Ponds and other water bodies are being filled brushing aside environmental aspects in Sherpur town, which graduated to a district town from a thana town even after the liberation of the country.

Filling the ponds and water bodies, the residents of the town are making houses and other infrastructures.

population."

Experts studying images taken from space were initially baffled by reddish-brown splodges on the ice.

"It turned out they were the feces, guano stains, of the emperors," Trathan said. "There's a really good contrast between the dark poo stains and the ice."

Scientists widened the search for the tell-tale blots to 90 percent of the Antarctic coastline and found 38 colonies.

From January 1 this year, 79 elephants had been killed. More than half of them victims of the human-elephant conflict, Environment and Natural Resources Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka said.

There were also 11 human deaths due to elephant attacks, Ranawaka told a press conference held at the Central Environment Authority on Tuesday.

A logging operation planned by Asia's biggest pulp producer in Indonesia's Sumatra island threatens the habitat of rare orangutans, tigers and elephants, a joint report by five conservation groups said on Tuesday.

One fifth of Europe's reptiles and nearly a quarter of its amphibians are in danger because of the threat humans pose to their natural habitat, according to a study carried out for the European Commission.

The list of birds threatened with extinction has grown fractionally; a new sign that governments are failing to meet a 2010 global conservation goal, an annual review of birds showed on Thursday.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has upheld a Bush administration finding that the Endangered Species Act is not a suitable tool for restricting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threatening the polar bear and its habitat. We agree, with this codicil: There are steps Mr. Salazar can and must take under the act

Major palm oil buyers face being graded for their green credentials after figures showing they have bought only a fraction of the sustainable palm oil available, environmental group WWF said on Tuesday.

About 1.3 million tonnes of certified sustainable palm oil has been available since November last year, but only about 15,000 tonnes have been bought, WWF said.

Wild elephants, that lived in the Buttala, Kataragama and Wellawaya areas in the Pahala Uva region of the Monaragala district have come to the forests off Ambarangala, Koslanda, Makaldeniya, Puunaagala and Seeriyabedda in the Haldummulla Divisional Secretariat of the Badulla district, say the Haldummulla public.