Species File: Exploring India’s biodiversity, one species at a time.

With their flattened bodies and wing-like fins, rays are a striking sight when they glide in ocean waters. But many rays face an uncertain future: a recent study found that most Important Shark and Ray Areas (ISRAs) in Indian waters along the Bay of Bengal fall outside marine protected areas, leaving critical breeding and nursery habitats vulnerable.

Rays are cartilaginous fish closely related to sharks. Found worldwide, they are mostly marine, though a few species live in freshwater lakes and rivers. Most ray species are benthic (dwelling on the ocean floor), while a few live in the open ocean. Depending on the species, they feed on zooplankton, krill, fish, molluscs, worms, crustaceans, and marine mammals, thereby shaping seabed communities and cycling nutrients.

There are diverse groups of rays, ranging from manta rays (the largest type, with some growing as wide as a minibus) to stingrays, which have whip-like venomous tails. Nearly all rays have flattened, disc-shaped bodies with wing-like pectoral fins.

A unique lineage is the rhino rays (order Rhinopristiformes), which have flattened, ray-like bodies but shark-like tails and pointed snouts. These comprise 68 species of saw-fishes, wedgefishes, giant guitar-fishes, guitarfishes and banjo rays.

According to the IUCN Red List, rhino rays are the world’s most threatened marine fish, with over 70% of assessed species considered threatened, and nearly half critically endangered. About 23 rhino ray species are protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) under Appendices I and II, which completely bans and strictly regulates trade, respectively. In India, about 15 species of rhino rays, such as the bottlenose wedgefish (Rhynchobatus australiae) and bowmouth guitarfish (Rhina ancylostoma), are listed in Schedule I of India’s Wildlife Protection Amendment Act 2022, offering the highest level of protection.

Fisheries are the largest threat to rhino rays. Like other sharks and rays, they grow slowly and produce few offspring, making it hard for populations to recover from overfishing. Once targeted primarily for their fins, they are now frequently caught as bycatch. Fins are exported for international markets, and meat is consumed locally.

Ray skins have also recently become popular in commercial trade. In an article published in Mongabay-India in 2025, Rima Jabado, chair of the IUCN Shark Specialist Group, said: “This is really concerning because these large rays, which are skinned, are coastal and they are being targeted in many countries not for their meat but specifically for their skin.”

Read more about how local ecological knowledge is aiding rhino ray conservation, why key shark and ray habitats in India remain unprotected, and how social media can help track shark and ray consumption.

Banner image: A manta ray. Image by Svetlana Obysova via Pexels.

Nepal, which suffered a catastrophic debris flow and flash flood on August 26, is slated to receive $21.6 million from the United Nations’ Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD).

The decision to “provisionally” release the funds was finalised during an “extraordinary meeting” convened by the Fund’s board on October 22. Nepal will still need to apply for this funding, and the Board will consider the request at its next meeting, the tenth FRLD Board meeting, this December.

“Following Nepal’s formal letter on August 31, 2026 requesting support from the Fund, the FRLD Board commenced to assess available options. Backed by strong solidarity from the whole Board, intensive consultations were held throughout September and October, culminating in today’s extraordinary Board meeting, in accordance with the Board’s Rules of Procedure,” an FRLD press statement said.

The FRLD was constituted in 2023 with the specific purpose of providing rapid financial support to developing countries struggling with the economic and non-economic losses and damages associated with climate-driven extreme weather events.

The demand by developing countries for a funding facility for losses and damages had been simmering at the climate Conference of Parties (COP) meetings for decades. The decision to provisionally release funding to Nepal comes ahead of the COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, scheduled to take place from November 9 to November 20.

Climate change was “a destabilising factor” in the Nepal flash flood, according to a report by the World Weather Attribution. The trigger was the rapid collapse of a 2-square-kilometre wall of rock and glacier ice, but “warming and permafrost degradation likely weakened the source rock wall by increasing bedrock temperatures and thawing ice within fractures,” said the WWA which conducts rapid attribution studies to quantify how climate change influences the intensity and likelihood of an extreme weather event.

About 1,300 people – including hundreds of Indian pilgrims – died in the Nepal floods. Damages were estimated to be up to $2.69 billion. The Nepal government told the FRLD that the initial cost of recovery and reconstruction would cost $4.71 billion.

“The Loss and Damage Fund took a historic first step by responding to Nepal, but this cannot be a one-off,” said Harjeet Singh, Global Convenor of the Fill the Fund campaign, in a statement. “No country should have to endure a catastrophe and wait seven weeks, through historic letters and relentless pressure, just to unlock the Fund’s first-ever emergency meeting. We must set up a permanent rapid-response system that moves support in days, not months.”

Banner image: Residents pull a zipline to help people commute across the Trishuli river in the aftermath of flash floods at Bidur in Nuwakot district, Nepal in September 2026. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

New research from the Centre for Wildlife Studies evaluated changing fire regimes in wildlife reserves across three Indian landscapes, finding that burned area rose most steeply in the Eastern Ghats between 2002 and 2022, at 9.3% per year.

The rising fires in the Eastern Ghats show that it has a more fire-prone combination of vegetation, climate, and repeated human ignition than the Western Ghats, while Central India sits in between.

The study evaluated roughly 20,000 square kilometres of protected forest land across 13 reserves. Both human and climate factors explained between 21 and 77% of annual fire activity across individual reserves, with drought and community fire use both playing major, but regionally varying roles.

A region- and reserve-specific deconstruction of forest fires is essential to understanding how different rainfall, temperature, and land use regimes, as well as population densities, affect fire occurrence, the researchers argue.

For example, high human population density was strongly associated with more frequent fires in Kawal Wildlife Sanctuary (Telangana) and Nagarjunasagar-Srisailam Tiger Reserve (Andhra Pradesh), but in Nagarahole and Bandipur National Parks (Karnataka), similar conditions were linked with fewer fires.

“Various factors could be contributing to this paradoxical trend in burned areas in India, including forest management, land-use change, changes in fire ignitions, anthropogenic climate change and natural climate variability,” the study says.

Using satellite-derived burned-area data from NASA’s MODIS sensor, the study found that burned area in the Western Ghats declined by 10.8% per year. It suggests that local factors, including wetter conditions and changing land use, may be offsetting drought- or human-driven fire pressure. The Western Ghats had a fire-return interval of 92 years (the average number of years between successive fires in the same place), compared with 31 years in Central India and 14 years in the Eastern Ghats.

Intensifying fires in the Eastern Ghats are driving the growth of fire resistant grasses like Cymbopogon “and creating regeneration challenges for native trees,” while too little fire in parts of the Western Ghats “risks allowing woody plants to encroach on the open grasslands that support herbivores,” a press release of the study says.

“Wildfires are ubiquitous across various eco-regions of India. However, each region is characterised by variation in trends, drivers, and ecological challenges. Integrated fire management that accounts for climate, vegetation, and human factors is important for fire management and policy in Indian ecosystems,” Narendran Kodandapani, lead author of the study, said.

Banner image: A wildfire in Bandipur National Park, Karnataka, in 2019. Image by NaveenNkadalaveni via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Species File: Exploring India’s biodiversity, one species at a time.

A creature of the open grasslands, where there’s nowhere to hide, the blackbuck’s evolutionary survival trick is endurance — it can sprint incredibly fast, sometimes even fast enough to have once outrun the Asiatic cheetah when it still prevailed in India.

The blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra) is the sole living member of its genus.

In a 2025 story published in Mongabay-India, Mihir Godbole, founder of The Grasslands Trust-India, said: “Blackbucks … are key indicators that grassland species cannot do well in any other habitats.”

Female blackbucks are light brown and live in herds, sometimes led by a mature male. Younger males live in bachelor groups until they mature, at which point they establish their own territories, develop a black-brown coat, and grow corkscrewed horns. During mating season, males form display territories called leks, leaping and calling to attract females.

Once spread across the Indian subcontinent, blackbuck populations were decimated by trophy hunting under British rule. The species is now extinct in the wild in Pakistan and Bangladesh and survives in small protected pockets in Nepal, while the majority live in India.

A 2016 estimate put the Indian population at roughly 35,000. They live in the open grassland habitats and are found across 13 states, with strongholds in Velavadar, Tal Chhapar, Point Calimere, and Karnataka’s Ranebennur and Jayamangali reserves.

The IUCN lists the blackbuck as least concern, indicating that its population is widespread and abundant. In India, it’s protected under Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, offering it the highest protection from hunting, poaching and trading. It is the state animal of Punjab, Haryana, and Andhra Pradesh, and is considered sacred by the Bishnoi community of western Rajasthan.

Habitat loss is the main threat to the blackbuck, as grasslands have historically been dismissed as “wastelands” and converted for agriculture or infrastructure projects, or encroached by invasive plants. Feral dogs are another growing danger — in Haryana’s Hisar district alone, over 360 blackbuck were killed by dogs between 2016 and 2020.

Read more about blackbucks outside protected reserves, threats to blackbucks from feral dogs, and community conservation of blackbucks in Odisha.

Banner image: Male blackbucks fight at Sagareshwar Wildlife Sanctuary. Image by Inside Indian Jungle via Flickr (CC PDM 1.0).

Are invasive plants better at competing with species in places they invade than species in their native range? A paper investigated this using Erigeron canadensis, commonly known as Canadian horseweed, to find that plants from non-native populations had 19.2% higher competitive ability than those from native populations.

In the study, that advantage was evident across two watering conditions — watered and drought. Although drought reduced competitive ability overall by 12.9%, the difference between native and non-native populations was not significant.

Canadian horseweed is native to North and Central America that has spread widely across Europe, Asia and other regions. In some introduced areas, it can suppress other plant species and reduce local plant diversity.

The researchers conducted a large glasshouse experiment involving plants from 100 native and 165 non-native populations of Erigeron canadensis. They grew the plants under different conditions, including adequate water and drought, and tested how they performed when growing alone, alongside individuals of their own species, and alongside other plant species.

The paper suggests that the competitive advantage evolved independently in different regions. Genetic analyses identified four clusters, but increased competitive ability was evident in two. The result suggests that similar evolutionary changes can emerge independently rather than being explained solely by the spread of one already competitive lineage.

One of the crucial findings was that the advantage was associated with interactions with other species, rather than competition between individuals of the same species. Non-native plants showed 28.4% greater competitive tolerance and 38% greater competitive suppression under interspecific competition. These differences were not found under intraspecific competition. In other words, the advantage was specifically associated with competing against other plant species, not with competing against members of their own species.

The findings suggest that if non-native populations attain greater competitive ability, they may increasingly suppress other plants and contribute to reduced native plant diversity. The ecological impacts of an invasive species therefore may not remain constant after introduction.

The paper, however, cautions that it remains uncertain what drives the competitive ability and whether it is a general response because “the evidence is largely based on studies with limited sampling, inadequate consideration of population co-ancestry, and oversimplified estimates of competitive ability”.

Banner image: Canadian horseweed or Erigeron canadensis photographed in North America. Image by Aaron Volkening via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

On October 11, the Upper Siang district administration issued an order prohibiting the assembly of five or more people amid intensifying protests against the Siang Upper Multipurpose Project (SUMP). The order was issued two days after four protesters were detained under the Arunachal Pradesh Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 2014.

Protests against the 11,000 MW hydropower plant turned violent earlier this month after Chief Minister Pema Khandu’s visit to the district. Residents of the Siang, Upper Siang, and East Siang districts have consistently opposed the development of the dam, which will submerge 27 villages, including Upper Siang’s district headquarters, Yingkiong.

On October 13, three civil society groups — the Adi Banne Kebang United, Siang Indigenous Farmers Forum Youth Wing, and SUMP Affected Area Youth Association (SAAYA) submitted a memorandum to the Upper Siang District Collector condemning police atrocities and demanding the immediate release of those arrested for protesting. Police allegedly lathi charged protesters on October 4, days after protesters set fire to vehicles and stormed an MLA’s house.

The memorandum demands the unconditional release of protesters from police custody, the “immediate and complete withdrawal of Central Armed Police Forces from Siang and Upper Siang,” a halt on all studies being done to determine the dam’s viability in the area, and the quashing of all legal proceedings against protesters.

“Failure to comply will compel the youth and public to escalate democratic agitation, for which the district administration and law enforcement authorities shall be held solely responsible,” says the memorandum, seen by Mongabay-India.

“We’ve been approached by the authorities seeking advice on how to restore peace to the area. By the steps they’re taking now, like detaining people, can peace be restored?” asked Goto Apang, convenor of SAAYA, over the phone.

Ashok Tajo, Upper Siang’s District Collector, said that the area was peaceful. “The detainees will have to submit their representations to the state government challenging the detention order of the District Magistrate for release from detention.”

The imposition of UAPA on protesters, as well as curbs on public assembly, follow allegations of the movement being foreign funded. Bhanu Tatak, legal advisor to the SIFF, was served a notice by the Central Bureau of Information for allegedly violating the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act. The notice alleged Tatak had received ₹17 lakh (₹1.7 million) without registration under the FCRA.

The protests oppose the attempt to carry out a Pre-Feasibility Report (PFR) study by the NHPC, which is developing the project, to determine if the locations of the proposed dam are viable. The PFR is one of the few pending studies left before completing the dam’s detailed project report.

Banner image: Protests against the SUMP held in Upper Siang in 2024. Representative image by special arrangement.