Believed to have been introduced by the British in pre-Independence India for its showy flowers, ox-eye daisies that adorned ornate gardens in Kashmir rapidly spilled out and effortlessly invaded the…
Thiophilus Khojol has been a farmer in Assam's Cachar district on the hill slopes along the Assam-Manipur border, for over 20 years. The district's pineapple production hit an all-time high…
Born into a marginalised family in 1937 in Kerala, his umbilical cord looked almost like a bloated seed of a common mangrove tree. So, his parents who worked as farm…
September 22 is a special day in the calendar of the forest department and wildlife lovers of Assam. It's World Rhino Day, marking the occasion for celebrating the one-horned rhinoceros…
Extreme rainfall deficiencies were not the only causes of famines in semi-arid regions of southern India in the 18th to 20th centuries, according to research that blends paleoclimate reconstruction and…
Arecanut and coconut plantations sweep across the landscape and eventually into forests that creep up the hills of the Western Ghats. At a distance, windmills perched on a hillock oversee…
Senior Zoological Survey of India scientist Dhriti Banerjee has straddled two different worlds of research — physiology of drug abuse and working on the use of insects in forensic investigations…
If depleting groundwater resources was one of the reasons why the Madurai bench of the Madras high court passed a landmark judgement in 2014 to remove all eucalyptus and wattle…
While working on a project to document Maharashtra’s endemic species, researchers from the Naoroji Godrej Centre for Plant Research (NGCPR) came across a unique tree that they had never seen…
Long before global warming became a topic of hot discourse worldwide, certain traditional practices of humans, like homegardens, have served as natural ways to maintain environmental equilibrium. Homegardens are defined…
Mega herbivores undertake vast migrations across large landscapes in several parts of the world. Wildebeests migrate in the millions through the Serengeti-Maasai Mara ecosystem of East Africa — the largest…
In a scene in Sherni, a recent Hindi film depicting the complicated politics of wildlife conservation in the tiger forests of Madhya Pradesh, when District Forest Officer Vidya Vincent confronts…
One hot 2019 afternoon in Lakshadweep, as marine mammal scientist Divya Panicker sat engrossed in listening to recordings retrieved from underwater sound recorders, she came across low blue whale moans,…
Gliding through the water, a diver searches for small fragments of Turbinaria mesenterina or table coral, found in abundance near the islands of Goa in the Arabian Sea. Another diver brings…
City parks and residential gardens have a unique functional microbiome with more potential human and plant pathogens, and fewer plant-symbionts than neighbouring natural ecosystems, according to a study that unpacks…
Unless there are immediate and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting global warming to close to 1.5 degrees Celsius or even 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times will be…
Aesthetically, they may not quite cut it, but these two-tiered sanitation structures, set against the sprawling cold deserts of the Indian Himalayas, have supplied organic manure to local communities for…
“For a crop loss worth Rs. 15,000 per acre, we receive only Rs. 6,000 in compensation from the forest department. That money is of no use to us; we have…
Biological invasions are a major global challenge for the conservation of biodiversity, maintenance of ecosystem health and sustainable livelihoods. India is not new to the concept and consequences of invasive…
With over 60 species of grasses, Kutch’s Banni grassland, India’s largest, is home to an array of wildlife and key to its dairy industry. The grasses satiate the livestock reared…
