-Business Standard Claims Bill did not respect rights of people under the Forest Rights Act and gave unbridled control over thousands of crores to forest bureaucracy On Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi regretted that the Compensatory Afforestation (CA) Bill could not be passed in the budget session of Parliament. On Saturday, outgoing Rajya Sabha member from Congress Jairam Ramesh hit back at the NDA, saying the reason the bill could not be...

-The Times of India Ahmedabad: Salt pan workers, fishing community and maldharis in the Little Rann of Kutch (LRK) should be given their respective rights - salt making, fishing and pastoral land grazing. When denied these rights, locals illegally make salt and graze cattle in the forest area, leading to hassles with the forest department, a study commissioned by the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has found. During the 2012...

-DNA Even as the Modi government promises to increase the green cover, here are the challenges it is facing. Meet Ashish Arora, resort owner in Uttarakhand who lives next to a forest. It is not just the chirping birds, clean air and wild animals that surround him. He also has to grapple with forest fires every year. For the people in Uttarakhand like any other forest-rich state, forest fires are a way...

-The New Indian Express BARIPADA: At a time when the entire State is reeling under water scarcity, the Mayurbhanj administration has implemented an innovative water supply project that runs without electricity. Apparently, the irrigation-cum-drinking water project is first of its kind in the State and has been implemented in six hilly villages - Mudrajodi, Digdiga, Askinala, Kumarinala, Keonjhar and Sitakunj - of Shyamakhunta and Jashipur blocks under the Integrated Action Plan. It...

-The Indian Express No, the tiger is not out of the woods. If numbers presented ahead of last week’s global tiger meet in New Delhi showed minor gains due to better counting methods, they also revealed massive losses. On April 11, a day before ministers of 13 tiger range countries assembled in New Delhi to pledge support for the big cat, a statement by the WWF-International and Global Tiger Forum claimed...