Articles by Sandhya Sekar

Eyes straight out of a cartoon, raptorial legs resembling the praying mantis, a body pattern like a wasp, and finely woven wings that would be a lacemaker’s dream – mantispids…

In a population estimate of the Ganges river dolphin in the Mahananda river in Bihar and West Bengal, a total of 190 individuals were counted by two teams of scientists…

Mid-October saw extreme weather events, specifically unusually heavy rains in some parts of India. In Kerala, heavy downpours — an excess of 135% for the first 19 days of the…

Spurred on by high-level Bonn Challenge commitments to restore an area of degraded lands bigger than India by 2030, tree planting looks ready to be a major part of what…

If trees on our earth could mobilise, fighting for life would be the way forward, says Nicolas Salazar Sutil, the founder and director of Forest Guardians, an independent organisation that…

How much menstrual waste does India generate? A 2018 report by WaterAid India and Menstrual Hygiene Alliance India (MHAI) states that there are 336 million menstruating women in India, out of which…

What are dung beetles? Dung beetles use the dung of warm-blooded herbivores for… everything. They are attracted to fresh dung via volatiles (meaning, the smell). Adults feed on the soup…

A new study predicts an increase in the frequency of flash droughts in India towards the end of this century. Intraseasonal variability of the summer monsoon rainfall and anthropogenic warming…

Goa, famous for its beaches, has always been a tourism hotspot. The state has a steady footfall of tourists throughout the year. The image of Goa, in popular media, as…

Forest land amounting to 43 million hectares, more than twice the size of the state of Karnataka, was cleared across the tropics and subtropics between 2004 and 2017, largely for commercial…

Dive into the clear, shallow waters of the Gulf of Mannar and you'd be met with more than a hundred species of corals. Among these vivid corals of varying shapes…

Stretching from the Nicobar Islands very close to the equator to the Western Himalaya in the north, India covers about 30 degrees of latitude, with a long coastline on its…

Imagine sighting a wild carnivore as you go about your daily chores near your house. Your reactions may range from joy to awe, apprehension, or fear. Or even anger: maybe…

This week’s environment and conservation news stories rolled into one. To receive a weekly email with a roundup of our stories, please sign-up for our newsletter. Though Cyclone Nivar had a…

This week’s environment and conservation news stories rolled into one. To receive a weekly email with a roundup of our stories, please sign-up for our newsletter. Lesser florican: just 11 in Madhya…

For E. V. Soniya, a scientist with the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB) in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, science, and especially molecular biology, has been a lifelong passion. Her expertise in the basic…

This week’s environment and conservation news stories rolled into one. To receive a weekly email with a roundup of our stories, please sign-up for our newsletter. The link between Bengaluru’s lakes,…

This week’s environment and conservation news stories rolled into one. To receive a weekly email with a roundup of our stories, please sign-up for our newsletter. A community in Nagaland strives…

Of the insect world’s many architects, the termites are undoubtedly the reigning monarchs. The earthen mounds that these tiny insects construct out of soil, water and their own saliva, are…

Over the last decade alone, more than 100 frog species new to science have been discovered in India. One of them is the Kalinga cricket frog (Minervarya kalinga), a plain-looking…