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A conservation programme targeted at changing children’s mindsets towards wildlife
The Hindu
The programme is free for adivasi students and children from government schools. For private schools, a fee of ₹350 is charged per student
The Forest Department has launched a campaign to change the mindsets of children from communities that have a high number of problematic interactions with animals in the region.
The eco-ambassador programme, at the Gene Pool Eco Development Committee, currently has more than 160 children enrolled in it, including children from adivasi communities, apart from school students from government and private schools.
G. Prasad, Forest Range Officer, Nadugani Range, said the programme was started after two local adivasi children had bought rice from their pocket money to feed to the captive elephants from the Theppakadu Elephant Camp that were being used to drive away wild elephants entering human habitations in the region. The Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Coimbatore Circle), at the time had sanctioned the programme, to include more students.
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When fed into Latin, pusilla comes out denoting “very small”. The Baillon’s crake can be missed in the field, when it is at a distance, as the magnification of the human eye is woefully short of what it takes to pick up this tiny creature. The other factor is the Baillon’s crake’s predisposition to present less of itself: it moves about furtively and slides into the reeds at the slightest suspicion of being noticed. But if you are keen on observing the Baillon’s crake or the ruddy breasted crake in the field, in Chennai, this would be the best time to put in efforts towards that end. These birds live amidst reeds, the bulrushes, which are likely to lose their density now as they would shrivel and go brown, leaving wide gaps, thereby reducing the cover for these tiddly birds to stay inscrutable.