SRINAGAR: An explosion in the population of Himalayan porcupine threatens to wreak havoc on the saffron and vegetable crops and fruit trees in Kashmir Valley.
Long-time residents say they have no memory of the animal; its sighting is a new phenomenon. Wildlife experts and researchers, however, hold that the animal, a rodent, is a native of the area.
Its shrinking habitat and human interference in forest areas have caused the porcupines to move to human habitations. Porcupines have a taste...
Posted 136 days ago.
BARAMULLA: A leopard mauled an 11-year-old boy to death on Saturday when he was playing with his friends in north Kashmir, another addition to incidents lately which underline a growing man-animal conflict in the Himalayan region.
The animal, officials said, roamed into Kreeri village in Baramulla from a nearby forest and attacked Kamran Ahmed Ganai before fleeing back.
The boy died of serious injuries at a hospital.
Residents of the area took to the streets shouting slogans against...
Posted 136 days ago.
Feb 2 is observed as the World Wetlands Day; marking the Ramsar Convention, held on this day in 1971 in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the Caspian Sea.
The convention on wetlands is an intergovernmental treaty that embodies the commitments of its member countries to maintain the ecological character of their Wetlands of International Importance and to plan for the "wise use", or sustainable use, of...
Posted 137 days ago.
JAMMU: Stressing on the need to promote wildlife tourism in Jammu and Kashmir, a state minister today said it has a great potential to draw tourists to the state.
Concerned authorities have been asked to launch an awareness campaign about wildlife destinations in Jammu and Kashmir, state Minister for Forests, Ecology and Environment Mian Altaf Ahmad said at Nagrota here.
He inspected the proposed site for setting up a Zoo at Khanpur Nagrota.
Posted 140 days ago.
SRINAGAR: A leopard blamed for attacking half a dozen people in north Kashmir was brutally stoned to death by angry villagers, media reports said on Tuesday.
The leopard which had injured villagers, including women and children, in Gulgam area of Kupwara was attacked from all directions, even after wildlife officials sedated it.
"The police and wildlife officials reached the spot and successfully tranquilised the animal to evacuate it to some safer place," TNS qouted police as...
Posted 148 days ago.
Kainaat Mushtaq
SRINAGAR: In a densely populated downtown area of Srinagar, Parveena and her husband Altaf sit hunched over a handloom, painstakingly weaving a shahtoosh shawl.
Both are unmindful of a global ban on the elegant shawl, made from the hair of an endangered antelope called the Chiru, or Tibetan antelope.
But it wouldn't matter even if they knew.
Neither the international ban of 1995, a separate ban by central government 15 years ago nor the two...
Posted 149 days ago.
SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir’s nomadic Gujjar and Bakarwal tribes have lost 12 “rare indigenous” species of sheep, goats, horses and dogs during the past four decades as a result of induction of foreign high-yielding breeds.
According to Javaid Rahi, secretary Tribal Research and Cultural Foundation (TRCF), a frontal organisation of Gujjars of Jammu and Kashmir, almost six of rare native species considered the most threatened in the world are also at the verge of extinction in the...
Posted 154 days ago.
SRINAGAR: A 45-year-old temporary forest guard today risked his life and limbs to save a musk deer from a pack of more than a dozen dogs, earning a reward from the government.
The musk deer is an endangered species and occasionally makes the news in Kashmir when hunters kill one.
Ghulam Hassan Malik, who earns a daily wage as a forest department watchman, will be awarded for his courageous act, Kulgam deputy commissioner Jahangir Mir said.
"For a moment I thought I myself would not be...
Posted 156 days ago.
NEW DELHI: Over rising fear that the endangered Kashmiri stag Hangul may soon become extinct, the Environment Ministry has decided to step in and initiate a conservation process to check its fast dwindling population.
The horned stag, which is found only in Dachigam National Park in Kashmir, has been reduced from thousands to around 200, raising an alarm over the possibility of its extinction.
The Environment Ministry has, therefore, decided to step in to conserve the state animal of...
Posted 164 days ago.
SRINAGAR The government will spend nearly 3,560 million rupees cleaning up iconic Dal lak in Kashmir which has been polluted during decades of neglect, corruption and bureaucratic wrangling, state's Deputy Chief Minister Tara Chand said.
Dal Lake, the region's main tourist attraction which has drawn visitors from Mughal emperors to the Beatles star George Harrison, has shrunk from 25 sq km to 13 sq km since the 1980s, environmental campaigners say.
Raw sewage, rubbish and land...
Posted 166 days ago.
