a conference organized by the Union environment ministry on February 12 in the national capital came out with the Tiger Census 2008 and the State of India’s Forests Report 2005. Both came out with dismal figures: a little more than 1,400 tigers are left in the county; and over 725 sq km of forests have vanished between 2002 and 2004.

Three conservation groups sued the Department of the Interior on Monday for missing a deadline on a decision to list polar bears as threatened because of the loss of Arctic sea ice.

The South African government has announced a ban on commercial fishing of wild abalone from February 1. The move comes just a few days after the ministry of environmental affairs published

The city zoo is expanding its panda exhibit for the 2008 Olympics and will ship in up to 10 more for visitors to see during the August Games, an official said on Thursday. The zoo is expanding its facilities to accommodate the additional animals and is also building a Giant Panda Museum which will document efforts to save the endangered species, a zoo spokeswoman said. "The pandas will be on loan from the Wolong Giant Panda Centre, but the numbers to be brought in are still under negotiation,' she said. According to the Beijing Youth Daily, up to 10 more pandas would be brought in from Wolong, the world's most successful panda breeding centre located in southwest China's Sichuan province. The panda exhibition is the most popular attraction at the Beijing Zoo and currently houses seven of the animals. A record number of pandas have been bred in China in recent years, with 31 born and 25 surviving at breeding centers around the nation in the first 11 months of 2007, earlier press reports said. In 2006, 33 pandas were born, with most of the new births in both years occurring at the Wolong centre, where artificial breeding techniques are continually improving, the reports said.

KRISHNAGAR, Feb. 12: At a time when the critically endangered White-rumped Vulture Gyps, who were once a common sight in West Bengal, have indeed made a self-styled effort to be re-colonised in the Banguria forest near Bethuadahari Wildlife Sanctuary (BWS) in Nadia, hectic preparations are on to catch the spotted deer inside the sanctuary for its census after a long gap of seven years.

>> Authorities confirmed an outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu strain in Suffolk county, the UK, on November 13. An exclusion zone was imposed at the site and about 6,000 poultry were ordered to be

In a bizarre mishap, about 10,000 wildebeest drowned at a bend in Kenya's Mara river in the last week of September. Conservationists say the deaths, which occurred over several days, have wiped out

The revival of a historic road should ordinarily not attract the wrath of conservationists. But in Jammu and Kashmir it did. The state government's decision to upgrade the almost five century-old

Tata Chemicals is getting considerable stick from conservation groups and environmentalists in Africa over its plan to set up a soda ash facility jointly with the Tanzanian government. It is being

albert einstein is said to have said: "If the honeybee becomes extinct, mankind will follow within four years.' The physicist wasn't entirely off the mark