Environment

A scene that steals your heart. Pic: Nikita MalusareThe 17-feet-high, 40-feet-wide vertical garden, with 5000 pots. Pic: Nikita MalusareFlowery carpets welcome you to the show! But no - you will not want to walk on them! Pic: Nikita MalusareVegetable grown in pots, put up by Horticulture Department. When are you going to set up your own vegetable garden? Pic: Nikita MalusareYes, that's an EGG PLANT! Pic: Nikita MalusareTake home some seeds, and grow a piece of Lalbagh at your own balcony.. Pic: Nikita MalusareThese water-rich plants are a gardener's delight.. Pic: Nikita MalusarepotTry figuring out what flowers are these! Pic:…

Everyone knows of the national bird, the Indian Peacock. But do you know what the State bird is? Karnataka, along with other States (Andhra Pradesh,Bihar, and Odisha) has chosen the Indian Roller.  It’s a bird that almost as beautiful as the Peacock, and as interesting too. These birds can often be seen perched on telephone or telegraph wires, and they feed on  insects, spiders, small lizards, snakes and frogs, too. Pic: Deepa Mohan. Contrary to the belief that birds are afraid of fire, these birds seem to know that fire attracts insects, and they can often be found swooping on…

If we think that with fencing the lake area to prevent further encroachment, planting trees and bushes and nurturing them, eliminating sewage, and getting more rain water into the lake, we have saved the lake, we're in for a surprise. That is just the beginning!     It was last August when a gentle green carpet started spreading itself over the dormant waters of Puttenahalli Lake. PNLIT trustees brought this to the notice of a few experts who said it could be a form of algae, and that the best way to get rid of it was to get more clean water…

With so many butterflies flocking to our Puttenahalli lake of late, it seems appropriate to get experts to identify them and take good pix of these fleeting, flighty beauties.      In June came Ms. Chinmayi, a lepidopterist from Banashankari and she photographed and identified quite a few of the butterflies. Read about her visit here.   Last week Dr. Kunal Angola and Naveen, research scholars from the Butterfly Park at Bannerghatta spent a good two hours at the lake. Their visit opened our eyes to more of these pretties.    Butterflies don't really need exotic plants. The common weed Tridax (Coat…

Apartment associations that received their water bills for June 2013 were in for a shock. Their water bills were two to three times more than what they had been paying! Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) had increased the charges for bulk consumers as per a notification in the Karnataka Gazette dated 23rd May 2013, but most apartment association representatives and residents were not aware of either the new charges, or of the impact of the amendment in tariff, till they received the bills.  According to the new tariff rules, for Bulk Domestic Consumers i.e. High-rise/Multistoried Buildings/ Apartments/ Central and…

Ever so often, somebody makes the statement – that we need to have a right to water. You can substitute water with education, food, health or any other resource-dependent ‘right’ — the arguments are quite similar: that not enough people have sufficient access to it, that the lack of availability of the right was a fundamental human indignity, that it was likely against the fundamental right to life guaranteed by the constitution, and that it was high time the state did something about it. For better or worse, this has now resulted in Right to Education legislation, and will likely…

Yelahanka Lake, covering 292 acres is one of the largest lakes in Bangalore, under the jurisdiction of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). Home to many birds, ornithologist Dr Subramanya recorded as many as 33 species during a one-hour visit to the lake in November 2012. About 14 acres of the lake was encroached by illegal buildings and hutments, but over the past year, in multiple operations, the BBMP has successfully evicted the encroachers, regained possession of the property, and is now looking to restore it.  Yelahanka Lake and the neighbouring Yelahanka Puttenahalli Lake To initiate the restoration, the BBMP…

Bangalore has always been in news internationally for its software sector. Now it is the turn of lakes of Bangalore to draw international attention, pollution being the main reason. A San Francisco-based NGO, Sherwood Institute, focussing on water, energy and ecological infrastructure for cities, is collaborating with Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) to revive the dying lakes and watershed areas in Bangalore. Sherwood has invited public inputs on their site: See Better Lakes, Better Bangalore. The first watershed which is proposed to be revived with this scheme is the Bellandur watershed. Its catchment area, spread across 140 sq kms, includes Bellandur…

When we are scared of creatures, we often don’t look closely at them... and so miss out on seeing how beautiful they can be. We often categorise a lot of insects as “bugs” and try to stomp on them! However, beetles are slightly different from bugs. Click here to find the major differences between bugs and beetles. We can observe beetles closely in our own gardens... but be careful in handling them. Some are harmless, but others can pack a wallop! Here is a Blister Beetle.This is called so because touching it alarms the creature, and it releases a fluid…

Restoration work at the Munnekolala Lake in the AECS Layout near Marathahalli began about three months ago, but not before several months of pursuing the BBMP, the custodian of the lake, to save it. The AECS Layout actually has a set of three lakes, known to residents as the “Chinnappanahalli lakes”. The Munnekolala Lake, at 15.38 acres is the largest of them. The smaller 11.33 acre Chinnappanahalli Lake (located behind CMRIT College) was already restored by the BBMP in around 2010 and is currently being looked after by the Chinnappanahalli Lake Development Trust. The third lake, according to area residents…