Hyderabad: Green cover is dwindling rapidly in the state, and Hyderabad is the worst hit when compared to other cities, according to data released by the Forest Survey of India and the AP Forest department.

In just one year, the state has lost tree cover of the size of Vijayawada city, or about 45.34 sq km.
According to Forest Survey of India-2011 Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy have only five per cent of forest cover at 391 sq km out of the total area o 7,710 sq km.

A team of researchers from the University of Calicut has reported the discovery of a new subspecies of wild banana that could be developed as an ornamental plant for tropical gardens.

The plant Musa velutina subsp. markkuana was discovered from the forests of Arunachal Pradesh and is characterised by smooth skinned fruits, purple pseudostems, erect maroon-coloured inflorescence and pink fruit. It has been named after Markku Hakkinen, an international expert on wild banana, attached to the Finnish Museum of Natural History, University of Helsinki, Finland.

Hydropower is important. But how important? Is it important enough to dry out stretches of our rivers? Or is there a way to balance energy needs with the imperative of a flowing, healthy river?

I have been grappling with these issues for the past few months. But now that the committee (of which I was a member) on the hydropower projects on the Ganga has submitted its report, let me explain how I see the way ahead.

MUMBAI: Activists have denounced the Kasturirangan high level working group for the exclusion of Dodamarg from ecologically sensitive areas (ESA) in its recommendations to the Union ministry of environment and forests.

The group was set up to review the report submitted by the Madhav Gadgil led Western Ghats ecology expert panel. "Dodamarg has been excluded and left open for mining. The Sawantwadi-Dodamarg wildlife corridor minus Dodamarg is a non-entity. Dodamarg is more eco-fragile than Sawantwadi.

Seshachalam hills, home to a variety of plants and animals, reptiles and amphibians, have proved again to be rich in biodiversity, with the recent sighting of a rare poisonous spider after a gap of 113 years in India at the foothills of Tirumala.

The spider belonging to the genus poecilotheria is known to be native to India and Sri Lanka, of which eight species are found in India and seven in Sri Lanka. While taking inventory of the Seshachalam Biosphere reserve spread across Chittoor and Kadapa districts of Andhra Pradesh, officials of the Seshachalam Biodiversity Lab attached to Tirupati Wildlife Management Circle sighted a dead specimen of Theraphosid spider, a variety listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as ‘critically endangered.’

‘The project will submerge patches of the riparian forests’

The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) constituted high-level working group (HLWG) headed by Planning Commission member K. Kasturirangan has said that the government should reassess the impact that the Gundia hydroelectric power project will have on the environment and proceed with it with “extreme caution”. The HLWG submitted its detailed report on the Western Ghats in New Delhi on April 15.

After delinking the environment and forest clearances for highway projects, the environment ministry is mulling over a proposal to relax clearance norms for hydro-power projects.

The ministry is considering a proposal that allows hydro-power projects to initiate the forest clearance process without even completing comprehensive river basin study.

Two new genera of frogs were discovered by a team of independent researchers, led by Anil Zachariah and Robin Kurian Abraham, during their recent exploration in the Western Ghats.

The discovery, published in the latest issue of International Taxonomic Journal Zootaxa , is a joint effort by the team which comprised B .R. Ansil; Arun Zachariah of the Wild Life Disease Research Lab in Wayanad; and Robert Alexander Pyron, Assistant professor, Department of Biological Sciences of the George Washington University, U.S.

Identifying 37 per cent — or about 60,000 square km — of the Western Ghats as ecologically sensitive, a high-level panel has recommended that “destructive” activities such as mining, thermal power, major construction, and some hydel power projects should not be allowed there.

However, the panel was silent about any restrictions in the remaining 96,000 square km area, thus creating the perception that it had diluted earlier recommendations that the entire Ghats should be declared as an eco-sensitive area.