-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In a fresh threat to the fragile ecosystem of the Aravalis, the Haryana forest department has reversed its earlier order and asked officials not to designate lands in the range as forests, other than those formally recorded as such. The order implies that vast tracts of forests, including most parts of the sacred Mangarbani grove, would now be recorded as 'not forest'. This reverses the department's...

-India Today "The butterflies will show you the way to the farm." Farmer Sunil Gupta is not talking of mythical butterflies that will appear to guide me to the organic farm I am trying to locate amidst swathes of farmland, some lush with the standing paddy, some damaged in parts from last week's strong winds, others dotted with vegetable patches or freshly ploughed for the next crop. Can one tell an organic...

-The Times of India DEHRADUN: Trashing speculation following the spate of recent incidents of human-leopard conflict which indicated that leopard numbers were on the rise, a study conducted by three wildlife scientists has found that the leopard population, on the contrary, has declined by a whopping 70-80 per cent over the past 100 years. The study, conducted over four years by Samrat Mondal of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Krithi...

-Business Standard About 100 changes have already been effected through executive orders; new amendments involve structural and policy-level alterations The Centre is all set to overhaul environmental and forest regulations, policies, and laws once the two-day conference of state forest ministers and officials is over. The conference will start on Monday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing it. After effecting some 100-odd changes to regulations through executive orders, the Union environment ministry has...

-Economic and Political Weekly While the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act 2001 is a progressive piece of legislation that recognises farmers' rights to seed, it demands payment of an annual maintenance fee by the farmers to protect the varieties which they have been cultivating and conserving for years, only because these varieties have been brought under legal protection through national legislation. Parameswaran Prajeesh (prajeesh@mssrf.res.in) is a researcher with the...