Environment / Northeast

TEZPUR, June 2 ? The NE region of the country is not backward. It is resourceful and has the potential to emerge as the centre of development in the country, said secretary of the North Eastern Council (NEC) PL Thanga here today. Thanga, who was inaugurating a two-day regional workshop on ?Policy Framework for Efficient Management of Water and Land Resources for Poverty Alleviation in NE region?, organised by the North Eastern Regional Institute of Water and Land Management (NERIWALM) at Dholabari here, besides inaugurating the new administrate building of the Institute, also called upon the...

Dimapur, June 1: The first phase of the Department for Development of North East Region-funded embankment project on river Dhansiri at Nahar Bari and Rangapahar was formally inaugurated on Saturday, providing the residents with the much-needed respite from the menace of soil erosion.

?Hopefully, our worst fears of losing our land and homes to monsoon floods is now a thing of the past,? said Hokato, a settler on the bank of Dhansiri.

The residents expressed the hope that the project would serve its purpose and prove its worth when it faces its first acid test in August.

Over the past several...

SHILLONG, May 25 ? National Hydro-electric Power Corporation Ltd (NHPC) has got outstanding dues of nearly Rs 100 crore upto April this year against seven north eastern states ? beneficiaries of the Loktak Hydel Project - with Manipur topping the list, according to the North Eastern Regional Electricity Board (NEREB), reports PTI.

The outstanding dues included the principal amount surcharge on it, development surcharge, according to a NEREB statement released at its 52nd board meeting here last week. While Manipur topped the list with an accumulated outstanding amount of Rs 43.82 crore, it...

Guwahati, May 20: Four elephant reserves of the Northeast, including two in Assam, have caught the attention of the Nairobi-based Monitoring Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE), a highly-rated international agency working in the field of elephant conservation.

The four elephant reserves that have come under the organisation?s scanner are Chirang-Ripu and Dibru in Assam, Deomali in Arunachal Pradesh and the Garo Hills elephant reserve in Meghalaya. Six other elephant reserves elsewhere in the country have been included in the programme.

MIKE functions under the Convention of International Trade...

SHILLONG, May 13—The National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) has embarked upon an ambitious plan for harnessing over 25,000 MW of hydroelectric power by setting up a number of projects in the North Eastern region by the end of the 12th Plane. NHPC chairman-cum-Managing Director Yogendra Prasad announced at a Press conference at Itanagar recently,” This will effectively make the region the powerhouse of the country and also speed up development by providing abundant and cheap power,” he said.

The region has a major share of hydro power potential to the extent of 63,257 MW out of the...

Guwahati, May 6: International organisations active in the field of community forests, under the aegis of Community Forestry International (CFI), are working on a project to support the development of effective policies and programmes enabling communities to manage forest lands in the Northeast.

The partner institutions in the project are the regional centre of the National Afforestation and Eco Development Board and the North Eastern Hill University. The project, being funded by the John and Catherine MacArthur Foundation, will end in 2005. The CFI assists rural communities to stabilise and...

GUWAHATI, May 2— The problems of land alienation and their non-restoration, indebtedness, tribal forest rights, development of forest villagers and shifting cultivators, need to give effect to the provisions of Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act of 1996, involuntary displacement due to development projects and lack of proper rehabilitation, rehabilitation of displaced and disabled tribals, survival, protection and development of the primitive tribal groups and effective and meaningful implementation of the strategy of Tribal Sub-Plan have by and large remained unattended to in...

Guwahati, April 22: It is a debate of elephantine proportions, rooted in the jungles of Chattisgarh and spreading across states to finally echo in the Prime Minister’s Office.

At the centre of the debate is Parbati Barua, Asia’s only female elephant trainer. She is being hounded for allegedly using cruel and archaic methods to capture a rogue elephant in Chattisgarh in February, leading to the animal’s death.

A member of the steering committee of Project Elephant, which is being implemented by the Union ministry of environment and forests, wrote to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee recently...

NEW DELHI, April 21 — In a development having wider ramifications for Assam, the Central Government, as part of its broader plan on inter-linking major river basins under Himalayan Component of National Perspective, envisages inter-linking of major tributaries of Brahmaputra river with Teesta and Ganga. Divulging this, Union Minister of State for Water Resources Bijoya Chakraborty in a written reply in Lok Sabha said that according to the feasibility studies carried by National Water Development Agency (NWDA), Manas and Sankosh, both tributaries of river Brahmaputra, are proposed to be linked...

GUWAHATI, March 20— It has the animals that slither and also the ones that claw their ways up. For it is a documentary film on the reptiles— the reptiles of North-East India. This documentary film— Friends for ever: Common Reptiles of North-East India, directed and produced by Sri Dip Bhuyan, an M Sc in Statistics from Delhi University, has once again provided the documentary proof that there is no dearth of talent or lack of determination among our youths. Sri Bhuyan is associated with documentary films for the past about 11 years.

Assam or for that matter the entire NE region, has remained...