Environment Ministry's Brochure Goof up: Pics Showcase African Species

The Ministry of Environment and Forests seems to have committed a major goof up in its latest brochure uploaded on its site http://envfor.nic.in/. Under the section titled ‘New Releases’, a PDF file uploaded under the ministry’s New Initiatives & Efforts for the year 2014-16 flaunts at least three photographs of a plant, a herd of elephants and a frog, all of which are originally from Africa.

• On page 8 titled Forest Initiatives with a subtitle Discoveries and Technology, the first photograph of the pink colored flower is a rare bulb of species Hesperantha kiaratayloriae originally from South Africa’s Overberg.

The original link which describes the rare bulb from Overberg

• The second photograph of a frog is actually of a species belonging to the Boophis rappiodes group (Anura, Mantellidae) found in North West Madagascar.

The research paper that describes the rare frog from Madagascar

• And the third photograph with a side note that claims to track elephants using drones has an image of African elephants picked up from a link available online that tells us 10 ways in which drones can be put to good use in 2015.

The original blog link from where the photographs of the African elephants were sourced

Chaitanya Krishna, a research scholar doing his Phd in Wildlife Biology and Conservation from Manipal University, stumbled upon the Ministry’s goof up on Monday evening after a friend mentioned about the new brochure that was uploaded by the Centre to showcase its achievements in the last two years.

Why would a government booklet use images of species that are originally from Africa as if they have invented their own list of species and are keen to showcase it to the world,” quips Chaitanya over the phone to CNN News18.

According to Chaitanya, Union minister of Environment and Forests, Prakash Javadekar had tweeted some of the slides from the newly produced brochure on May 20, a week before the second anniversary celebrations of the Modi government.

Chaitanya even tweeted his findings to the MoEF along with the exact names but hasn’t received any response yet.