Chikkamade Gowda had once told the Centre to give him poison. It was better than being evicted from his forest habitat. That was in 1974. Thirty-seven years on, the Soliga tribal and some 16,500 fellow sufferers are celebrating their homecoming, thanks to a landmark central amendment. The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2008, allows them to use nearly 60 per cent of their ancestral land,...
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Rs5 lakh reward for information on slain RTI activist Shehla Masood
-PTI The CBI today announced a cash reward of Rs5 lakh for providing information about the murder of RTI activist Shehla Masood, who was shot dead outside her house in Bhopal last month. On September 3, a case was registered against unnamed persons by the Bhopal unit of the agency, CBI sources said here. Shehla was shot dead when she was going towards her car outside her residence in posh Koh-e-Fiza locality in...
More »Planet Earth needs a global biodiversity watchdog by M Rajshekhar
Have you heard of the Yangtze River Dolphin? For the longest time, it used to be found along 1,700 kilometres of the middle and lower reaches of the mighty Chinese river. The Baiji, as it is known, was white finned, a little over two metres long, had poor eyesight and relied mainly on sonar for navigation. A few decades ago, as populations along the river grew, as shipping traffic rose,...
More »Death of an activist. Murder or suicide? by Priyanka Dubey
SHEHLA MASOOD’S eventful life was brutally cut short on 16 August, when her body was found in the front seat of her car. A fierce Wildlife Conservationist and RTI activist, 38-year-old Shehla was also a flamboyant socialite of Bhopal. The murder in broad daylight outside her bungalow in the posh Koh-e-Fiza area sent ripples across the otherwise peaceful city. With the state media jumping from one conclusion to another and...
More »Experts see more big cats than reserve cameras by Sanjeev Kumar Verma
Experts have questioned the latest tiger count at Bihar’s Valmiki reserve, saying the park could have more than the eight big cats the census says it has. Authorities at the Valmiki Tiger Reserve (VTR), in West Champaran district, claim that the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) had goofed up in not taking into account the entire occupancy area of the park and instead relied on the data collected over just 444sq...
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