India News | ZSI Activities Suffered Due to Curtailment of Funds During Covid Lockdown: Govt
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. The government on Friday said activities under the primary and secondary objectives of Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) have suffered due to curtailment of funds during the lockdown but it has initiated field surveys this financial year despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
New Delhi, Aug 6 (PTI) The government on Friday said activities under the primary and secondary objectives of Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) have suffered due to curtailment of funds during the lockdown but it has initiated field surveys this financial year despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Yes. Due to curtailment of funds, activities under the primary and secondary objectives of ZSI have suffered, especially field surveys for faunal diversity and status surveys of threatened species as well as training and capacity building activities including molecular systematics work.
"However, in spite of the pandemic, following the Covid protocol, ZSI has initiated field surveys for the year 2021-22," said Minister of State for Environment Ashwini Choubey while responding to a query in Lok Sabha about the challenges faced by the ZSI in performing its mandates during the lockdown.
He said ZSI carried out over 20 field surveys, and faunal collections have been made from eight Protected Areas of the country.
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"As a part of training and capacity building, 10 JRFs (Junior Research Fellow) have been recruited recently during May 2021 exclusively to train them through working in various research programmes of ZSI," Choubey said.
The minister also gave out data on funds allocated to the organization in the last three years.
According to the figures, Rs 210 crores have been allotted to ZSI between 2018-2021. For the current financial year, Rs 67 crores have been allotted to it out of which Rs 22.4 crores have been utilized till July 15, 2021.
Replying to another question on whether ZSI has been enriching the information on DNA barcodes and solving taxonomic queries in the country, the minister said, "Yes, ZSI has been enriching the information on DNA barcodes and solving taxonomic queries in the country.
"The ZSI has generated 7,186 DNA barcodes as on March 31, 2021 which are available in the public domain 'The Barcode of Life Data System (BOLD)'."
He said the ZSI has also contributed over 1,000 sequences to National Centre for Biotechnology information (NCBI) as of March 2021.
"Further, the ZSI through its DNA barcoding and generating digital sequences information has solved many taxonomic disparities. ZSI identified the existence of two phylogenetic species of red panda, up-scaling pangolin conservation, allopatric speciation in Himalayan ibex among others.
"It has also validated two Mahseer fishes, produced world's largest DNA barcode library for thrips (insecta), India's largest DNA barcode library for spiders, provided DNA Barcoding evidence for invasive Pest thrips, Thrips Parvispinus (Thripidae: Thysanoptera), from India, revealed DNA barcode evidence for host associated genetic diversity of 'tea Mosquito Bug' Helopeltis Theivora (Miridae: Heteroptera) from India etc," he said.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)