National seminar on ‘Research perspectives in eco-conservation’ at St Agnes College

Submitted by : Gulf Varthe Reporter - Submitted on : 2005-09-10

Source : TOI

Mangalore: “The National Bio-Diversity Bill must be accepted, fine-tuned and implemented by all with fullest consideration it deserves,” said S A Hussain, ornithologist and former principal scientist of Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), Mumbai, here on Friday.

He was presiding over the UGC-sponsored national seminar on ‘Research perspectives in eco-conservation’ at the St Agnes College here.

Hussain lamented that the major player for managing resources (eco-conservation), the government, was adopting a ‘top down’ approach with very little or no inputs from scientific community and the stake holders at the bottom level.

“Fortunately the acceptance and ratification of the Bio-Diversity Convention will encourage a much practical ‘bottom up’ approach in policy planning procedure in which all stakeholders will definitely play effective role in managing and conserving the resources,’’ he opined.

Observing that management of natural resources involves multi-sectoral approach and close co-ordination between the government, scientific community and stake holders, Hussain rued that considering the rapid environmental degradation these days, the co-ordination aspect looks inadequate.

Hussain noted that while a few major issues get noticed, like rapid decline of tiger population in India, by and large a great deal of research findings are confined to scientific journals which finally end on library shelves or dusty official archives.

Hussain said the major player, the government, should feed the findings of its national institutes into policy planning and governance of the resources.

“Unfortunately, in spite of the best of efforts conservation issues get bogged down by politico-social, economic, sectoral, regional and many other pressures, often pitted against and at logger heads with each other’’ he said, adding that one needs to keep a balance in approaching the problems in a pragmatic way without giving into emotional and/or other narrow considerations.

He said the scientific community must be unbiased in reporting scientific facts, based on their findings and conclusions, and on the other hand the activists and other fringe groups must draw upon facts and temper their actions with rationality and reason in any issues they set out to advocate.

Dr Arunachalam Kumar, professor and head, department of anatomy, Kasturba Medical College (KMC), delivering the key note address said urbanites need not fret about the lack of wildlife, saying that city dwellers should concentrate on ‘urban wildlife biology’ which could be a topic for serious subject for higher research.

He said it is often naively assumed that wildlife conservation science is limited to field observations and garnered information from studies performed in the field.

The inaugural function was attended by Sr M Carmel Rita, principal of the college, Sr M Olivia, province co-ordinator for higher education, Karnataka province, Nagaveni, convener of the workshop among others.