It is very important to read this too along with the news:

The officials wanted to grab the photographs, but without any attributions to the photographers themselves. As usual, these photos will later appear in costly or otherwise Govt.  publications, promptly and sacredly credited to the photographers employed by the department of forests or tourism.

As for Wikimedia, we had our Wiki Vana Vijnjana Yatra, (Wiki Jungle Expedition), conducted highly succesful, as part of Malayalam Wikipedia's 10th Anniversary in December 2012, just a few days before the order was released. Most of those photographs are already in Wikimedia Commons.

It is only a matter of time, the Government officials realize that the true guards of our bio-diversity are such amaeture / freelance photo'grabber's.

-ViswaPrabha



On Sat, Aug 31, 2013 at 7:35 PM, L. Shyamal <lshyamal@gmail.com> wrote:
I was told some years ago that a forest minister had passed a rule that no photography was to be allowed in any forest areas in Kerala. Any forest in that including Reserve Forests, in which one is *even* allowed to graze cattle, collect firewood and minor forest produce. I was just trying to look up this and found a newspaper article on the topic. That ban was apparently introduced because of a certain wildlife photographer refused to provide photographs to the Kerala Forest Deparment for their use.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-kerala/wild-photography-ban-condemned/article4233888.ece

Reading that news again with fresh insight suggests that the wildlife photographer in question was in fact N.A. Nazeer! Perhaps he or someone ought to inform the Kerala Forest Department of Wikimedia Commons..

best wishes
Shyamal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shyamal

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