Hi,
The head of CSE is now the Head of Tiger Task Force in India - details in the newsletter below. Only yesterday at DC Zoo I was thinking how relaxed seemed the two tigers here. Maybe some tigers could be raised in US National Parks also - since USA has 3 times India's land area and only one third India's population. They already have about 10,00 mountain lions in US though.
Today at the US National Museum of Natural History I was surprised to see stuffed animals of all types - tigers, lions , giraffe, bison etc. What was surprising was that the tiger and even pouncing lions were having only ONE foot on the ground. It was eery - how gravity defying leaps they were making even after dying - in the museum.
It had the Hope diamond (of Indian orgin and worn by Marie Antionette) about the size of a Table Tennis ball!! as were so many gems and crystals. I did not know that rocks also contained water -as shown there- proving the proverb that a strong man could squeeze water from rocks.
I wonder why in India we do not have a museum of stuffed wild animals - since already animals are getting murdered and one specimen would not make much of a difference.
----------------------
PS: In the DC Smithsonian Art Galleries - Arther Sackler and Freer - I was surprised to note that although there were lots of antique sculptures of Buddha, Bodhisattvas, Shiva, Vishnu etc from Asia - but there were none of Jesus Christ or Madonna . Perhaps the antique smugglers are afraid to plunder Christian Churches (Christainity is an Asian religion) or maybe the Western art collectors are afraid to buy them . Anyhow, idols can be made again - and it would be a boon for those Buddhists and Hindus in USA or other Western countries - who can go to these galleries and pray to these stautes.
My room mate gave me this idea - since yesterday he did exactly that. He dropped to his knees in Sackler Art Gallery - infront of the images of Shiva and Parvati and prayed for about five minutes. Will now go there regularly. Sackler Gallery is run by the govt and just opposite the White House -Capitol Hill complex.
An interesting article was a book in Freer Gallery - about Jesuits and Mughal Rulers http://store.freersacklershop.com/jeandgrmorea.html
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 20:34:40 +0530
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Let the tiger roam - [CSE news bulletin - August 25 edition]
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=============================
CSE's Fortnightly News Bulletin
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An e-bulletin from the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE),
India, to our network of friends and professionals interested in
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INSIDE:
- Seed Bill 2004: Not catering to farmer's needs.
- Editorial: Let the tiger roam
- CSE Training: Wastewater Recycling; Information Management
- News/Features: Endosulfan tragedy; Sorry state of forests; Skeleton
Lake
- Publications: Waste Water Recycling Manual
- Careers with CSE
-------------------------------------------------
Latest in Down To Earth magazine
< http://www.downtoearth.org.in >
-------------------------------------------------
Cover Story: Seed Bill 2004
This legislation touches the core of Indian society: its farmers. But
does it not cater to them. Can the bill be re-evaluated before it
becomes an Act?
Direct link >> http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=1
-------------------------------------------------
Editorial: Let the tiger roam
-------------------------------------------------
"She has never seen a tiger": this is how some conservationists
questioned my credentials to chair the tiger task force when it was
set up three months ago. It did not surprise me. Cola, pesticide or
diesel car-making companies reacted precisely like this to our work.
Discredit the messenger and hope the message also gets dismissed.
But it did worry me. Here were people we work with. Saving the tiger
is surely common to all environmentalists. So, was it really so
important for me to have seen a tiger to have the expertise for what
could be done to safeguard it? Why did I need to prove my 'loyalty'?
After all, this was not the fanaticism of religious extremism or the
jingoism of right-wing nationalism. Was it?
The task was to understand how to secure the tiger's future. It was
clear the tiger was under threat from many fronts. There was the
poacher, whose network extended from the poor hunter to sophisticated
trade cartels. There was the miner and developer, out to grab the
tiger's home. Then there were the desperately poor people sharing the
tiger's habitat. We needed to understand what had been done so far --
successfully or unsuccessfully -- to find answers.
We learnt how critical conservation history was to the tiger's future.
Project Tiger began over 30 years ago, amidst international concern
and foreign advisors who believed large areas -- reserves -- would
have to be set aside just for the tiger. The history I read showed the
Indian architects of this programme knew -- even then -- this was not
possible in this densely populated country. They fiddled with the
concept of creating reserves, embedding them within larger landscapes
of forests so that the tiger could roam and multiply. They knew
coexistence was critical. By the early 1980s -- just 10 years after
Project Tiger began -- they realised it would need innovative
strategies to involve people in regenerating lands, so that tiger
habitat could expand. Without this, they knew, the 'islands' of
conservation would be lost over time.
Sadly, this message never went home. What happened instead was this:
on the one hand the threat to the tiger grew; on the other, protectors
responded by raising the barricades higher. Their paranoia grew; they
began to believe everybody else was increasingly against the tiger.
Their solution should have worked. But the fact was the war of
conservation began to be lost.
Each time a tiger crisis hit headlines, and it did many times in the
last 30 years, the response was: more guns, more guards, more fences.
Sariska received over Rs 1 crore per tiger over the 25 years of its
existence, against the national average of Rs 24 lakh per tiger. It
received over Rs 2.58 lakh per sq km over this period (the average for
the rest of the reserves was a little over Rs 1 lakh per sq km). Yet
Sariska lost all its tigers. In short, money and infrastructure for
protection was not the simple answer.
Our inquiries taught us many things have to be done. We must throw a
protective ring around the tiger, not by deploying more armed forces
but carefully improving internal management and scrutiny so that
defences will not fail. We have to break wildlife crime, by building
investigative and forensic capacities; most of all, we have to amend
the criminal provisions of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, so
that the poacher can actually be convicted.
But all this is half the work. In the past 30 years of conservation,
we have never really discussed what has to be done about the people
that share the tiger's home. Most reports or policies for wildlife
conservation talk notionally about them; they either fail to mention
their existence or dismiss it as an aside.
The people who protect the tiger believe people and tigers cannot
coexist. This logjam -- tigers versus people, or for people -- had to
be resolved. It was not about polemics, but the reality of winning the
war of conservation. We sought answers. How many people lived in the
reserves? How many were relocated? How much land was needed for
relocation? How much money? Nobody knew.
We sought replies. We learnt only 80 villages had been relocated from
the country's 28 tiger reserves till date; a minimum 1,500 are still
inside. Relocation was fraught. Many of the relocated had returned, or
turned against the park. The law provided rights of people had to be
settled before a protected area could be notified. In other words,
people should have been resettled or compensated before protection
began. But this was not done. Relocation did not happen. People
continued to live within reserves, where conservation imperatives
became hasher. They needed resources. Extraction continued, illegally
and unsustainably. The conflict between people and park authorities
grew. Here was a deadly stalemate for conservation.
So it is that we learnt, and have espoused, that there will have to be
an Indian way of conservation. Even as we secure inviolate areas for
the tiger by relocating people, we will have to accept not everybody
can be relocated. We will have to practice coexistence -- sharing
benefits of conservation to gain reciprocal protection. It is here we
will have to learn managing multiple and competing needs without
compromising the protection needed to secure the tiger's future. We
know it is not easy. But it will have to be done.
The protection of the tiger needs inclusive conservation. It is clear
to me the issue of protecting the tiger cannot happen unless there is
scope for dialogue, unless the process becomes much more inclusive. It
is time to put a stop to distrust, and slander. It is time to hear a
multiplicity of voices, to converse, and continue to converse. Only
then, can the tiger roam.
-- Sunita Narain
< [EMAIL PROTECTED] >
Read this editorial online >>
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=2
Related article >>
A new paradigm: Who will join the dots and make it possible?
< http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=6 >
-------------------------------------------------
Gobar Times > Environment for Children
-------------------------------------------------
Health: Do we take care?
The only public health clinic in the village has run out of medicines
and Jishnu has to go to the village quack to save his two-year-old
grandchild. On the other hand Omar Ali of Malaysia looks around with
pleasure at the gymnasium and the yoga centre. He has come to a
private hospital to undergo heart surgery. Both these scenes are being
staged in our very own India >>
Down To Earth supplement >>
http://www.gobartimes.org
-------------------------------------------------
CSE Training Programmes
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(New Delhi, October 17 - 21, 2005)
Learn how to plan, design and maintain a localised wastewater
treatment system. Get hands-on training on contemporary water-waste,
pollution management practices. Get exposed to alternative paradigms
and future strategies best suited to the Indian situation. Designed
for engineers, architects, NGO representatives, researchers, policy
makers, scientists & students
Sample course modules >>
- Status of water pollution and its management in Indian cities
- Alternate wastewater management paradigm
- Fundamentals of wastewater treatment
- How to plan, design, implement and monitor a localised wastewater
system
- Issues of safe reuse of treated wastewater
- Overview of norms and laws on pollution and wastewater treatment
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All enquiries >> RK Srinivasan < [EMAIL PROTECTED] >; Suresh Babu <
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Information Management & Documentation training
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Limited seats (Deadline: October 5, 2005)
All enquiries >> Kiran Pandey < [EMAIL PROTECTED] >
Register online >> http://www.cseindia.org/misc/library_form.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Also in Down To Earth magazine
-------------------------------------------------
The government suppression of Kerala's endosulfan tragedy
Read complete article >>
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=3
-------------------------
The Forest Survey of India's traditional research methodology and
bureaucratic functioning hides the true state of India's forests.
Read complete article >>
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=4
-------------------------
Skeleton Lake: When ice melts in the glacial tarn of Roopkund, located
5,000 metres above sea level in Chamoli district, Uttaranchal,
hundreds of corpses can be seen floating.
Read this article online >>
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=5
-------------------------------------------------
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CSE publications
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Wastewater Recycling Manual
A step-by-step guide to various methods and techniques of Wastewater
Treatment explained simply and in an engaging manner. Includes
real-life case studies of wastewater treatment in residences,
colonies, offices and industries, from across India
Order online at (secure gateway) >>
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-------------------------
Water Harvester's Manual
A practical guide to water harvesting systems along with illustrations
and working drawings. Detailed descriptions and diagrams of various
RWH methods and techniques
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