IUCN Red List

Least Concern <  Near Threatened < Endangered < Critically 

Endangered < Extinct in the World < Extinct 

 

Least Concern

Near Threatened

Endangered

Critically Endangered

• Great Indian Bustard
• Pink-headed Duck
• Jerdon’s Courser
• Siberian Crane
• Forest Owlet(Maharashtra)

Extinct in the World

Extinct 

News-Sep 2013

• India has decided not to give in to U.S. pressure to agree to discussions on phasing out refrigerant gases under the Montreal Protocol.
  • To do so, the Indian government has agreed to set up a Indo-U.S. working group on climate change, which will discuss the issue of refrigerant gases, besides other areas of collaboration and discussions. The joint working group will be headed by Union Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan on the Indian side, while Todd Stern, Special Envoy on Climate Change, will lead the U.S. team.
  • Since 2009, India has stood firm that the HFCs — used for refrigeration — should be dealt with like all other greenhouse gases under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. They have contested that the Montreal Protocol is only meant to address ozone-depleting substances and argued that the developed world is keen on pushing costly and not fully tested proprietary technologies to fast growing economies through this route.
  • But the Indian position was weakened when New Delhi signed the recent G20 communiqué that welcomed bringing mitigation of HFC emissions under the Montreal Protocol. 

Terms

Blast Fishing

• Blast fishing or dynamite fishing is the practice of using explosives to stun or kill schools of fish for easy collection. This often illegal practice can be extremely destructive to the surrounding ecosystem, as the explosion often destroys the underlying habitat (such as coral reefs) that supports the fish.
• Researchers believe that destructive fishing practices like blast fishing to be one of the biggest threat to the coral reef ecosystems. Blown up coral reefs are no more than rubble fields.
• Coral reefs are less likely to recover from constant disturbance such as blast fishing than from small disturbance that does not change the physical environment. Blast fishing destroys the calcium carbonate coral skeletons and is one of the continual disruptions of coral reefs

 

Desertification

Desertification 

It is a type of land degradation  in which a relatively dry land becomes increasingly arid , typically losing  its bodies of water as well as  vegetation and wildlife.

Causes : 

Number of factors which work individually or in combination causing desertification. The immediate cause is the removal of most vegetation. This is driven by a number of factors such as:

• Drought
• Climatic shifts
• Tillage for agriculture
• Overgrazing
• Deforestation for fuel or construction materials

Role of vegetation, livestock and wildlife in preventing desertification

• Vegetation plays a vital role in determining the biological composition of the soil. As per studies, the rate of erosion and runoff decreases exponentially with increased vegetation cover.
• Unprotected, dry soil surfaces blow away with the wind or are washed away by flash floods, leaving infertile lower soil layers that bake in the sun and become an unproductive hardpan.
• Movement and migration of large herds of livestock and wildlife has an integral role in the preservation of vegetation and soil fertilization, and that the removal of livestock and wildlife (largely by human influence) has been the main driver of increasing desertification.

India’s over one-fourth land hit by desertification : Environment Min

• Report submitted by Env Min to UN Convention to Combat Desertification.
  Report : 

1. India which has a total geographic area of 328 million hectares is grappling with Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought (DLDD) on 7,91,475 sq km of the territory covering almost all states and union territories of the country.
2. The total area undergoing the process of land degradation in the country is estimated at 105.48 million hectares, which forms 32.07% of India’s total land.
3. Major challenges remain in the area of land use planning, management of waste and degraded land, and efficient use of water resources.

• A number of measures have been taken through different channels like Integrated Watershed Management Programme, National Rural Drinking Water Programme, MNREGA, National Rural Livelihood Mission, Green India Mission to address the problem.

Fauna

1. The Great Indian Bustard, one of the endangered flying bird species in the world, will soon be tracked by satellite by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) to understand the movement of this rare bird and its preferred habitat,Gujarat and Rajasthan.Great Indian bustard is amongst one of the largest flying bird species found in the world today. It can easily be distinguished by its black crown on the forehead contrasting with the pale neck and head.The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recognised it as critically endangered in 2011.Distinguishable by its brownish body and wings marked with black, brown and grey, the Great Indian Bustard is listed in Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act of India, 1972, and its international trade is prohibited.The Rajasthan government recently launched its own project Great Indian Bustard, at a cost of over Rs. 12 crore, to identify and provide secure breeding enclosures, in a bid to arrest its decreasing population.

Environment Realted

1.  The study was conducted in collaboration with World Wildlife Fund For Nature (WWF) and Wildlife Institute of India for counting of Bengal Tiger in SunderBans and the counting came out to be 103.