be the cause of death. The intended target for the poisoning was not the raptors but the stray dogs which have been attacking village livestock. The incident at Chaygaon is not an isolated incident of vultures dying after consuming contaminated carrion. A fortnight before the Chaygaon incident, 30 vultures died after feeding on a poisoned carcass in Dibrugarh and earlier in January this year, 23 vultures died under similar circumstances. Even three years ago, 19 and 39 vultures had died in two separate incidents in Sivasagar district. However with increasing awareness about the role of vultures in the ecosystem and the impact of pesticides along with the forest department’s efforts in vulture conservation, there seems to be hope in protecting the birds an...

SALINITY, RECHARGE ISSUES AND EXTRACTION HAVE SPELT DOOM In Gothra and Khanpur Khurd: HARYANA Gothra village is located in Charkhi Dadri, Haryana’s newest district on the state’s border with Rajasthan. It looks like any other dusty village in north India. Except that it is suffering extreme water shortages which, if not controlled, will soon make the village a desert. The village has fallen prey to excessive salinity in its groundwater, caused by lack of recharge due to decreasing rainfall and consequent extreme groundwater extraction. All this has led to the village being caught in a vicious cycle which is now so bad that it neither has potable drinking water nor water for its crops .Gothra is in the ‘over-exploited’ category as far as groundwater is concerned, according to the Central Ground Water Authority. This means that more groundwater is being drained out than necessary. The groundwater in Gothra continues to fall, according to the Haryana Water Resources (conservation, regulat...

  Haryana government killing the Aravallis and people: Mining Five people were killed in a landslide at a mining site in the Bhiwani district of Haryana in January 2022. The site, according to reports submitted in the National Green Tribunal, was illegal and unscientific but had still got a go-ahead for mining after a penalty was paid. According to the official  documents , nearly three reserved forests and three protected forests falls within a 10-kilometre radius of the mine lease area. It is alleged that the miners are drawing water from the ground below the permissible limits and extending their mining activities beyond the designated area to the protected areas in Aravallis. In the last 8 years, Gurugram’s Aravallis lost more than 10,000 acres of the Natural Conversation Zone (NCZ), which is considered to be the greenest area of the city’s forest cover, a recent report submitted to the NGT showed. According to a report, 3,676 square kilometres and 776...