Lecture on Wetlands in Chennai

Yesterday I attended a talk on the wetlands around chennai. It was an illuminating talk and I learnt about many places I did not know used to be major ecosystems in chennai - like the Padi Villivakkam lake, there is no lake there now apparently only a small ditch with plastic and rubbish being thrown in.

It was interesting to note that the way this landgrabbing usually takes place is by filling up the place with rubbish. Though it was surprising that the speaker was referring only to the small vendors who do this,or the narikuravas, whom he came down on quite too sharply -- was it that he did not want to be explicit?

It would be an ideal world if various people would sit around a table have a chaay and discuss which would be best for all concerned. Of course realtors and business folk should also agree to let go of this for the good of humanity at large! Sigh! How sweet a dream that is!!!

The speaker filled his talk with slides of various birds and beasts and insects that he had photographed out of his own love of the art and it made the slideshow very engaging and lively.

He was speaking in two languages and that made it a bit distracting, he could have only spoken in Tamil, but there may have been a good reason for using english that I do not know of...

Cat Island Pictures in Today's Hindu

Today (22 April 2011). There are two photographs of Cat island in the pages of the Hindu. they look like the before and after pictures in a VLCC advert, only reversed! The before is a lush green lake area with many winged visitors, egrets, pond herons etc, the after is the aftermath of a oil slick wash up. A pathetic grey dirty landscape more sickening for its monotony of texture than absence of birds or grass. When is Chennai going to hear this wake up call to protect its vanishing green cover?

Yesterday's post on my blog had some pictures of the Pallikaranai marsh that resembled the Cat island pictures very closely, happily they looked like the healthy one. But already troughs are being dug around the edges, how long before the concrete overtakes and buries the reeds of the marsh?

In March 2011, there was a fire in fifteen places on the marsh that destroyed a lot of the bird life and greenery. Will the government take steps to protect the marsh. One organisation that is involved in protecting this marsh is Care Earth. Care Earth represented in this case by Ranjith Daniels, is an organisation involved in educating and training tribals around TN in matters of conservation. In the case of the Pallikaranai Marsh, they work with the TN Pollution control board.