Lady-killer elephant being tracked in Indian park

New Delhi - Forest wardens are hunting for a 25-year-old bull elephant suspected of killing at least 12 female elephants in a wildlife reserve in southern India after they spurned his sexual advances, news reports said Wednesday.

Eight female elephants were found dead in the Periyar tiger reserve in Kerala state from February 2009 to June, the Times of India newspaper quoted the state's chief wildlife warden KK Srivastava as saying.

Srivastava said postmortem reports suggested the deaths were caused by the same tusker who has been named Alpha by forest officials.

'Two more females were found dead between March 12 and March 21 this year,' Srivastava said. 'The nature of the injuries point to the same culprit.'

The rogue tusker is believed to have killed another two elephants over the past three years, forest officials said.

Alpha most likely gored these elephants because they resisted his sexual advances while he was in a 'musth' state, the forest officials said.

Musth, which derives from Persian and means intoxicated, is a term used to describe a periodic condition in bull elephants when they show highly aggressive behavior because of increased testosterone levels.

Forensic tests on the dead elephants revealed they had puncture marks on their rears. The wounds matched the dimensions of Alpha's tusks, the Times of India said.

A 15-member expert panel has been set up to track the rogue elephant, the report said.

S Africa ready to give cheetahs to India

Neha Sinha

On the sidelines of the just-concluded climate change meet in Cape Town, India and South Africa — the two countries on Monday released a joint statement, pledging support to tackle climate change as part of the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) group — also discussed cheetahs, which the Ministry of Environment and Forests is trying to re-introduce here.

After a meeting between Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh and his South African counterpart Buyelwa Sonjica, the latter has consented to part with cheetahs, extinct in Indian forests, for the re-introduction programme.

“South Africa is willing to give cheetahs to India,” Ramesh said. “Now, we have the option of getting the animals from South Africa, Kenya and Namibia,” he added.

Chhattisgarh UMPP bids may run into environment ministry hurdles

NEW DELHI: Bidders for the ultra mega power project at Chhattisgarh, that are set to put in their pre-qualification bids by May 3, could be in for a major jolt as coal blocks linked to the 4000 mw project is unlikely to get the nod from the environment ministry. In a clear case of where one arm of the government works at cross purposes against the other, the power ministry has called for bids even as the environment and coal ministries have jointly declared the Hasdeo Arand coal belt region as a “no go” area for mining.

The environment ministry, which has been carrying out special audits on the encroachments and violations in the forest areas, has come down heavily over some ambitious mining projects like that of the Vedanta group in Orissa and also rejected a highway project in Madhya Pradesh that transgresses through Pench Tiger reserve.

The ministry has carried out a joint exercise with the coal ministry studying nine major coal mining areas and has concluded that almost 35% of the area under study (primarily in central and eastern India) is not viable for mining activities.

The decision of the environment ministry is likely to raise a crucial question over the fate of this proposed UMPP. For one, coal, the fuel for the power plant will now have to be carted from some other mine which would impact the costing and power tariffs. Also, bidders for this proposed power project may not be so keen on investing unless there is clarity on the fuel linkage.

Power companies, like NTPC, Jindal Power, L&T, Sterlite, were keen on taking part in the Chhattisgarh power project that would involve an investment of almost Rs 20,000 crore.

“The environment ministry has studied the nine major coal belts in India. And we have divided the areas into three broad categories. The first being those which do not pose serious environmental risks, the second being a “no-go” but which would allow remedial measures like compensation foresting and the third category identifies areas that are completely no-go,” environment minister Jairam Ramesh told ET. “The Hasdeo area is one such no-go area where no mining activities will be allowed,” he said.

The matter and decision was flagged by the environment ministry to the power ministry and a joint meeting was taken by officials of the prime ministers office (PMO) and representatives of coal, environment and power ministry in January, a copy of the agenda note that ET has in possession shows.

Apart from the umpp, the decision will immediately impact about 30 mining licence given to steel, power and cement companies such as Prakash Industries, Hindustan Zinc, Ultratech and Chhattisgarh Captive Coal Mining. The captive blocks in this field have been allocated between 2003 and 2007 and substantive work on some of the blocks has already been done.

Officials in coal ministry, who wished not to be identified, said that any new policy would also have to look at country’s needs of pushing up GDP growth that would mean that energy production will have to be enhanced rapidly.

Speaking to ET, Coal India chairman Partha S Bhattacharyya expressed concern that new policy will seriously impact its operations. “The country needs a more integrated approach towards environment and forest clearance,” he said.

Do not foresee any problems in Chhindwara plan: Adani Power

The power project of Adani Power Limited (APL) in Madhya Pradesh seems to have run into trouble with the Environment Ministry giving enough indications that it would not approve the proposal of the company to draw water from Pench Tiger reserve for its project in Chhindawara district.

However, the company’s director, Ameet Desai said they haven’t received any official communiqué on the subject from the Ministry. “We do not foresee any problems in Chhindawara project,” he said in an exclusive interview with CNBC-TV18.

This is not the first time that an Adani project has hit a roadblock over environment approvals.

A few months ago, the Environment Ministry had said no to the company's coal mining proposal in Tadoba region in Maharashtra citing threat to tigers in the adjacent Tadoba Andheri tiger reserve.

On a positive note for the company, recently the Reserve Bank had classified infra projects as non-performing loans (NPL) wherein commercial production is behind schedule by four years from the earlier two years.

Desai said the change in guidelines is a welcome step as infra projects do get delayed due to some legal issue or the other.

Commenting on the current average realisation, Desai said, merchant power tariffs have started to firm up in the last few days. “We think this trend will continue to remain till the monsoon period sets in.”

On the capacity front, he said, “In the latter part of last quarter, we have commissioned out the 330 MW unit at Mundra and now we have effective capacity of 660 MW up and running.”

“One More Leopard Lost”

Amravati territorial forest also knows as Pohara-Malkhed forest range is a rich biodiversity forest with many species of wild animals and plants. In spite of heavy human interference this forest has maintained its rich flora & fauna.

This forest is divided in patches between different villages like Pohara, Malkhed, Chirodi, Karala etc. this patches including some patches others are isolated and don’t have corridors connecting them with each other. Hence when leopard population increase in a particular patch (female giving birth to cubs) young leopard march outside the forest area to search a new territory for himself thus giving rise to human conflict which further results in accidental death, easy poaching or retaliatory killing of leopards.

In a series of such incident in Pohara-Malkhed forest on 4^th April 2010 skin of a young leopard was ceased from Jevad bit of Wadali range due to initiative taken by “Youth For Nature Conservation Organization, Amravati” NGO working for wild life conservation in Melghat Tiger Reserve and Amravati territorial forest for many years.

On the base of information gathered from local informer, which is a part of our information network developed in Melghat Tiger Reserve and territorial forest. Dr. Swapnil Sonone president of the organization along with members of organization mr.Shyam Pawar and mr.Rakesh Mahalle rushed to the location told by the informer leopard skin warped in bed sheet between bushes. Information was forwarded to forest department for further investigation, and backup team of youth for nature conservation also rushed to the spot including Saurabh Sutrave, Kunal Potode & Vaibhav Babrekar. While investigation were done by our team two suspicious persons were present some distance away, our team chased them but before the forest department team arrived they will able to escape from that location.

A hut near Chatri-Talav which was observed for illegal activities by our team was also searched in presence of forest official and police department & horns of spotted deer and legs of peacock were ceased from that hut offence were registered against the owner and further investigation is on the way.

Such incidences had happened and will happen again and again until monitoring on the movement of wild animals specially leopard is done properly, and human interferences should be reduced with corridors connecting the sensitive patches should be maintained and developed. We are continuously working on “Leopard Tracking Program” project for the wildlife conservation at Amravati territorial forest.