Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/09/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]love the unintended consequences in the form of educational opportunities on this list. Regards, George Lottermoser george at imagist.com http://www.imagist.com http://www.imagist.com/blog http://www.linkedin.com/in/imagist On Sep 8, 2010, at 1:14 AM, Jayanand Govindaraj wrote: > Habitat loss - they do not, for example, go through a tea garden or > other agricultural land to access another patch of forest, so once > they are isolated, they stay isolated, which weakens the gene pool > considerably. In addition, the tea and coffee estates do not plant > trees endemic to this region, which would support varying degrees of > fauna - they plant water leaching, quick growing species like > eucalyptus, which has no ecological value whatsoever, but do have > commercial value. Valparai is totally surrounded by huge tea estates > growing very average tea - mainly for use in inexpensive tea bags - so > this problem of isolation is becoming acute. To add to the woes, more > eco-friendly companies like Unilever have sold all their gardens to > some local buyers, who want to maximize profits through land > development. There are people actively working on this, like Nature > Conservation Federation, who are persuading the tea garden owners to > hand back some land to reforest and maintain animal corridors, with > varying degrees of success: > > http://www.ncf-india.org/viewtypes.php?class=ecosystem&type=western+ghats+rainforests > > Cheers > Jayanand > > On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 11:11 AM, Nathan Wajsman <photo at frozenlight.eu> > wrote: >> Beautiful shots, beautiful animal. Why have the numbers declined--hunting >> or just habitat loss?