Report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel Part I. : 2.

17 Hill Stations In Western Ghats Where Britishers Created Little England

Opinion
   08/09/2018
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Report of the Western Ghats
Ecology Expert Panel
Part I

2. Acknowledgements :

The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) acknowledges the valuable inputs provided by the Hon. Ministers for Environment and Forests, GoI, several Ministers of State Governments, and the Members of Parliament of the Western Ghats region.

The WGEEP acknowledges the help and cooperation provided by the State Environment and Forest Departments, as well as other departments including Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, and institutions such as KILA and KFRI of various Western Ghats States viz. Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

The WGEEP acknowledges the members of all the civil society groups who have interacted and shared their invaluable experience and information with the Panel. Many of them have played an important role in evolving policy and management formulations for the ecologically sensitive zones. Individual names of the members and the civil society groups appear at relevant places in the Annexures.

The WGEEP acknowledges with great pleasure the warmth with which people at the grass-roots welcomed it and shared their understanding, perceptions and concerns.
The WGEEP acknowledges the significant and critical inputs provided by Shri Sanjay Upadhyay, Advocate, Supreme Court and Managing Partner, ELDF, regarding the modalities for setting up the proposed Western Ghats Ecology Authority.

Most importantly, the Western Ghats Ecology Expert panel puts on record its gratitude to Dr. S.N. Prasad and its deep appreciation of his effort in preparing the geospatial database for arriving at ecological sensitivity levels for the whole Western Ghats region. This database is the basis for defining the proposed ecologically sensitive zones across the Western Ghats.

The Panel would also like to acknowledge the following persons for their invaluable help and assistance in accessing the data and information required for the geospatial database used by WGEEP : -

1. Mr Kiran, Arundhati Das, V Srinivasan and Dr Jagdish Krishnaswamy of ATREE (Habitat-related information for parts of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu)
2. Mr Ravindra Bhalla of FERAL and Mr Bhaskar Acharya of CEPF
3. Dr R J R Daniels of Care Earth (point locations of mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians and fishes)
4. Dr K A Subramanian, ZSI (point locations of Odonata)
5. Prof R Sukumar (elephant corridors)
6. Dr K N Ganeshiah (Western Ghats boundary)
7. Dr P S Roy (habitat information and shapefiles for Gujarat and Maharashtra)
8. Dr Bharucha and Dr Shamita of BVIEER, Pune, and Dr Jay Samant and his colleagues from DEVRAAI, Kolhapur (data on parts of Maharashtra)
9. Dr K S Rajan Open Source Geospatial Foundation – India chapter and IIIT, Hyderabad (geospatial statistical analyses)
10. Dr P V K Nair, KFRI (analyses for Kerala)
11. Mr Santosh Gaikwad, Mr Siva Krishna, Mr Ravi Kumar, Ch. Appalachari, and Mr Sai Prasad of SACON for their invaluable and dogged GIS work
12. Ms Amruta Joglekar of Garware College, Pune, for able support in the work of the Panel for its Maharashtra segment.
The Panel acknowledges the efficient support provided by Ms. Geetha Gadgakar, Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, in convening the Panel meetings and brainstorming sessions, and by Ms. Saroj Nair, The Energy and Resources Institute, (TERI) New Delhi with the formatting of the report. Special thanks to Ms Shaily Kedia of TERI, for research support at various points.
The WGEEP acknowledges the whole-hearted support provided by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, and its officers. In particular we wish to acknowledge the unstinting and enthusiastic support provided by Dr Amit Love (Deputy Director, MoEF).

To be continued ..

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