Pune, April 12: TWO snake lovers from Pune, Ram Bhutkar and Subhash Ghule, recently rescued a 12 feet long king cobra illegally restrained at Solapur allegedly by a Naga hermit. The rescue took place at Degaon village on the outskirts of Solapur town with the help of forest department officials.
The king cobra was kept in a four feet long, four feet wide and six feet deep cement tank, the top of which was covered with an iron cage. The reptile is presently in the custody of the forest department officials in Solapur.
Bhutkar said he had received tip off from a Solapur-based snake lover Ashfaq Gafur Muchhale. “Initially I was doubtful as king cobras are not found in western Maharashtra and normally being poisonous they are not caged by amateurs. However, when I went to Degaon with Ghule, I found that it was indeed a king cobra. We immediately contacted the forest department officials who rushed to the spot and took the snake in their custody. Later, a case under Wildlife Protection Act was filed against the hermit, Mohannath Aghori alias Kasture,” he said.
Bhutkar said Kasture, during questioning by forest department officials, claimed that he had brought the snake to Solapur from Karnataka.
Climate change threat to heritage
The Asian Age, Friday, April 13, 2007
By OUR CORRESPONDENT
New Delhi, April 12: What do the Tower of London, Kilimanjaro National Park and the Great Barrier Reef of Australia have in common? They are all part of the World Heritage site list and all face a common enemy: climate change. A recent Unesco publication, Case studies on Climate Change and World Heritage, has outlined the threats posed by climate change to natural and cultural sites.
Making a clear indication that global warming will pose major challenges for not just humans but also other natural as well as manmade heritage buildings, the report has said that the melting glaciers are affecting the appearance of many heritage sites.
Taking the case of 26 such heritage sites to focus on the dangers faced by the 830 sites included in the World Heritage list, the Unesco publication has covered both natural as well as manmade wonders.
The World Heritage Committee had decided in 2005 to study the impact of climate change on World Heritage Sites, following which a meeting of nearly 50 experts was held by Unesco a year later.
According to the study, the melting of glaciers is affecting the appearance of sites and destroying the habitat of rare wildlife species, like the snow leopard in the Sagarmatha National Park, Nepal. "These changes could also have disastrous effects on human lives, with flooding resulting from glacial lake outbursts threatening human settlements," it has noted, while recommending the establishment of monitoring, early warning systems and artificial draining of glacial lakes to avoid disasters.
Calling for "an integrated approach to issues of environmental preservation and sustainable development", Unesco director-general Koïchiro Matsuura has noted in his foreword to the publication that the "international community now widely agrees that climate change will constitute one of the major challenges of the 21st century".
The publication studies the impact of climate change on historical sites through five chapters focusing on glaciers, marine biodiversity, terrestrial biodiversity, archaeological sites and historical cities and settlements.
According to the study, nearly 70 per cent of the world’s deep sea corals could be affected by global warming and increased ocean acidification by the year 2100. The Great Barrier Reef of Australia, considered a natural wonder, is expected to see frequent cases of the corals turning white and even dying due to global warming.
