New Delhi: Phoebe Dale Nongrum, one of India’s first women Formula 4 drivers and the first from the Northeast, added another feather to her cap recently by securing podium at the 23rd JK Tyre FMSCI National Racing Championship held in Coimbatore.
In a Facebook post last week, Nongrum said, “Got my first podium in Formula Racing and set a new record for my Home Town Shillong Meghalaya and Northeast as a whole…”
According to a report, Nongrum, a native of Shillong, learnt driving when she was 12 years old. “While growing up as a little girl, I always had this passion of driving a race car. I loved cars so much, but then coming from a small town like Shillong, I never really thought that I would get there one day,” she said.
Nongrum has also been quoted as saying that she dreams of racing in Formula 1 someday. “I can dream bigger, you never know, maybe one day, I can race in the F1 as well.”
11 Manipur farmers revive lake ‘found only in history books & folk songs’
Yaralpat lake, located near the Nongmaiching hill range in Imphal East district of Manipur, became extinct in the 1960s due to environmental changes and human activities. The lake was popular for the purple-coloured ‘Kombirei’ flower.
“Yaralpat, famous for the Kombirei flower, vanished from the area for several decades. Since the 1960s, the lake turned into a paddy field in the harvesting season, though due to flooding in the rainy season no crops were produced,” Takhelmayum Janaki Singh, secretary of Yaralpat Integrated Farming Cooperative Society, told the Imphal Free Press. Singh also said how Yaralpat and Kombirei were only heard of in history books and folk songs of the state.
In 2010, 11 farmers came together to restore the lake and contributed Rs 50,000 each to start digging 11 hectares of land that was jointly owned by them. It took three years of continuous digging to revive Yaralpat. Today, the lake has a thriving fish population, and also sees visits by migratory birds.
Assam villagers perform last rites of 36 vultures that died of accidental poisoning
Hundreds of villagers from Assam’s remote Dhulijan, Betoni, Borgora and Tamuli villages gathered earlier this week to perform the last rites of 36 vultures that died due to accidental poisoning. The vultures died after reportedly feeding on a cow’s carcass that had succumbed to poisoning after drinking water from a pond.
Krishna Kanta Gogoi, a forester with the Doomdooma forest division in the state, has been quoted as saying, “The last rites were performed in a similar manner like we do for humans. Prayers were performed at the same place where they were found dead.”
Happy to release 6 Slender billed and 2 White rumped #Vultures in Assam after treatment for unintentional #poisoning. Paid homage to the 36 that died with villagers who had kept a wake ( Shraddh) for vultures. Indian values and challenges in nutshell #conservation pic.twitter.com/DrID0WzF59
— Vivek Menon (@vivek4wild) February 1, 2021
Prayers were also offered for the well-being of another eight sick vultures that were released Monday after treatment. Gogoi also said that the villagers have now decided to plant and preserve tall trees that are preferred by vultures to build nests on.
Researchers discover a new gecko species in Arunachal Pradesh
A team of researchers from five Indian institutes have discovered a new gecko species in Arunachal Pradesh which belongs to the genus Cyrtodactylus, commonly known as bent-toed geckos. The researchers have named the new species Cyrtodactylus arunachalensis.
The discovery was made by Zeeshan Mirza of the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bengaluru, Harshal Bhosale and Mandar Sawant of the Bombay Natural History Society in Mumbai, Faizan Ansari of the Madras Crocodile Bank in Chennai, Gaurang Gowande of Ferguson College in Pune, Pushkar Phansalkar from Pune, and Harshil Patel of the Veer Narmad South Gujarat University in Surat.
“The finding of this lizard species is important because it proves that the state of Arunachal Pradesh is rich in biodiversity which is yet to be documented. With many development projects lined up in the state, some of these species may be wiped out even before they are discovered,” Mirza told the Hindustan Times.
Also read: 88-year-old Manipur tea seller-turned-bridal dresser among this year’s Padma Shri awardees