Posted on by InsightsIAS
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

PRELIMS BOOSTER 2018: Forest Owlet (Heteroglaux blewitti) and World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

PRELIMS BOOSTER 2018

Forest Owlet (Heteroglaux blewitti) and World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

Forest Owlet (Heteroglaux blewitti)

  1. Critically endangered –IUCN
  2. It had been lost for more than a century. It has an interesting history. When not sighted for decades, posters were printed and Salim Ali, the premier ornithologist of India made a public appeal to look for the bird. After 113 long years, the owlet was rediscovered in 1997 and reappeared on the list of Indian birds

 

  1. Habitat
  • Dry deciduous forest
  • Range : endemic to the forests of central India
  • South Madhya Pradesh, in north-west Maharashtra and north-central Maharashtra

 

  1. Threats
  • Logging operations, burning and cutting of trees for firewood and timber damage roosting and nesting trees of the Forest Owlet
  • encroachment for cultivation, grazing (reduce habitat suitability) and settlements
  • threats from development projects such as the widening of state/national highways (Kanha-Pench Corridor), minor irrigation dams
  • suffers predation from a number of native raptors, limiting productivity, and it faces competition for a limited number of nesting cavities
  • hunted by local people and body parts and eggs are used for local customs, such as the making of drums
  • Pesticides and rodenticides are used to an unknown degree within its range and may pose an additional threat
  • severe drought conditions which as well its direct effects on forest may also lead to increased anthropogenic pressures on the habitat  

 

  1. Conservation — CITES Appendix I

World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

  1. intergovernmental organization
  2. Established by the ratification of the WMO Convention on 23 March 1950
  3. headquarter — Geneva, Switzerland
  4. Predessor organization — International Meteorological Organization (IMO) — founded in 1873
  5. members — of 191 Member States and Territories
  6. specialised agency of the United Nations for meteorology (weather and climate), operational hydrology and related geophysical sciences

 

  1. Governance structure
  • World meteorological congress
  • Each member state and territory is represented by a Permanent Representative
  • Congress meets every four year
  • World Meteorological Congress
  • Policy making body
  • elects the President and Vice-Presidents of the Organization and members of the Executive Council; and appoints the Secretary-General

 

  • The Executive Council (EC) — implements Congress decisions
  • Six Regional Associations (RA)
  • coordination of meteorological, hydrological and related activities within respective Regions.
  • The president of each regional association is an ex officio member of the Executive Council.
  • Eight Technical Commissions — studying meteorological and hydrological operational systems, applications and research.
  • The Secretariat
  • Secretary-General — appointed by the World Meteorological Congress for a four-year term with a maximum tenure of 8 years

 

  1. Reports
  • Greenhouse Gas Bulletin
  • Status of the World Climate