-Down to Earth Hounded by cow vigilantes and trade restrictions, farmers in Uttar Pradesh's border areas abandon their unproductive cattle in Nepalese villages creating havoc there Residents of Semri village in Uttar Pradesh's Sitapur district drew a plan for "invasion" on April 2, 2018. They called a meeting of farmers and agriculture labourers to take a call on the stray cattle menace. With the state closing down illegal slaughter houses in...

-The Hindu Communities are ‘far behind’ in terms of human development, says survey of 1,000 households by Professor Amartya Sen’s institute Two months after the West Bengal government denied any food scarcity as a possible cause of death of seven persons from a tribal community, a survey report has identified “food scarcity in varying degrees” in about 31% of tribal households in West Bengal. The study titled ‘An Inquiry into the world of...

-Mongabay.com * In three years, India’s environment ministry approved diversion of over 20,000 hectares of Forest land for developmental projects like mining, thermal power plants, irrigation, road and railway projects across India. * Telangana, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha together account for over 62 percent of the total Forest land diverted during this period. * Diversion of Forests for non-Forestry projects has always been a contentious issue in India especially in light of poor...

-The Hindu But shola Forests have remained “relatively unchanged” Kochi: The new year heralds bad news for the high-altitude grasslands of the Western Ghats. Over four decades, the country lost almost one-fourth of these grasslands and exotic invasive trees are primarily to blame, find scientists. Though grassland afForestation using pine, acacia and eucalyptus ceased in 1996, the exotics still invade these ecosystems, confirms a study published on January 2 in the international...

-Scroll.in Instead, for a start, we should allow Forests to regrow naturally. Planting trees creates a plantation, not a Forest. India is again wasting valuable time, effort and resources on a national scale as it races to Forestall an impending water crisis. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change is conducting massive afForestation drives, planting native species. But a Forest is a self-sown, self-regenerating community of plants and dependent organisms, from...