Environment

Sometimes, the departure of one of the circle of friends comes as a shock, and so it was when I got the news of the sudden passing of Ashok Hallur, just short of his fifty-first birthday. Ashok, in his short life, had already made a name for himself as an active wildlife film-maker and avid conservationist. He was born in Bagalkot, Karnataka, on 25 February 1966. He received early schooling at his village, Hanamapura, with a short stint at Kavalur, later moving to Bijapur. One of his teachers noted his artistic ability and advised him to go to art school,…

“I would always get into fights with my mother, about having separate bins for waste segregation, switching off lights and all those things.” Prateek Agarwal has been passionate about the environment for as long as he can remember. That passion has manifested itself in his current venture. Together with Subham Agarwala and Siddhant Khetan, Prateek co-founded “Green Strips,” an initiative which aims to replace plastic bags with paper bags, subsidised through advertisements placed on the latter. The twenty-year old likes designing and travelling, and pines for the Delhi food he left behind when he went to study in Kolkata. But…

NERALU, a citizen-led tree festival, is being organised on 18th and 19th February 2017, at Natonal Gallery of Modern Arts (NGMA) and other city-wide venues. Come February, Bengaluru’s trees burst into spectacular blooms. The first of its kind in Bengaluru, Neralu, which means ‘shade’ in Kannada, is being planned to coincide with the blooming season in the city, and will bring together citizens to celebrate the garden city’s glorious natural heritage. Bound by a common love for trees, naturalists, ecologists, artists, technologists, storytellers, homemakers, photographers and many more citizens from all walks of life are working together to organise Neralu.…

On January 8th 2017, over 4500 people from across Bengaluru visited Kaikondrahalli Lake to connect with their friends, community and nature. Lake festival, or Kere Habba, is a completely volunteer-organised event aimed at raising awareness, increasing community participation and fostering an appreciation of lakes in Bengaluru. Kaikondrahalli celebrated its third lake festival on January 8th, 2017. A bird living in the Kakondrahalli lake premises. Pic: Shree D N Over a hundred students from Renuka school situated on the banks of the lake, involved themselves in many activities; they organised a Halli Games session, to teach visitors how to play traditional…

Priya Muthukumar is a professional storyteller, who uses storytelling to make learning more interactive and impactful. Here you can listen to Priya tell a story to the children assembled by the lake side during the Kere Habba. The moral of the story was about not be disturbing nature and to live in harmony with it.  

The fully functional water treatment system. Pic: Akshatha M Arjun Ravi Kumar, a builder, once visited T-Zed, an apartment-cum-villa community that treats and reuses all its waste water. There he met Srinivasan Sekar, who as part of the Management Committee there, worked on the water system design. He recalls, "Sekhar offered me a glass of tap water saying that it is generated from sewage, initially I was a bit reluctant to drink it but when I did, (I realised) it was as good as any bottled water. " Arjun lives in an apartment that his firm built - Surbacon Maple,…

Nearly every citizen of Bangalore has heard of the current state of two of Bangalore’s biggest lakes - the Varthur and Bellandur lakes. The main reasons for the pollution of these lakes are the untreated sewage and industrial effluents that are constantly flowing into the lake.  Map source: All you need to know about Bellandur lake and its problems. Though we all know that these lakes are in bad shape, many of us may not be aware of the extent of  pollution. Check these shocking pictures. VARTHUR LAKE   The froth that we usually see at the top surface of…

On Dec. 23, 2016, I conducted a “Walk-n-Talk” for the residents of the campus at Indian Institute of Managament, Bangalore (IIMB). Pic: Deepa Mohan Prof Shainesh, who is the Dean of Administration, and a keen birder himself, opened up the campus for two bird census events in Feb and Nov 2016, and he wanted to ensure that the residents on the campus also got to know more about the flora and avifauna in the place where they live. Group before setting off for the walk. Pic: Deepa Mohan Dr. Selvarajan Rajeswaran, who is doing a doctoral program at IIMB, was…

A moth that looks like a tiny bird! India does not have Hummingbirds, those tiny creatures of the light and air that so delight those living or visiting abroad, especially the western coast of America. Our smallest birds are our Sunbirds and Flowerpeckers. However, even in urban gardens, one may find oneself looking at something that seems remarkably like a Hummingbird, and yet seems different. In India, this probably means that one is looking at a Hummingbird Hawk Moth! The scientific name for this small creature is Macroglossum stellatarum. They belong to the family called “Sphingidae”. Pic: Deepa Mohan In…

One of the very beautiful tiny insects that will often catch your attention is a needle-like creature that you see close to the edge of ponds and lakes, which seem to float magically in the air before settling, lightly, on a blade of grass. This slelnder, exquisite creature is the Damselfly. Damselflies, like Dragonflies, belong to the order Odonata, and are technically called Odonates. If you are interested in a more detailed name, they belong to the sub-order called Zygoptera. How does one distinguish between Dragonflies and Damselflies? The former have their wings open at right angles to their bodies…