Ridleys at risk
even as forest officials and environmentalists in Orissa heaved a sigh of relief with the news of the first batch of 3,000 Olive Ridley turtles crawling onto the beach near the Rishikulya river mouth, fishing trawlers are set to turn killer machines again. For though the use of turtle excluder devices (teds) has been made mandatory in the state, trawler operators continue to flout norms with impunity.
In fact, they made no bones about their outright contempt for the law at a recently held workshop in Bhubaneswar. What was meant to be a constructive brainstorming session, degenerated into a triangular war of words with the operators, authorities and activists freely trading charges. Its objective