IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-01

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Bannerghatta National Park has 40 leopards: Study

News

• The first ever scientific study on leopards in Bannerghatta National Park has estimated that there are 40 leopards in the protected area.

Scientific study on leopards

• The report titled ‘Leopards of Bannerghatta National Park’ was recently submitted to the Karnataka Forest Department.
• The study indicates that the number of leopards at BNP is higher compared to many other protected areas in the country and elsewhere in the world. Considering that the BNP abuts Bengaluru city and still has such high number of leopards is encouraging.
• The study attributed the abundance to two factors: the presence of sambar and chital in good numbers which act as a natural prey for leopards. Secondly, the absence of a large number of tigers which compete with leopards for food and space.
• The study team has also strongly recommended against laying of new roads, as already there are many roads and a few leopards have died after they were hit by vehicles.

These forests that are contiguous form a total of 5,375 acres of good wildlife habitat. Hence, they should be together notified as a Conservation Reserve. It will act as a buffer between BNP and human habitations, hence reducing human-wildlife conflict in addition to protecting watersheds, according to the study.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-02

India objects to China’s reference to J&K and Ladakh at UNGA

News

• India took strong note of reference made by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang to Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh in his address at the U.N. General Assembly.

Kashmir issue at the U.N

• Raising the Kashmir issue at the U.N., China has told the General Assembly that the “dispute” should be peacefully and properly addressed in accordance with the U.N. Charter, Security Council resolutions and the bilateral agreement.
• China, a close ally of Pakistan, also stressed that no actions should be taken that would unilaterally change the “status quo.”
• India’s last month decision evoked strong reactions from Pakistan, which downgraded diplomatic ties and expelled the Indian ambassador.

Second Scorpene submarine Khanderi 

News

• Defense Minister Rajnath Singh commissioning the second Scorpene submarine Khanderi into the Navy in Mumbai.
• Defence Minister later inaugurated an aircraft carrier dry dock and launched the first of the seven Project 17A frigates, Nilgiri, into water.

Submarine Khanderi 

• Khanderi is the second of six Scorpene-class conventional diesel-electric submarines being built by Mazagon Dock Limited (MDL), Mumbai, with technology transfer from Naval Group of France under a 2005 contract worth $3.75 billion.
• After a series of delays in the project, the first submarine of the class, Kalvari, joined service. Khanderi was launched into water in January 2017 and has since been undergoing a series of trials.
• The remaining four submarines are in advanced stages of manufacturing and trials.
• The dry dock inaugurated is the country’s largest, capable of servicing the 44,500 tonne aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya and, in the near future, the first indigenous carrier Vikrant, which is in advanced stage of construction.
• The 6,500-tonne frigates under P-17A is a follow-on to the P-17 Shivalik class of ships, of which four will be built by MDL and three by Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Ltd of Kolkata.
• The launch weight of Nilgiri is about 2,500 tonnes and the remaining work would be completed outside the dry dock. It is expected to be commissioned into service in 2022.
• The cost of the Scorpene project now stands at ₹25,000 crore. The cost of aircraft carrier dry dock is ₹1,320 crore, while the cost of the seven frigates under P-17A is over ₹48,000 crore.

In a first, police use drone-mounted speaker to warn crowds at ED office

News

• The Mumbai Police, for the first time, used a speaker mounted on a drone to issue advisories to protesters outside the Enforcement Directorate (ED) office.

Drone to issue advisories

• Three drones were procured ahead of the Ganeshotsav. The drones, apart from a camera, are equipped with a speaker and a focus light.
• The camera, speaker and focus light are detachable and can be used as per requirement.
• The focus light can be used at night to illuminate specific areas during police operations. The drones are also equipped with a beacon that blinks in the dark, making it easy for the operator to spot it from a long distance.
• Apart from recorded messages, instruction can be issued live through the drone’s controlling device.
• The idea of using a speaker was not just to ensure that the instructions reach the target group in time, but also to have a record of the measures taken by the police.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-03

Scientific way of reviving fragments of rainforests

News

• A two-decade long study finds that active restoration can promote recovery of tropical rainforest fragments with seven to 15 years of effort.

Ecological restoration

• The recovery included improvement in forest structure and composition as well as carbon storage.
• The study finds that such a restoration effort would be more effective in fragmented forest patches.
• The study focused on rainforests fragments in Anamalai Hills, in the Western Ghats, and the ecological restoration involved clearing the chosen areas of invasive weeds and planting a diverse mix of native species.
• The group studied 25 pairs of plots within degraded forest fragments. In one of the pair of plots, they carried out active restoration which included first removing non-native weeds and then planting saplings belonging to a variety of native tree species.
• The other plot was left to regenerate naturally.
• The team found that the actively restored areas improved in comparison with the passively restored ones in a way that matched the benchmarks to a good percentage.
• From seven to 15 years after restoration, these degraded forests recovered significantly in terms of numbers of trees, 49% in the number of tree species and 47% in the amount of carbon stored for a given area, compared to degraded forests left to recover naturally.
• The best way to go about ecological restoration would be to identify critical areas that would benefit from restoration effort this would include sites far away from larger, contiguous tracts of forests or those that would be critical as animal or plant movement corridors.
• Some of the fragments that the team studied were located within tea and coffee plantations.

Bio-restoring degraded patches of Sunderbans

News

• Increasing anthropogenic activities along with natural stresses have led to massive degradation of one of India’s World Heritage Site the Sunderbans.

Massive degradation

• A team of researchers set out with the herculean task of identifying the major reasons for the decline and also devising new restoration strategies.
• They surveyed 19 shoreline mangrove patches, collected soil and water samples and studied them.
• The results highlight that lack of essential nutrients and increasing salinity were the main problems in Sunderbans.
• They also saw a change in the species distribution salt-sensitive ones such as Heriteira fomes, Xylocarpus species and Phoenix paludosa were not able to cope up with the increase in the salinity and declined while the tolerant varieties thrived.
• After understanding the state of the degraded region, the team started the bio-restoration process.
• The grass rhizosphere also provided a nutritive atmosphere to the colonizing mangroves because this root zone decomposes microbes and helps release more nutrients in the mudflat soil.
• These grasses also provided protection from high energy waves and subsequent erosion of soil.
• The team also used native plant growth-promoting bacteria to enrich the degraded land.
• The team then established an on-site mangrove nursery and during each season collected mangrove propagules or buds and maintained in the nursery till transplantation.
• About 22 species of mangroves were restored in the region which included threatened, endangered and vulnerable species. High salt-tolerant varieties were planted near the shoreline and the moderate ones farther.
• The team notes that the present ecosystem in the studied patch is almost brought back to the original pristine condition.

Four, including three Hizbul terrorists, killed in separate incidents in J&K

News

• Three Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists and an army jawan were killed at Batote in Jammu’s Ramban district along the Jammu-Kishtwar national highway after a nine-hour operation.

Terrorists

• The terrorists were identified as Osama Javed, Zahid, residents of Kishtwar and Moin-ul-Islam.
• Javed and Zahid were allegedly involved in a spate of killings in Kishtwar district including the 2018 double murder BJP leader Anil Parihar and his brother Ajit Parihar and the April 9 killing of RSS functionary Chanderkant Sharma and his personal security officer.
• On September 13, the duo snatched weapons from the house of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) district president Sheikh Nasir Hussain in Kishtwar.
• Security agencies had anticipated terror attacks ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.

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