The ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) is yet to catch up with the ground reality of the number of species of critically endangered birds in the country. When environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan released a book on Tuesday, which updates the list of birds facing a threat of extinction in India, it perhaps escaped her mind that the ministry’s official list is outdated.

The state’s maiden vulture breeding centre in Muta, 22km from Ranchi, may not have taken wing as yet, but Bhagwan Birsa Biological Park in Ormanjhi, closer to the capital, may soon boast a special winged guest. Forest officials and wildlife experts in Hazaribagh have nursed back to health a two-year-old Himalayan Griffon Vulture (Gyps himalayensis), which was found in a village 8km from town two weeks ago, and plan to give it a new home at Birsa zoo.

Environmentalists have slammed the environmental impact report of the controversial Mae Wong Dam, saying it was poorly conducted and underestimated the likely damage to wildlife and forest ecology.

The project's Environmental and Health Impact Assessment (Ehia) study was put up for final public review at a forum in Lat Yao district yesterday.

Around 1,000 people and some veteran environmentalists attended the forum, organised by Creative Technology Consultant, which was commissioned by the Royal Irrigation Department (RID) to conduct the study.

Large stretches of salmon-spawning streams and thousands of acres of wetlands would be wiped out if a large-scale mining project were to be built in southwestern Alaska's copper-rich Bristol Bay region, according to a report issued Friday by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The report, while not directly addressing it, is a potential blow to the massive Pebble copper and gold mine operation proposed by an international alliance of mining interests, and opposed by environmentalists and local native groups.

Large stretches of salmon-spawning streams and thousands of acres of wetlands would be wiped out if a large-scale mining project were to be built in southwestern Alaska's copper-rich Bristol Bay region, according to a report issued Friday by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The report, while not directly addressing it, is a potential blow to the massive Pebble copper and gold mine operation proposed by an international alliance of mining interests, and opposed by environmentalists and local native groups.

The Sewri mudflats in Mumbai, home to a rich biodiversity, including flamingoes, is under threat from a development project.

A variety of birds flock the recovered stream within 48 hours

For the past couple of weeks Rakesh Kumar with his borrowed binoculars and relentless patience has been busy tracking and keeping record of the varieties and number of birds that have begun to flock to a small water body inside a park in Dwarka's Pochanpur village. The water body that has become home to the winged visitors has been revived in a park maintained by the Delhi Development Authority.

BERHAMPUR: Emu, the flightless bird from Australia, is gradually changing the trend of poultry farming in south Odisha. Considered to be the second largest bird in the world after ostrich, though these amazing birds weigh 50 kg and run at 40 miles per hour, emus are far from being intimidating. This is the prime reason why emus are proving to be a boon to farmers in the State.

With the mercury on a steady upward drive, officials of the forest department are back to solving the poser thrown up at them every summer: How to provide water to the animals and birds in the state’s forest areas and, more importantly, protect them from poachers and hunters. With 22 wildlife sanctuaries and four national parks covering 12,579.205 sq km, or 4.57 per cent of the state’s area, the work is not exactly child’s play.

The vast swirl of plastic waste floating in the North Pacific has grown 100-fold over the last 40 years, according to a research paper published Wednesday.
And scientists warned the killer soup of microplastic — particles smaller than five millimetres – threatened to alter the open ocean’s natural environment.
In the period 1972 to 1987, no microplastic was found in the majority of samples taken for testing, said the paper in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.