March-April 2017 NEWS LETTER KERALA 2017 Newsletter of WWF - India, Kerala State Office FROM THE STATE DIRECTOR’S DESK activity based sensitization programme on the theme “Forests & Water” through a workshop and rally on 21st The project Marine Turtle Conservation in Kerala is and 22nd March 2017, jointly commemorating World progressing well. The ambitious task of setting up Forestry Day and World Water Day at Peet Memorial a good quality Marine Turtle Interpretation Centre Training College, Mavelikara attended by 40 Teacher (MTIC) at Kolavipalam under Theeram Prakriti Trainees of the college. As part of volunteering, the Samrakshana Samithi is moving ahead with the participants made placards with the captions on art work progressing at Godfrey’s Graphics. Twelve forests and water conservation and took out a public new information panels and eight photo panels rally on the next day morning. As in previous years, are being made for installation in the MTIC. We we observed Earth Hour 2017 on the theme ‘Switch are also undertaking a new consultancy project for Off and Switch to Renewable Energy’ with full-fledged setting up a Honeybee Museum at Thenmala funded activities ranging from public outreach through sticker by Thenmala Ecotourism Promotion Society. The distribution, engaging early morning walkers in the technical inputs for the project will be given by WWF Museum Compound, Cyclothon in association with and the artistic inputs will be availed from Godfrey’s Indus Cycling Embassy and the concluding evening Graphics by awarding a sub-consultancy. In the month function at Shanghumugham Beach, the highlight of March, we organized the Urja Kiran programme being the ‘Fusion Music’ performance and the Switch in the third electoral constituency assigned to us i.e. Off and Candle Light Vigil led by dignitaries. Mr. Vaniyamkulam Gramapanchayat falling under Shornur Sudhir Vyas, IFS, Member of the Board of Trustees Constituency in which 70 women from different of WWF-India visited the Western Ghats Nilgiris Kudumbasree units participated in the programme. Landscape with his family from 6-10 April 2017. Mr. Our initiatives towards protecting our feathered Tiju Thomas from the WGNL Team and the State friends continues in full steam with the session on Director and Senior Education Officer from the State ‘Bird watching and documentation’ organised at Govt. Office accompanied Mr. Vyas on his visit which turned College, Pattambi led by the Senior Education Officer out to be a great sharing and learning experience. and attended by around 80 students of the Nature Our environment education activities of the two Club. The Volunteer team of WWF- India completed months included delivering invited talks in several the dry season data collection for the preparation forum, the most notable being the Citizen Science of the Trivandrum Bird Atlas also in March. As in Workshop organized for Coastal NGOs by Dept. of previous years, we conducted the Sparrow Survey Aquatic Biology and Fisheries, University of Kerala, in Thiruvananthapuram in connection with World putting up exhibition stalls in University College, Sparrow Day 2017. Our Volunteers and staff covered 15 facilitating visit to Pathiramanal Island of Vembanad sites this time. A slight decline in the total population Lake for the members of Green Valley Nature Club of the small bird and a notable population shift from from Puthuppally, Sunday Bird Walk in April in and within the City to the coastal belt was observed. With around Punchakkari wetlands and support to Mr. the soaring temperatures and drying waterbodies, a Justin, a school student doing an assignment on Tiger small bird bath has also been established in the State Conservation in India and Project Tiger. Office. Our Volunteer Engagement Programme is also well accepted and moving ahead with a wide range of Renjan Mathew Varghese, State Director activities and in the month of March, we conducted an in the Amazon basin in Argentina. Scientists at the IMPORTANT NEWS ON Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos NATURE AND ENVIRONMENT Aires made the discovery by accident while studying the pigment of Polka-dot Tree Frogs, a species common to the rainforest. In normal light, the frog appears to have a dull, GLOBAL mottled browny-green skin with red dots, but under UV light it glows a bright fluorescent green. Fluorescence A frog that glows in the dark: - the ability to absorb light at short wavelengths and re- Scientists find first of its kind in Amazon basin emit it at longer wavelengths - is uncommon in creatures The world’s first fluorescent frog has been discovered that live on land. The translucent frog was found to use Mruthika/ March-April 2017 / 1 a combination of lymph and glandular emissions to An Elephantine Census after 5 years fluoresce. The researchers, who published their discovery Volunteers and wildlife activists will fan out in May across on March 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the trait enhanced the brightness forests and other habitats to count the actual number of of the frog by 19-29% depending on the level of ambient wild Elephants in the country. The All-India Synchronised light in its surroundings.The compound causing the blue- Asian Elephant Population Estimation, will be carried green glow of the Polka-dot Tree Frog was not previously out simultaneously in the southern States from May 16 thought to exist in vertebrates and its discovery has excited to 19, and earlier in eastern States, after a five-year gap. researchers. “This is very different from fluorophores In the previous counting exercise in 2012, the estimated found in other vertebrates, which are usually proteins or population of wild Elephants reported by the Environment polyenic chains” Maria Gabriella Lagoria, a Photochemist Ministry was between 29,391 and 30,711, compared to at the University of Buenos Aires and study co-author, told 27,657 and 27,682 in 2007, the data range indicating the Chemistry World. The discovery opens up the possibility lower and upper bounds. The exercise involves estimating that other amphibians may be able to fluoresce, particularly the Elephant numbers through various methods — those with translucent skin similar to that of the Tree Frog. including direct sample block counts and indirect or line Speaking to the journal Nature, which first published transect dung counts — and the data is used to arrive at news of the fluorescent frog, co-author Julián Faivovich a reliable estimate of the actual population range. The expressed his hope that the discovery would inspire protocols have been designed and approved by the Project interest in the phenomenon, saying he hoped scientists Elephant Directorate of the Ministry of Environment and would “start carrying a UV flashlight to the field”. Forests. (Source: The Hindu, April 8, 2017) (Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/a- frog-that-glows-in-the-dark-scientists-find-first-of-its-kind- An avian paradise thrives amid drought in- amazon-basin/story-BNugovwDo7vC5gpIArNdlK.html) People of the village in Prakasam district do everything they can to provide safety to winged visitors. Fourteen year old How a burrowing rodent survives near-suffocation Harish is busy putting back a young bird which fell off the They are homely, buck-toothed, pink, nearly hairless and nest from a Tamarind tree. Such spectacles are replete in the just plain weird, but one of the many odd traits of rodents remote village of Velamavaripalem in the Ballikuravamandal called Naked Mole-Rats that live in subterranean bliss in of Prakasam district as the villagers take pride in providing the deserts of East Africa could someday be of great benefit a safe and secure environment for the winged visitors. to people. Scientists on Thursday said the rodents, when Painted storks and other birds make it a point to visit the deprived of oxygen in their crowded underground burrows, village in the first week of January for nesting, and return survive by switching to a unique type of metabolism based in July along with their young ones. “'We don’t harm them. on the sugar fructose rather than the usual glucose, the We don’t allow others to do so either” says Village Sarpanch only animal known to do so. Metabolising fructose is a plant strategy, and the researchers were surprised to see it M. Praveen Kumar, who has taken the initiative to sink a in a mammal. They now hope to harness lessons learned borewell in the dry pond, mobilising Rs 4 lakhs to ensure from this rodent to design future therapies for people to water for the avians during this summer as the district faces prevent calamitous damage during heart attacks or strokes severe drought for the third consecutive year. “Our village when oxygenated blood cannot reach the brain. Naked is more like a mother’s home for these birds which come for Mole-Rats, they found, can survive up to 18 minutes with breeding and return in July only when the young ones are no oxygen and at least five hours in low-oxygen conditions in a position to fly” adds 65-year-old Pitchaiah. These birds that would kill a person in minutes. (Source: The Hindu, have been breeding at the village since time immemorial. April 21, 2017) They used to come in thousands till the devastating 1977 Diviseema Super Cyclone which uprooted several big trees in the village, laments villager V. Rosaiah. Their NATIONAL number had come down in recent years as the irrigation canals fed by River Krishna has been receiving dwindling North India to get DNA bank for wildlife inflows, following the construction of reservoirs by the upper riparian States of Karnataka and Maharashtra, points out North India is all set to get its first DNA bank for wildlife.