Your Environment This Week: Disappearing grasslands, Wildlife corridors, Elephants walk free

This week’s environment and conservation news stories rolled into one.

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Walls come down to make way for elephants

A refinery’s boundary wall that obstructed a critical elephant corridor in Assam is being demolished after a decade-long legal battle.

[Explainer] What are wildlife corridors?

Wildlife corridors connect fragmented habitats, facilitating wildlife movement across ecosystems, ensuring population sustainability.

With a new discovery, lizard studies get an edge

With the description of a new species of lizard, Agasthyagama edge, in Kerala, one more species gets added to the genus Agasthyagama.

India will go to vote amid sweltering heat; experts call for public awareness to mitigate impacts

This year’s general election coincides with a period of unusually high heat, spurring warnings from government departments to protect against heatstroke.

Banni’s edible local grasses threatened by the spread of Prosopis

Once a main source of edible grasses for local communities, the Banni grasslands of Kachchh in Gujarat in are now gradually vanishing.

[Interview] Ecologist and policy expert S. Faizi advocates for putting ‘justice’ at the heart of conservation

Indian ecologist and international environment policy expert S. Faizi awarded the Alliance World of Scientists (AWS) 2024 Planet Earth Awards which acknowledges individuals who champion life on Earth.

S. Faizi highlights the need to have an intermixing of disciplines and people across fields, including scientists, policymakers and indigenous communities, to manage conservation initiatives.

[Video] Complexities of siting a windfarm in the Western Ghats

Farmers in Kharpud village, Maharashtra, claim that a windfarm in an adjoining hilltop causes annual flooding and erosion during monsoons, affecting their crops and livelihoods.

The 133 turbines part of the Andhra Lake Wind Farm spread across 194 hectares of reserved forest land contiguous with the Bhimashankar Wildlife Sanctuary in the Western Ghats, and fall within its buffer zone.

More than 15 years on, implementation of Forest Right Act is lagging, new report finds

Delhi-based NGO Call for Justice, conducted a study on the implementation of Forest Rights Act across five states, and found varying gaps in implementation.

Forest-dwelling communities who are not Scheduled Tribes found almost no representation in the several committees designed to approve claims for rights.

Converting pine needles from a fire risk into a livelihood opportunity

J&K Forest Dept. partners with locals to gather dry pine needles to mitigate forest fire risks and create handicrafts.

In Jammu & Kashmir, it is estimated that some two lakh tonnes of pine needles are shed every year. Photo by Rakesh Sharma, Range Officer, Nowshera Forest Division.

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