Campaigns

The North-Frontier Railway has proposed the construction of a new broad gauge railway line from Sevoke in Northern West Bengal to Rongpo in Sikkim through 32.586 ha. (the Gola, Chawa, Andheri and Ruyem blocks) of the Mahananda Wildlife Sanctuary, West Bengal.

April 2013: In 2012, 21 rhinos were reported dead in Assam, the majority poached in and around the Kaziranga National Park. In the first two months of 2013 alone, 12 rhinos were slaughtered – 10 from Kaziranga, and one from Manas, both World Heritage Sites – and one, which possibly strayed out from the Orang National Park and was killed in the Chitalmari char area within Morigaon district of Assam.

February 2013: The argument for the construction of a new railway line to connect Nanjangud in Karnataka with Nilambur in Kerala, at the cost of Rs. 3,384 crores across a 22 km. stretch of pristine wilderness in the reserve, has taken on new dimensions, with the Kerala State Government taking a keen interest in pushing for the rail track.

In response to a PIL filed in December 2012 by the Arkavathi and Kumudvathy River Rejuvenation Trust (Arkavathu mathu Kumudvathy nadi Punaschetana Samithi in Kannada), in the Karnataka High Court, the division bench of the acting Chief Justice and Justice Nagarathna has halted construction plans for a theme park, film city and golf course that had been proposed across a 300 acre stretch of Hesaraghatta, the…

December 2012: In a few decades, the glaciers that feed Himalayan rivers with water could have vanished, yet closed-minded planners are proceeding with eco-lethal plans for large hydropower projects that can benefit no one but the politicians, contractors and a pecking order of insensitive, short-term profit seekers.

December 2012: The brutal massacre of the Amur Falcon in regions of Northeast India has long been suspected by Conservation India – a recent survey at the Doyang reservoir in Wokha district, Nagaland by a small group of conservationists  (Ramki Sreenivasan from Conservation India, Shashank Dalvi, Bano Haralu and Rokohebi Kuotsu) confirmed their worst fears.

Spread over 7506 sq. km., the ‘Flamingo City’ in Kutch, the largest flamingo breeding ground in Asia, faces grave threat from a proposed road construction project. An Important Birding Area (IBA) declared by the BNHS and BirdLife International, it could soon be abandoned by the birds, eliminating India’s only flamingo breeding site and jeopardising the bird’s future in the Indian Subcontinent.

Expected to be a tenacious, action-provoking film – the stuff that conservation ideals are made of – the film ‘Return of the Ganga’ is out to convert the one-billion-strong population of India into activists fighting to save the country’s most vital lifeline, the Ganga. The team responsible for this massive undertaking is in need of funding and is running a campaign for the same.

October 2012: In December 2011, the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) took up the issue of notification of the Nandhour landscape, lying between the Gola and Sharada rivers in Uttarakhand, and which is a key part of the Terai Arc Landscape (TAL), as a wildlife sanctuary.

October 2012: With the majority of her coal reserves lying under the last remaining forests in India, coal mining is one of the largest threats facing Central India’s biodiversity today. These destructive projects are being approved and expanded at a terrible pace, and the ecologies they damage are reaching a tipping point.