Beginning Wednesday the South Division of the Nilgiris Forest Department will operate special package tours to promote eco tourism in some of the scenic spots under its control.

Engineers require retraining, not the Ganga. This is where I left our conversation in my previous column. Why did I say this?

Difference In Water Levels Affects Migration Of Fish To Inland Water Bodies

Kochi: World Wildlife Fund (WWF) India has shown willingness to collaborate with Kerala to evolve and execute an integrated river basin programme for the state to address its twin requirements of making water available throughout the year and conserving the rivers and nature.

WWF India CEO Ravi Singh and other senior officials already held talks with the top officials of the State Planning Board and other departments early this week. “Our input will be primarily in terms of the expertise we have acquired during the implementation of similar programmes in India and abroad. We don’t want to involve in the programmes as consultants or funding agency,’’ Ravi Singh told TOI here over phone from New Delhi.

The Supreme Court on Monday said there is no basis to the fear that the radioactive effects of the Kudankulam nuclear power plant, when commissioned, will be far reaching.

A Bench of Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and Dipak Misra said: “We are convinced that the KKNPP design incorporates advanced safety features complying with the current standards of redundancy, reliability, independence and prevention of common cause failures in its safety systems. Design also takes care of Anticipated Operational Occurrences (AOO), Design Basis Accidents (DBA) and Beyond Design Basis Accidents (BDBA) like Station Black Out (SBO), Anticipated Transients Without Scram (ATWS), Metal Water reaction in the water core and provision of core catcher to take care of core degradation.

The Government of Nepal, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and partner institutions from Bhutan, China, India, and Nepal have agreed to cooperate across borders

The ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has called for suggestions and comments from various stakeholders on the Kasturirangan review committee report that has classified 122 villages in the state as ecosensitive areas along the Western Ghats.

A high-level working group (HLWG) on Western Ghats, chaired by K Kasturirangan, had reviewed the Madhav Gadgil-chaired Western Ghats Experts Ecology Panel (WGEEP) report as all the five states along the Western Ghats had raised objections against the Gadgil report.

Stockholm convention approves non-chemical as well as chemical alternatives

The Conference of Parties to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, meeting in Geneva, approved non-chemical as well as chemical alternatives to endosulfan on Thursday. The non-chemical alternatives were proposed in a significant departure from past practice. The evaluation of non-chemical alternatives, as accepted by the conference, consists of an ecosystem-based approach to pest management as well as technical interventions.

In a significant development, the UT Administration today agreed to reduce the stretch of the eco-sensitive zone (ESZ) around the Sukhna Wildlife Sanctuary to less than 2.5 km.

The UT has to declare and submit the report on the ESZ to the Ministry of Environment and Forests before May 15. Today, in the meeting chaired by UT Administrator Shivraj V Patil, the UT officials discussed as to in how much area around the sanctuary developmental activities should be prohibited. Initially, the officials were of the view that the developmental activities in the 3-km area around the sanctuary should be regulated, but today the officials agreed to declare less than 2.5-km area as the eco-sensitive zone.