Kainaat Mushtaq
SRINAGAR: The Mahseer, known among Kashmiri anglers as "tiger in the water", all but vanished after Pakistan constructed a dam in the late 1960s that stopped the fish from migrating to India.
Earlier conservationists said they were breeding the Mahseer and hope to release them in rivers in Kashmir.
The programme which was the result of a peace process between India and Pakistan that has led to a drop in violence in the region, failed...
Posted 55 days ago.
SRINAGAR: A local woman struggled to pole a shikara piled high with the day's vegetable harvest through a thick mat of duckweed, water ferns and algae.
"Lasa, help me! I can't find my way through!" she shouted to a relative trying to wrestle his shikara off a mud bar in the middle of the lake.
Strangled by weeds, choked with silt and saturated with pollution, one of the most idyllic lakes on the Indian subcontinent is dying.
Once the vacation destination for the likes of Beatle George...
Posted 57 days ago.
SRINAGAR: Five years ago when a Unani doctor in Kashmir started using leeches to cure his patients, he faced criticism from his allopathic counterparts.
Now Dr. Nisar Ahmed Hakeem says an increasing number of conventional doctors are among his patients.
"I cannot tell you their names, but yes a lot of English -medicine doctors come to me for themselves or their relatives," he says.
Three traditional hospitals in Kashmir, following the unani system of medicine, started using leeches to...
Posted 61 days ago.
Ishfaq Tantry
SRINAGAR: After successfully tagging a hangul (Kashmir stag) with a GPS (global positioning system) collar, wildlife scientists in Kashmir have started receiving satellite data which is opening new dimensions about the biology of the animal.
The preliminary data received through satellites has begun providing evidence about the rare animal’s resting places and the average distance it...
Posted 62 days ago.
SRINAGAR: Satellite collars are being fitted on a group of Hangul, a rare Red Deer species found only in this Himalayan region, in a bid to better understand their behaviour.
A team of scientists hid inside caves in the upper reaches of the Dachigam National park for two days for their first catch. That Hangul was collared on Saturday.
“We hope to fit the tiny equipment on few others during this week”, says Dr Khursheed Ahmad, Principal Investigator and head of wildlife department at...
Posted 66 days ago.
SRINAGAR: Leopards and wolves have moved closer to villages across Kashmir since the valley witnessed unprecedented snowfall last month, posing a threat to humans and livestock, residentgs say.
People living in small hamlets in the foothills of the Himalayas, complain that leopards, packs of wolves, jackals and hyenas have been moving freely in their villages during the night.
The wild cats and wolves have moved closer to the villages in search of food as the snowfall, the heaviest in...
Posted 67 days ago.
SRINAGAR: Authorities say they envisaged a new scheme for Pashmina wool development with a Rs 41.21 crore allocation.
They confirmed that thousands of Pashmina goats had died due to heavy snowfall in the Ladakh region.
"The Ministry of Textiles is deeply concerned to learn that the recent unprecedented snowfall in Changthang region this winter has left twenty two thousand goats dead," an official spokesman said.
The spokesman said New Delhi had launched a major programme for...
Posted 72 days ago.
Mujtaba Wani
SRINAGAR: A five-year-old boy was dragged away by a leopard to a forest in north Kashmir and later only his half eaten body was recovered, police said on Sunday.
This is the third such incident in past 10 days underlining the mountainous region's grave man-animal conflict issue.
Wildlife officials say Leopard and Himalayan black bear populations have increased after a ban on hunting was enforced in Kashmir in 1970, and the loss of pine forests had...
Posted 74 days ago.
SRINAGAR: Four people were injured when a leopard attacked them inside a house in central Kashmir, police said on Friday.
The wild cat on Thursday evening found its way into a house in Nasirpora, Budgam and attacked Abdul Aziz Reshi, Ghulam Hassan Mir, Gulshana Bano and Zahoor Ahmad and Mohammad Maqbool.
The cat fled and the injured were shifted to Hospital for treatment.
Such incidents have been on a rise lately, underlining a growing man-animal conflict in the Himalayan...
Posted 76 days ago.
SRINAGAR: Conservationists in Kashmir have established a breeding centre to save the Hangul, a rare species of Red Deer found only in the Himalayan region.
Environmentalists say there are less than 218 red deer known commonly as the Hangul left in Kashmir's forests from more than 900 in 1989 because of poaching and neglect by authorities aggravated by a 23-year-old separatist violence.
"Union Ministry of Forests and Environment has approved a long term Hangul Conservation Action Plan...
Posted 79 days ago.
