Expression from an Idiot by birth:

Whenever I deliver a talk on conservation to farmers, monks, nuns and sometimes even the educated lot, I m normally questioned to justify why would one spend money in conserving when nothing as conservation existed during our ancestral days and there were no recorded problems. My first answers would generally be, "our ancestors weren't greedy like we are now and didn't care of their wealth". Okey! on a serious note, I cover two main topics to justify myself to the question I get viz. Hydro-power and Human Wildlife Conflicts. 1. Hydro-power: How on earth is conservation connected to the economic generation potential of hydro-power? I am not going to touch on the controversial idea of the relation between number of trees and water volumes. But, I would like to touch from another angle here. We all know the important role ROOTS of trees and plants play in binding the soil and rocks thereby preventing soil erosion, but very few might have realized the pressure of rai...

The Manas River is a trans-boundary river in the Himalayan foothills between southern Bhutan and India . It is named after Manasa , the serpent god in Hindu Mythology . It is the largest river system of Bhutan, among its four major river systems; the other three are Amo Chu or Toorsa , Wang Chu or Raidak, Puna Tsang Chhu or Sunkoosh . The total length of the river is 376 kilometres, flows through Bhutan for 272 kilometres and then through Assam for 104 kilometres before it joins the mighty Brahmaputra River . Mighty Manas River is formed by merging two rivers, viz. Dangme Chhu and Mangde Chhu in a place called Dung-du-me brag and Un-dhala thang in Panbang.  Confluence of Dangme Chhu and Mangede Chhu  and also showing Bird eye-view of Panbang. Source: Google Earth  The river valley has two major reserve forest areas, namely the Royal Manas National Park   in Bhutan and the contiguous Manas Wildlife Sanctuary encompassing Project Tiger Reserve which constitut...