GreenLine - Greener People, Greener World

Jessica Luis Birders engrossed by the flamingoes at Little Rann of Kutch Pic: Jessica Luis You don't have to look very far to see birds in Gujarat!  This makes it one of the best places to hold the Global Bird Watchers' Conference, where people from all over India and the world come to see these winged wonders. We too attended this fourth edition of the Conference and it did prove to be a grand experience! The first thing you see (and hear!) when you step out of the Ahmedabad station is hundreds of noisy Rosy Starlings. These tiny birds that come here for the winter, fly around in huge flocks that look almost like a small tornado; and we all stopped to admire this show of aerial acrobatics. It’s amazing how they fly almost in synchronization, without banging into each other in midair!  Even the trees were FULL of Rosy Starlings, and so are the corners of station roofs. Looks like a cloud of black, but is in fact a flock of birds! The Rosy S...

Kaustubh Bhagat  Hi friends... Just wanted to ask, do you know what is tomorrow? Yes, I know it is a Sunday and you might want to laze around. But tomorrow is also 2 February, which is observed as World Wetlands Day. What are wetlands and why this day, you may ask? Wetlands are areas like marshes, peats, estuaries or where water can be static or flowing. They can be artificial or natural in origin, as well as perennial or seasonal. These include areas with fresh or brackish water, as well as marine areas where depth of water does not exceed six metres in low tide. The wetlands include ecosystems like mangroves, coral reefs, flood plains and even rice fields. The wetlands are one of the most productive ecosystems on earth. A study by Constanza and his team shows that the wetlands provide us ecosystem services worth USD 4.9 trillion. These services include fisheries, agriculture, water resource, flood plain control, just to name a few. However, wetlands are under trem...