Posted by
Mahafreed on December 22, 2009 |
No commentsOn Saturday morning, 120 Mumbaikars, most of them internet junkies, gave the city a green Christmas gift. They had been invited online by techies Satish Vijaykumar and Ranjeet Walunj to adopt an Ashoka or Neem sapling. The saplings were given free of cost with a condition: They should have an online profile with updates, photos and videos for the next two years.
Participants were encouraged to use the #sapling tag on networking sites like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us and Technorati. An award awaits the participant whose sapling grows the tallest at the fastest rate. The group plans to plant 10,000 saplings to the city by 2010.
The citizens’ initiative has been called The Sapling Project (www.thesaplingproject.com) and was started because the organizers felt that most tree plantation drives were carried out at the National Park or Aarey Milk colony, while colonies and buildings that actually need more trees were being ignored. ”Living is a different thing, we’re just about managing to stay alive,’’ says Vijaykumar, a Borivali-resident, avid tweeter and blogger at bombaylives.com.
Weeks before the drive, online invitations to visit Shivaji Park and adopt a sapling were sent out using Twitter, Facebook and blogs. His friend Walunj wants to tie up with the BMC. “A lot of places in the city can be designated sapling zones where trees are needed. So people who do not find place can come here and plant them’’.
Online networking with tweeters in Chennai, Bangalore and Delhi has enthused locals to carry out similar plantation drives as part of the project. The next drive in Mumbai will take place in January and the organizers will visit areas like Dadar, Bandra, Andheri and Borivali with saplings in a van for distribution.
In the past, several sapling-planting initiatives have been launched in the city. In a move to restore the degraded periphery areas of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, GAIA Conservation Foundation is working with the Bombay Natural History Society to get citizens to plant saplings.
Over 10,000 saplings of indigenous trees like Red Silk Cotton, teak, Shivaji’s Sword, Khair, Shivan, Ziziphus and Flame of Forest have been planted by hundreds of people at the Goregaon site. NGO I Love Mumbai has been carrying out planting distribution drives in the city too.
But environmentalist Rishi Aggarwal says drives like these need support from experts who understand the ecology of each tree. ”You can’t plant a tree that will grow to have a 30-foot canopy on a narrow road. Plantation has to be an informed exercise,’’ says Aggarwal who wants the tree authority to have a separate website giving details of where saplings can be planted in the city using GPS coordinate. ”Location is the key criteria and the BMC seems to have failed in facilitating the good intentions of citizens in this area’’.
Posted by
imports on January 24, 2009 |
3 commentsThe forest officers of Sanjay Gandhi National Park have been bombarded with questions from tourists. Everyone wants to see Yash and Laxmi, the two new members of the park. Yellow and striped, they are Bengal tiger cubs that have just been released for visitors to watch. The city’s very own national park has a tiger safari too. But it’s not like the open jeep-ride of Kanha National Park or Jim Corbett. The mini-bus that navigates on 5kms of winding, muddy forest roads allows tourists to catch the last glimpse of the endangered animal, only in a cage. So, the two tiger cubs play with their mother Basanti on a concrete patch of land inside what the forest officers refer to as the secondary enclosure. But for tourists any glimpse of the tiger will be memorable. For years after, they believe the tigers might just not be there for them to see. Unaffected by the preying eyes, pointing fingers and whispering voices of human visitors, mother Basanti lays stretched, soaking the afternoon sun.
Striped Wonder - Photo by: Thad Zajdowicz
The national park which sanctions ‘walking passes’ to people has other visitors too. Away from the preying eyes of their families and friends, couples make regular visits to the forest. Finding a cozy corner on the banks of lake Tulsi can be difficult considering there are so many other people falling in love at the same time.
Posted by
imports on January 7, 2009 |
4 commentsWhen residents of Shivaji Park saw a dead hump-backed dolphin washed on the beach shore, they didn’t know how to react. While some felt sad, a few others wondered where it came from and how it was murdered.
Rubbishing claims of the dolphin hitting itself with the newly-built pillars of the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, Anish Andheria, Director of Science and Natural History with Sanctuary Asia explains that the marine mammal has a very sharp sense of hearing and navigates with the help of sonic waves. “Dolphins die due to reasons ranging from climate change, fishing to old age. It would be difficult to find the cause of death without an autopsy,” he said.
The instance of a dolphin being washed away on the shore sounds strange for scuba diver BF Chhapgar. “They are intelligent, fast-swimming animals,” he says, narrating instances of whales being stranded on the beach. His experience with the Indian Fisheries department, reminded him about how in the 1950’s the mammals were killed ruthlessly by fisher folk. “Dolphins are enemies of the fishing community because they tear their nets. At that time, the government gave away Rs5 awards for every dolphin tail that was cut.”
It’s the best season to fish and with thousands of fishing trawlers setting sail everyday, experts pointed at the chances of the mammal being hit by a propeller. “It’s hearing sense could have got disoriented because of the loud sounds coming from the trawler,” explains Andheria.
Last year, when marine activist Jayasimha found a dolphin on Versova beach, he along with his deep-sea diver friend hired a motorboat to take it back into the sea. “Mumbai is apathetic towards fish life. No one really cares about the dolphin,” he says.
Ask him how the mammal could have died and he blames the excessive dependency of man on the oceans. “Dolphins look for schools of fish to eat. Due to excessive fishing, the reserves have depleted, forcing them to come to shallow water,” he says.
Although they are a rare sight, the Arabian Sea has a large dolphin population. Their fast-swimming nature makes it difficult to spot them. These mammals often come close to waters around Mumbai. In the past, fishermen have spotted them in the sea near the Gateway of India. Regarded as one of the most intelligent animals, dolphins have acute eyesight with a sense of hearing superior to humans.
While dolphin conservation in Mumbai is unheard of even scientists from the Central Institute of Fishery Education at Versova weren’t able to give details about the origins of the dolphins. A senior scientist said that most marine research carried out in Mumbai was focused on commercial fish that could be consumed, leaving the dolphins outside the bracket of study.
A very human expression
Some background about the dolphin found:
Species: Indo-Pacific Hump-Backed Dolphin
Habitat: Lives close to the shore and near the mouth of rivers. Found along the coast of south-east Asia up to northern Australia.
Food: Fish, squid and octopus
Nature: Group-loving
Body type: Robust, slender built, fin on a hump. Females grow upto 8 ft while males can grow upto 9ft. A full grown female weighs 170kg while a male weighs 260kgs.
Life span: Can grown till 40 years.
