In your Special Report 'Brazil goes to war against logging' (Nature 452, 134

Rivers in the southwest coast of India are under immense pressure due to various kinds of human activities among which indiscriminate extraction of construction grade sand is the most disastrous one. The situation is rather alarming in the rivers draining the Vembanad lake catchments as the area hosts one of the fast developing urban-cum-industrial centre, the Kochi city, otherwise called the Queen of Arabian Sea. The Vembanad lake catchments are drained by seven rivers whose length varies between 78 and 244 km and catchment area between 847 and 5,398 km2.

For 15 days in January, hundreds of men, women and children marched across river valleys of India's Uttarakhand state to raise awareness about government plans to build dams. The government intends to build 220 large, medium and small dams in the upper reaches of the Ganges River basin.

New studies confirm that fish ladders at dams in the tropics fail to meet their objective of guaranteeing the survival of migratory fish, and in fact, could hasten the extinction of some species. Brazilian scientists found that ladders act as an "ecological trap" attracting schools of fish to poorer environments, and making it even more difficult for them to reproduce.

Water wars in the arid western US are nothing new, but the rules of engagement have changed. The Klamath River basin on the California-Oregon border has seen the stage for a decades-long epic battle between farmers, fisherman, government agencies, utilities and tribes with treaty rights to dwindling salmon populations. More than 26 diverse groups have worked together to negotiate solutions to the most pressing problems the river facese, and are now close to a breakthrough that may breathe new life into the struggling river and its people.