Pejawar seer urges people to fight against proposed Ultra Mega Power Plant in Dakshina Kannada village

March 2, 2013

Udupi, Mar 2: Strongly opposing the Karnataka government's plan of setting up an Ultra Mega Power Plant (UMPP) at Niddodi village in Dakshina Kannada district, Pejawar Mutt pontiff Vishwesha Tirtha Swamiji has urged the local people to fight against it.

Addressing mediapersons here, the seer said that he would request the Union and State governments to give up the project.

The proposed UMPP at Niddodi was four times bigger than the coal-based thermal power plant of Udupi Power Corporation Ltd (UPCL) at Yellur in Udupi district.

It was essential to stop the project at the conception stage. The people of Niddodi and surrounding villages should fight against the project. While he would not accept the leadership of such a struggle, he would offer all his support to any agitation in this regard. “When I fought against the UPCL, I alone had to sit on a fast against it, it was a lone struggle,” he said.

It was not a question of whether the BJP-led State government or the Congress-led Union government was supporting the UMPP.

The main point was that the UMPP was unsuitable for the coastal region. Besides environmental problems, it would lead to the destruction of fertile agricultural land and affect the livelihood of a large number of people. This was a totally unacceptable project.

He would urge Union Petroleum Minister M. Veerappa Moily to drop the UMPP.

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Elusive bamboo shrimp resurfaces in Mangaluru estuary after 70 years

News Network

December 7,2025

Mangaluru, Dec 7: A rare bamboo shrimp has been rediscovered on mainland India more than 70 years after it was last reported, confirming for the first time the presence of Atyopsis spinipes in the country. The find was made by researchers from the Centre for Climate Change Studies at Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, during surveys in Karnataka and Odisha.

The team — shrimp expert Dr S Prakash, PhD scholar K Kunjulakshmi, and Mangaluru-based researcher Maclean Antony Santos — combined field surveys, ecological assessments and DNA analysis to identify the elusive species. Their findings, published in Zootaxa, resolve decades of taxonomic confusion stemming from a 1951 report that misidentified the species as Atyopsis moluccensis without strong evidence.

The shrimp has now been confirmed at two locations: the Mulki–Pavanje estuary near Mangaluru and the Kuakhai River in Bhubaneswar. Historical specimens from the Andaman Islands, previously labelled as A. moluccensis, were also found to be misidentified and actually belong to A. spinipes.

The rediscovery began after an aquarium hobbyist in Odisha spotted a shrimp in 2022, prompting systematic surveys across Udupi, Karwar and Mangaluru. Four female specimens were collected in Mulki and one in Odisha, all genetically matching.

Researchers warn the species may exist in very small, vulnerable populations as freshwater habitats face increasing pressure from pollution, sand mining and infrastructure development. All verified specimens have been deposited with the Zoological Survey of India for future reference.

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