DAILY NEWS ANALYSIS 26 OCTOBER
ENVIRONMENT
Why India and world are counting snow leopards, and how
On International Leopard Day, Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Prakash Javadekar launched a national-level protocol called the Snow Leopard Population Assessment in India (SPAI) to estimate the population of snow leopards in the Indian ranges.
About Snow leopard:
- Snow leopards are native to Alpine regions of Central Asia.
- It is because of their thick fur, they are able to survive in harsh cold climates.
- During the winter months, they are likely to descend to lower elevations.
- While the feline is a carnivore, no known human casualty has been recorded till now.
- Snow leopards mostly prey on blue sheep and mountain ibex and their smaller prey include hares, game birds and marmots.
- A snow leopard can kill prey that is up to three times of its own weight.
Habitats in India:
- In India, snow leopards mainly inhabit the higher Himalayan and trans-Himalayan landscape at an altitude between 3,000-5,400 meters.
- These ranges span a combined area of about 1,00,000 sq km across Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh.
Need for Protocol for counting Snow Leopard:
- India offers one of the best ranges for research purposes on snow leopards due to long-term research and conservation efforts.
- Yet India, like some other snow leopard ranges across the world, lacks a population estimate for snow leopard, making it difficult for conservation efforts to be effective.
- The launch took place during the fourth steering committee meeting of the Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection Program in New Delhi from October 23-34.
Challenges to Snow Leopard:
- Climate change, unregulated tourism, retribution killing, poaching, illegal trade, infrastructure development in the mountains, and excessive livestock grazing.
Process of Counting:
- Under SPAI, a two-step process will be undertaken to estimate the snow leopard population.
- The first step involves an occupation-based assessment of snow leopard distribution, which will involve identifying the area where study will be conducted.
- These estimates will be made by conducting preliminary surveys and using interview or sign-based methods.
- The second step will involves population sampling for regional density estimation.
- Online tools including a data-sharing portal, training app for identifying individual leopards through photographs and threat mapping tool are being developed by GSELP in collaboration with partner organizations.
About Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection Program (GSLEP):
- It launched PWAS (Population Assessment of the World’s Snow Leopards) in 2018 to bring together snow leopard range countries in an effort to accurately estimate their population size and monitor them.
- PAWS’s goal is to have a “robust estimate” of the snow leopard population by 2022.
- SPAI is a part of India’s PAWS effort.
- In partnership with 11 other snow leopard range countries under GSLEP, India will take part in the jointly initiated efforts.
Difficulty in counting of Snow Leopard:
- Stay in remote areas
- Elusive by nature
- Low Natural Density
- A recent survey cited in the SPAI document says that snow leopards do not occur in 25 per cent of the area that was thought to be their range in Himachal Pradesh.
- So far, counting has taken place in high density areas. Finding and counting them in low density areas is a very difficult task.
- According to GSELP, the global population of snow leopards is estimated to be between 4,000-6,500, with the highest number of them in China, between 2,000-2,500. In India, the number could vary between 200-600, according to an evaluation carried out in 1994.
ART & CULTURE
Explained: Allama Iqbal and his role in the creation of Pakistan
Last week, Furqan Ali, a headmaster of a government primary school in Pilibhit district of Uttar Pradesh was suspended after his students recited a poem written by Muhammad Iqbal in 1902 titled, “Lab peaatihaidua”.
About Iqbal:
- Iqbal is also known as Allama Iqbal and has also written, “Saarejahan se acha”.
- Iqbal was a poet-philosopher whose work promoted the philosophy of self-hood and dealt with the intellectual and cultural reconstruction of the Islamic world.
- During his visit to South India in 1928 he said that he was trying to “reconstruct Muslim religious philosophy with due regard to the philosophical tradition of Islam and the more recent developments in the domain of human knowledge.
- He wrote mostly in Urdu and Persian. Some of his works include Zabur-i-Ajam, Bal-i-Jibril (The Gabriel’s Wings), Musafir (The Wayfarer), Mysteries of the Selflessness, Secrets of the Self and The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam.
- Iqbal also took keen interest and part in the politics of his time and is revered as the “Spiritual Father of Pakistan.”
Role in Creation of Pakistan:
- Iqbal is considered to have given the vision for the creation of Pakistan, whereas Jinnah is considered to be the one who shaped this vision.
His view on Separate Muslim state:
- The enforcement and development of the Shariat of Islam is impossible in this country without a free Muslim state or states. He considered it as “only way to solve the problem of Muslims and to secure a peaceful India.”
- Therefore, Iqbal equated secular interests with the religion and believed that only a Muslim majority state would fulfill Muslims demand.
TECHNOLOGY
CSIR conducts Whole Genome Sequencing of over 1,000 Indians for Biomedical Applications
The Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) has conducted Whole Genome Sequencing of 1,008 Indians from different populations across the country.
Indigen Genome Project:
- The whole genome data will be important for building the knowhow, baseline data and indigenous capacity in the emerging area of Precision Medicine.
- Outcomes of IndiGen will have applications in a number of areas including predictive and preventive medicine with faster and efficient diagnosis of rare genetic diseases.
- The ability to decode the genetic blueprint of humans through whole genome sequencing will be a major driver for biomedical science.
- Outcomes of the IndiGen will be utilized towards understanding the genetic diversity on a population scale, make available genetic variant frequencies for clinical applications and enable genetic epidemiology of diseases.
- IndiGen initiative was undertaken by CSIR in April 2019, which was implemented by the CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), Delhi and CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad.
- IndiGenome card and accompanying IndiGen mobile application will enables participants and clinicians to access clinically actionable information in their genomes.
- He emphasized that it ensures privacy and data security, which is vital for personal genomics to be implemented at scale.
Source: The PIB
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