Articles by Arathi Menon

It's been about two months since The Elephant Whisperers won the best documentary short film award at the Oscars and Theppakadu Elephant Camp at Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, where the film…

Jayasudha, 38, counts it as a blessing that she was not home on the night of December 11, 2020. It was then that a bear with two cubs entered her…

“If the Pulicat lagoon dies, there will not be any rain in Chennai,” said architect and researcher Xavier Benedict of the Art & Architecture Research Development and Education (AARDE) Foundation,…

At his 38-acre coffee estate at 3,800 ft, overlooking the pristine Baba Budan giri (hill) in Chikmagalur district of Karnataka, I.S. Umeshchandra is working on creating a database of rainfall…

Human-wildlife interactions are on the rise. But not all of them are positive. In India, every year, hundreds of people and animals die due to human-animal conflict. Conflicts with wild…

In early May 2022, the Karnataka government announced its plan to denotify two-thirds of its deemed forest land. As part of this, 6.64 lakh hectares of forest out of 9.94…

It is late April 2022. At Namche Bazaar, a town in the Everest region of Nepal at an elevation of 3555 metres above sea level (m a.s.l), life, and business…

At the first-ever global tiger summit, to save tigers from extinction, held at St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2010, 13 tiger range countries, including India took a resolution to double tiger…

This is the second article in a two-part series on the impact of the solar park in Pavagada, Karnataka that is experimenting with a new model of leasing land from…

This is the first article in a two-part series on the impact of the solar park in Pavagada, Karnataka that is experimenting with a new model of leasing land from…

Traditional healer Janakiamma (60) belongs to the Kurumba community. An indigenous community in south India, Kurumba is listed by the government of India as one of the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal…

After two consecutive years of incessant rains, floods and landslides in the month of August, the smallest district in Karnataka, Kodagu, was in for a surprise this year. The famous…

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…

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…

There is no debate that renewable energy projects, when implemented suitably, are more environment-friendly and sustainable than fossil fuel-based projects. But if large renewable energy projects are the way forward,…

In the Malnad region of Karnataka that covers the western and the eastern slopes of the Western Ghats, the king cobra is nothing short of a deity. Hooded cobras appear…

Eat everything, nest anywhere and be like Beyonce when singing for a companion. If a city bird were to give a country bird the top 10 survival techniques in a…

Vidhya Bhaskaran is back home in her village Salamanatham in Tamil Nadu from three days of training for the self-help group (SHG) members at Yercaud, a hill station in the…

To a mind that’s taught to see vast swathes of land where no large trees but “mere” grass and shrubs grow as inconsequential, Hesaraghatta’s distinction as a unique habitat for…

It’s not uncommon in India to see cattle grazing in farms and backyards, ruminating by the road, or even causing a minor inconvenience to vehicles. Replace cattle with herds of…