SI have been accused of using the exhibition just to attract notice and recruits - though they deny it. But SI is changing its policies. Though the Indians still need help, they are increasingly effective campaigners on their own behalf. SI is putting more effort into campaigning in the West, source of much of the industrial exploitation that destroys these, and other, endangered habitats. The museum still refuses to give an inch, even as the exhibition enters its second year.
SI now proposes to go public internationally, and to protest for as long as the show lasts.
A NEW report outlines the disaster that will face the poor if the depletion of forests continues. Wood, says the State of India s Environment Report, is needed by millions for warmth and cooking, as well as for making ploughs, bullock carts and timber-frames for mud huts, yet the precious resource is disappearing alarmingly fast. In India 3,000,000 acres of forest are cut down each year. Many of the trees that are cut down go to wealthier Indians. Forests are sold to contractors and merchants for commercial logging operations, and then much of the wood is sold as fuel thousands of miles away.