There is good news for dolphin lovers. From 600 in 2005, the number of Gangetic river dolphins in Uttar Pradesh has risen to 671, according to the latest dolphin census report.

The first biggest single census of the Gangetic river dolphins was held by the state forest department, WWF-India and 18 other NGOs and supported by HSBC. UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav who released the report at a function, said that the efforts to create awareness about the need to conserve Gangetic river dolphins was ‘praiseworthy.’

LUCKNOW: The numbers of the Gangetic dolphins in Uttar Pradesh have registered an increase, reveals the latest dolphin census report.

Jaipur/New Delhi: After battling water shortages for 10 long years, Bharatpur is again ready to host winged visitors in numbers not seen in the bird sanctuary since the 1990s.

LUCKNOW: The Gangetic river dolphin census and awareness campaign was flagged off by transport minister Raja Mahendra Aridaman Singh on Friday.

Separate teams to conduct surveys on 16 stretches, covering 2,800 km of the river system.

The mapping of core and buffer zones for the creation of a tiger reserve in Sathyamangalam forest has reached the final stage and a revised proposal is likely to be submitted to the State Government in a few weeks.

The previous proposal submitted by the Forest Department did not include a buffer zone in the 1.41 lakh hectares in Sathyamangalam forest that have been earmarked for the tiger reserve and missed a few vital aspects. “Creation of a buffer zone is very important for carrying out various development activities. So we have carried out the mapping exercise once again and completed the task recently.

The 'tiger of the Ganga' is the nomenclature for the Ganga river dolphin which enjoys the same status in the river ecosystem as that of a tiger in a forest.

Like the tiger, the dolphin is close to extinction with its numbers having plunged from 6,000 in 1982 to less than 1,800 in 2012. With India losing nearly 160 animals a year, WWF India has launched a three-day awareness campaign, 'My Ganga, My Dolphin', in which they will conduct a survey of the number of dolphins present across a 2,800-km stretch of the Ganga river, along with the Yamuna, Son, Ken, Betwa, Ghagra and Geruwal rivers.

LUCKNOW: New lease of life for the Gangetic dolphins of Uttar Pradesh.

Villages in Ajmer district agree to conserve grounds for Great Indian Bustard and Lesser Florican

Endangered birds, the Great Indian Bustard (GIB) and Lesser Florican, are back in their annual breeding lands in Rajasthan’s Shonkaliya region in Ajmer district. Though the population of GIB, Rajasthan’s State Bird, cannot be termed sizeable the Lesser Floricans are in greater numbers this time with the males among them displaying their plumes jumping up in the air to attract the females in the middle of the breeding season with copious rains in the area coming as an extra incentive.

1,706 tigers today, up from 1,411 in 2007

Should the approximately 1,700 tigers left in India be treated as sacrosanct, not to be exploited by India’s tourism industry? Or, should they be looked at as valuable commodities, responsible for filling the coffers of the state? This is the firestorm of a debate that Ajay Dubey sparked off, when he, through a public interest litigation filed in the Madhya Pradesh High Court in September 2010, asked that tourism be banned in ‘core’ tiger areas — zones where tiger density is particularly high — in line with the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and its 2006 amendment.