Assam police personnel pledge to protect environment

Guwahati: Assam police personnel today in a departure from their routine duties of safeguarding the law took a pledge to protect and conserve nature and wildlife for survival of humanity. The police personnel were apprised on the occasion of World Environment Day by IGP L R Bishnoi about how forest cover in Assam and Northeast were fast dwindling posing threat to survival of wildlife.

He also explained how survival of mankind was dependent on the survival of wildlife and forest cover. Bishnoi pointed out how 1.3 billion tons of food gets wasted in the world per year while one-seventh of the global population remains either hungry or underfed and about 20,000 children below the age of five years die of hunger everyday in the world. "We are, however, destroying forest to increase food production to feed the burgeoning world population. We have to think about it. All of us have a role to play in conservation of the nature for the sake of our future," he added. The function was organised by prominent bio-diversity conservation organisation Aaranyak in collaboration with Assam chapter of Institutions of Engineers in India here and all the participants took a Green Oath in the programme. Aaranyak`s Secretary General Bibhab Kumar Talukdar gave a power-point presentation on wildlife crime scenario and explained how policemen could check such crimes. Advocate Ajoy Kumar Das explained the various provisions of Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 and Wildlife (Protection) Assam Amendment, 2009 in dealing with wildlife crimes so as to ensure maximum punishment to the guilty. PTI