Indian Wildlife Club Forum

Hi Harshad,

 I found this message in yahoo group "Naturepix" which will interest you.

jugal tiwari jugalt2000@yahoo.com wrote: Mount Abu in India is a great place for Reptiles. Atleast 16 species of Snakes are here (I have in my photo collection). The great work of Reptile rescue is being done by Kiran Chavda, Shailesh patel and the team. This forsten's cat snake is a rarity in Mount Abu. There are only 4-5 rescues from residential areas in 18 years time. They live in pairs, this one was rescued by Shailesh patel from the St. Mary School building. Jugal Tiwari 09414026156

Message from Yahoo group Naturepix message No. 6606

You can read the message at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/naturepix/messages/6602?viscount=-100

Peb fort near Matheran is a treat for bird watcher and herpetologist. I  visited  this fort  last Sunday. It was a very harsh treck due to summer heat. On peb fort there were many caves some of them are natural and some of them are man made. in these caves there were many gekos such as

1]Rock geko : Hemidactlylus maculatus.

 2]Ground geko: Gekoella sp.

3] Bark geko:hemidactlyus leschenaltii. 

We also get some snake Species such as

1] rat snake

2] Indian krait: in cave

3] Indian cobra:

At the base of fort a lot of bird species listed there. I watched 42 species in single treck. special achievement of treck is locating two nests of crested serpent eagle. it was an amazing treck. for more details e mail me on adi_sawant@rediffmail.com

One of the beautiful Indian snakes is Forstein's Cat snake. According to the reference in The Book of Indian Reptiles & Amphibians by J.C.Danial(BNHS),this snake is found in forests of western ghats and in Assam.

But last year we found two females of these species with one male too. The sizes were 4'9" ,4'8" and 5'2" respectively.

 I hope that this will be a great finding.

The renowned biologist A.J.T Johnsingh suggests that the forests of Uttaranchal can easily support about 1000 elephants and 200 tigers as long as this large habitat, now fragmented in three blocks is managed and protected as one continuous habitat for wildlife.

We have uploaded his report " A Road Map for Conservation in Uttaranchal" at the following link

http://www.indianwildlifeclub.com/ResearchPapers/Conservation-Uttaranchal.pdf

Since this is a pdf file, downloading will take some time. But I can assure you it is well worth the wait. Mr. Johnsingh is an academic who is well versed with grassroot level realities and I have heard him passionately pleading the cause of conservation - repeatedly stressing the need for field level awareness before taking up conservation issues.

"It is a much-ignored reality that tens of millions of people in India still survive on the biodiversity of forests, seas, wetlands, grasslands, mountains and coasts. The true value of these ecosystems and the species of plants and animals they contain is not reflected anywhere in parameters of development like Gross National Product."

 It is unfortunate that the National Bio-Diversity Action Plan drawn up by the Ministry of Environment and Forests with the assistance of Kalpavriksh, an NGO and Biotech Consortium India Ltd,  is creating controversies and delaying the much needed action.

India is one of the twelve megadiverse countries in the world.

Bio diversity is important for sustainable development because it represents the wealth of biological resources available to us and for future generations for food, clothing, medicine and housing. Polluted waters, deforestation and green house gases are threatening our biodiversity.

Environmental initiatives by individuals and groups like us, however small, will help in keeping our bio-diversity at the centre of developmental projects.

The total forest cover in India is estimated to be 19.27 per cent of India's geographic area.

This area accounts for our bio-diversity, our natural wilderness heritage.

 Is bio-diversity an end by itself or a mere tool for obtaining tourist revenues?