Vol 1:1
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April 2003
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Branches@ATREE(A
Bimonthly Newsletter)
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Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment |
Bangalore
Office
659 5th A Main, Hebbal Bangalore 560 024 Tel: 080-353 3942,353 0069 Fax: 353 0070 Delhi Office B-80 Shivalik New Delhi 110 017 Tel/Fax: 011-266 93299 266 93190 Eastern Himalayas Office Bagdogra 734 422 Tel/Fax:0353-255 1110 255 0093 Advisory Board
Executive Board
Executive Staff Dr. Bibhab Talukdar Mr. Manoj Dabas Ms. Suparna Biswas
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Conserving India’s Natural Heritage
India
is one of the signatories to the World Heritage Convention and five of
India’s key protected areas are currently inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage
List.These are Kaziranga and Manas
in Assam, Keoladeo in Rajasthan, Sundarbans in West Bengal and Nanda Devi
in Uttaranchal.
The
designation of a protected area as a world heritage site confers several
benefits: direct and indirect financial assistance, greater visibility
of the site(s) in world conservation circles, inhibition of destructive
development and land use changes around these sites, and possibly increased
benefits from eco-tourism due to their international stature.
A
new initiative is being launched through a planning grant from the UN Foundation
(UNF), through UNESCO, which was awarded to the Ministry of Environment
and Forests, Government of India, that will use four World Heritage Biodiversity
sites in India as models for other protected areas, to be replicated if
successful.The proposal will be
submitted to UNF in March 2003 for securing funding from themand
from other organizations to implement the recommendations of the proposal
in a phased manner. The first phase will be for a trial 4-year period,
which may be extended to 10 years after a critical review. The implementing
agencies for the planning phase activities are the Wildlife
Institute of India (WII), an autonomous institution under the Ministry
of Environment and Forests, Government of India, and the Ashoka Trust for
Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE). ATREE is in charge of
activities in the Eastern Himalayas and Western Ghats and WII
is the lead agency for the Nanda Devi and Keoladeo Ghana National Parks
and the Terai floodplains.
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As
part of this program, ATREE organized a workshop in New Delhi in January
2003 to design and implement a communications and advocacy strategy for
raising the profile of protected-area management as a profession within
Indian society, andfor increasing
the interest of youth in choosing this profession as a career option.
Desirable
outcomes of the World Heritage Biodiversity Program advocacy and communications
strategy would be, asignificant
reduction of political and public opposition and animosity to law enforcement
Practices
adopted by protected areamanagement
personnel to protect biodiversity; regular media coverage, and other advocacy
products in public and private media channels promoting the
work of protected areamanagement
personnel and emphasizing the role played by them in preserving our natural
heritage; and agreater appreciation
and understanding of the benefits of conservation (e.g.,ecosystem services)
amongkey decision makers, people’s
representatives, politicians, the judiciary, senior bureaucrats and also
the general public.– Abi Tamin
Course
in conservation biology in the North East – Jan.21
to Feb.4, 2003
ATREE
sponsored its 4th conservation biology course and the2nd
of its kind in the north east for post graduate and graduate students.
It was held in Siliguri and Guwahati. The objective of this course was
to teach students the fundamentals of Conservation biology, as it is practiced
today. This was conducted at two different locations. One was in Siliguri
area with field work in the Mahananda wild life sanctuary and around Darjeeling.
The other location was Guwahati in Assam for lectures while the field work
was done close to Guwahati, in Meghalaya region. 15 students including
one from Nepal participated in the course. Many new topics were introduced
such as: conservation planning, lesser fauna approach to conservation,
forest restoration, laws and policies in conservation apart from the regular
topics such as general introduction to
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Conservation
biology, distribution of biodiversity at global and regional levels, ecological
communities and their conservation, conserving small populations at species
level, threats to biodiversity such as local extinctions, climate change,
invasive species and forest fragmentation, genetics of conservation, Ex-situ
conservation and protected areas.
--
T. Ganesh
New
Fellows
ATREEwelcomes
the following new and recently appointed Fellows:
Dr.
Kartik Shanker,
who obtained his PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.
Dr. Shanker is an animal ecologist. His recent work has focused on the
ecology and conservation genetics of the Ridley turtle.
Ms.
Seema Purushothaman
is finishing her PhD degree from the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun,
India, . She obtained her Master’s degree in natural resource and environmental
economics from the University of London. Ms. Purushothaman is a resource
economist.
Dr.
Harini Nagendra
obtained her PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.
She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at Indiana University, Bloomington,
Indiana, USA. Dr. Nagendra has interests in landscape ecology, and property
and tenure rights associated with the use of natural resources.
Dr.
Bhaskar Sinha
has a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, NewDelhi,
India.
Dr. Sinha is an ecologist. He is particularly interested in the sustainable
use of natural resources in mountain ecosystems.
Dr.
Mohan G.S
completed his PhD from University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore,
India, in genetics and plant breeding. His interests are in plant-genetic-resource
utilization, agro-biodiversity and eco-informatics.
Dr.
Mohammed Irfan Ullah
obtained his PhD from the applied geology department at the |
Indian
Institute of Technology, Roorkee. His doctoral thesis was on environmental
hydrochemistry. His special interests are in the use of GIS and remote
sensingtechniques in natural resource
management with an emphasis on water resource management.
Dr.
Rohan D’Souza (visiting fellow)
has a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has been a post-doctoral
research associate at Yale University in New Haven and at the University
of California, Berkeley, USA. Dr. D’Souza is interested in environmental
policy and environmental history.
Endowed positions
Some
of the fellows named above have filled 4 of the 5 endowed positions. These
are:
Plant/Forest Ecologist - Dr. Ankila Hiremath
Landscape/Watershed Ecologist - Dr. Jagdish Krishnaswamy
Animal/Wildlife Ecologist - Dr. Kartik Shanker
Environmental Economist
- Dr. Seema Purushothaman
New
Staff Members
Arundhati
Das
completed her MS in environmental science from Duke University, Durham,
North Carolina, USA. She is interested in landscape ecology and is the
coordinator of the GIS and remote sensing laboratoryat
ATREE.
Sham
Dhavande
completed his MS in environmental science from Shivaji University, Kolhapur,
India. – He is a research associate working with a Ministry-of-Environment-and-Forests-funded
gap analysis project at ATREE.
Shiva
Subramanya
is the new systems administrator at ATREE. He completed his MS in computer
science from Madurai Kamaraj University,Madurai, India. His special interest
is in data base management.
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T.R.
Gopi
is the ATREE senior accountant. He graduated from Achrya Patashala College,
Bangalore, India, with a degree in commerce.
Edda G. Sehgal
Fund in Conservation Science
Through
the generous support of the Sehgal Family Foundation, ATREE has established
the Edda G. Sehgal Fund in Conservation Science. The Foundation’s gift
of Rs.48 lakhs (U.S. $100,000) was matched by ATREE to set up an endowment
of approximately Rs.96 lakhs (U.S.$200,000). The endowment will support
an Edda G. Sehgal Fellowship in Conservation Science.The
fund will also provide assistance to fellows of ATREE to conduct research
at institutions in the Boston areafor
limited periods. This $100.000 gift is on top of the endowment grant provided
to ATREE by the Sehgal Family Foundation in 2002.
T.N. Khoshoo Memorial FundATREE
has established the T.N. Khoshoo Memorial Fund to honor the late Dr. T.N.
Khoshoo, one of India’s eminent botanists and environmentalists. Dr. Khoshoo
was also a Trustee of ATREE. The Fund, established by ATREE with a contribution
from K.S. Bawa and Ganesan Balachander will recognize outstanding individuals
engaged in academic or action-oriented environmental work. A committee
headed by
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Dr.
Ved Brat of Braton Biotech Inc, Rockville, Maryland, U.S.A.,will
develop the guidelines for the T.N. Khoshoo Memorial Award(s)It
will also plan for the annual event associated with the award.
ATREE
Board Member to Head the Ford Foundation, New Delhi
Dr.
Ganesan Balachander, currently the Director of the Asia Program at the
Mountain Institute, Washington, D.C., has been selected as the Program
Head (Representative) of Ford Foundation’s New Delhi office for India,
Nepal, and Sri Lanka. He will jointhe
Foundation in June of this year. Dr. Balachander is a member of ATREE’s
Executive Board. However, with his recent appointment to the Ford Foundation,
he plans to resign from the ATREE board.
Science
Features ATREE Publication
Science,
the world’s leading newsmagazine,
and the weekly journal of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, featured an article published by ATREE scientists in its January
17, 2003 issue under the Editor’s Choice column.The
following is a quote fromone of
the editors of Science:
ECOLOGY/EVOLUTION:
Biodiversity from Space “Mapping
and quantifying biodiversity is key to effective conservation planning,
yet gathering the necessary data can be costly and time consuming. Conservationists
and land managers therefore place a premium on methods, such as remote
sensing, that yield tolerable estimates of biodiversity in the absence
of exhaustive ground surveys. Bawa et al. have tested a method of estimating
tree diversity from space. Their study, conducted in the Biligiri Rangaswamy
hills in the Western Ghats, India, shows a strong and positive correlation
between species richness and an index of green biomass–the Normalized Difference
Vegetation Index (NDVI)–which can be assessed accurately using satellite
imagery. This technique shows promise for estimating broad patterns of
tree species diversity at the landscape scale in tropical forests, which
may be crucial to identifying areas most in need of protection and where
rapid destruction is underway.” –
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The
details of the cited paper are:
Assessing
Biodiversity from Space: An Example from the Western Ghats, India.
Kamaljit
Bawa, Joseph Rose, K.N. Ganeshaiah, Narayani Barve, M.C. Kiran, and R.
Umashaanker .Conservation. Ecology. 6, http://www.consecol.org/vol6/iss2/art7
(2002).
Upcoming
Events
April
28-30,2003
Workshop
on “Policies, Management, Utilization and Conservation of Non-Timber Forest
Products in the South Asia Region” at Bangalore, Sponsored by FAO.
June
9, 10 and 11, 2003
Eco-informatics
Workshop at Bangalore, sponsored by Indo-U.S Forum
2nd
week in June, 2003
Conservation
Biology course for senior, graduate and post-graduate students at Bangalore
Recent
Publications Bawa
K, J. Rose, K.N. Ganeshaiah, N. Barve, M.C. Kiran, and R. Umashaanker.
2002. Assessing Biodiversity from Space: An Example from the Western Ghats,
India. Conservation Ecology. 6, http://www.consecol.org/vol6/iss2/art7 Hiremath,
A.J., J.J. Ewel, and T.G. Cole. 2002. Productivity, nutrient retention,
and nutrient use efficiency in three fast-growing tropical trees. Forest
Science 48: 662-672 Talukdar,
B.K. 2002. Tiger Predation of Rhino Calves at Kaziranga National Park,
Assam. Tiger Paper 29: 18-20 Talukdar,
B.K. 2002. Dedication leads to reduced rhino poaching in Assam in recent
years. Pachyderm 33: 58-63 |