<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/" xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/" >

	<channel>
		<title>Mongabay India</title>
		<atom:link href="https://india.mongabay.com/feed/?topic=biomes&#038;type=post" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
		<link>https://india.mongabay.com/list/biomes/</link>
		<description>India&#039;s environmental science and conservation news</description>
		<lastBuildDate>Fri, 30 Oct 2026 05:08:10 +0000</lastBuildDate>
		<language>en-US</language>
		<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
		<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
		<generator>https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.3</generator>
				<item>
					<title>Conserve both large intact and small degraded habitats to maintain biodiversity</title>
					<link>https://india.mongabay.com/2020/08/conserve-both-large-intact-and-small-degraded-habitats-to-maintain-biodiversity/</link>
					<comments>https://india.mongabay.com/2020/08/conserve-both-large-intact-and-small-degraded-habitats-to-maintain-biodiversity/?noamp=mobile#comments</comments>
					<pubDate>03 Aug 2020 11:07:52 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Aathira Perinchery]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Mayank Aggarwal]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/30/2020/08/03085251/Banner-image-A-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://india.mongabay.com/?p=10811</guid>

					
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Biomes, Conservation, Grasslands, Habitat Fragmentation, Himalayas, and Protected Areas]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Scientists are undivided on the need to conserve natural habitats to maintain biodiversity, but divided on which ones to prioritise: intact wild habitats, or fragmented, degraded lands that are becoming increasingly common? However, both these habitats could play crucial roles in maintaining biodiversity worldwide, finds a recent study published in Proceedings of the National Academy [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Scientists are undivided on the need to conserve natural habitats to maintain biodiversity, but divided on which ones to prioritise: intact wild habitats, or fragmented, degraded lands that are becoming increasingly common? However, both these habitats could play crucial roles in maintaining biodiversity worldwide, finds a recent study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The world&#8217;s biodiversity is distributed across protected and non-protected areas, both of which face several threats. Increasing land degradation caused by human activities (including conversion of natural ecosystems into croplands to meet increasing rates of human consumption) is pushing the world towards a sixth mass species extinction, undermining the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people and intensifying climate change, found a 2018 report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). According to another study, India is among the countries that could sustain high biodiversity loss (of birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians) due to agricultural intensification. The cutting up of intact habitats into several smaller isolated fragments is a worry too: in 2015, an analysis found that such habitat fragmentation reduces biodiversity by 13 to 75 percent and affects important ecosystem functions in many ways. Landscapes have to be conserved, but should intact natural expanses be prioritised over smaller, fragmented areas in people-modified landscapes? With studies revealing the importance of both protected areas (such as the finding that local biodiversity is higher in protected areas worldwide than outside them) and non-protected ones, scientists have been divided on this. Read&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://india.mongabay.com/2020/08/conserve-both-large-intact-and-small-degraded-habitats-to-maintain-biodiversity/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://india.mongabay.com/2020/08/conserve-both-large-intact-and-small-degraded-habitats-to-maintain-biodiversity/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
														</item>
						<item>
					<title>Heaven is where there are Mahua trees – and their bat friends</title>
					<link>https://india.mongabay.com/2018/06/heaven-is-where-there-are-mahua-trees-and-their-bat-friends/</link>
					<comments>https://india.mongabay.com/2018/06/heaven-is-where-there-are-mahua-trees-and-their-bat-friends/?noamp=mobile#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>19 Jun 2018 10:19:02 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Bhanu Sridharan]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Sandhya Sekar]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/30/2018/06/15203828/Photo-3-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://india.mongabay.com/?p=1463</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Tamil Nadu]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Biomes, Deccan Plateau, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[It was while studying the breeding and courtship behaviour of short nosed fruit bats that biologist Parthasarathy Thiruchenthil Nathan began to examine roosting sites around every house from the ancient temple town of Tirunelveli to the town of Kutralam at the edge of the southern Western Ghats. Even though the aim was to look up [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[It was while studying the breeding and courtship behaviour of short nosed fruit bats that biologist Parthasarathy Thiruchenthil Nathan began to examine roosting sites around every house from the ancient temple town of Tirunelveli to the town of Kutralam at the edge of the southern Western Ghats. Even though the aim was to look up at the bats hanging from palm trees, Nathan, curious to see what they were eating, started to look down at the remains of their meals. “Most of the sites had left over fruits, flowers and seeds of the Mahua tree,” he said. He began reading about the plant. No tree has come to symbolise the dry tropical forests of Peninsular India like Madhuca longifolia, called Mahua in Hindi and Illupai in Tamil. Indigenous communities use the bark of the tree as medicine, the fruit as food and of course the flowers as an intoxicant. “Heaven is where there are Mahua trees and hell is where there is no mahua tree to make wine,” Nathan recalled reading one version of a popular Gond saying. “That’s when I became interested,” he said. From the scant literature that was available in 2004, Nathan learnt that fruit bats were believed to eat up Mahua flowers, ruining the tree’s chances of bearing fruit. Mahua is a treasured plant species across Peninsular India. Photo by Dinesh Valke / Wikimedia Commons. The bats help, too To find out if this was really true, he spent three years observing Mahua trees in the&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://india.mongabay.com/2018/06/heaven-is-where-there-are-mahua-trees-and-their-bat-friends/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://india.mongabay.com/2018/06/heaven-is-where-there-are-mahua-trees-and-their-bat-friends/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
														</item>
						<item>
					<title>[Interview] Land degradation is affecting two-fifths of humanity</title>
					<link>https://india.mongabay.com/2018/04/interview-land-degradation-is-affecting-two-fifths-of-humanity/</link>
					<comments>https://india.mongabay.com/2018/04/interview-land-degradation-is-affecting-two-fifths-of-humanity/?noamp=mobile#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>11 Apr 2018 07:16:08 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Padmaparna Ghosh]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Sandhya Sekar]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/30/2018/02/25131640/Pic-2-768x512.jpeg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://india.mongabay.com/?p=798</guid>

					
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Biodiversity, Biomes, Cities and Towns, Climate Change, Earth Science, Ecosystem services, Forests, Global Warming, Interviews, Mountains, Rivers, United Nations, Villages, and Wetlands]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Land use change is one of those terms that we read about frequently and gloss over it. We read about lakes being converted to high rises, forests being turned farmland or grazing land, ponds being made into fisheries – all of this and more. It happens all the time, everywhere. Since we learnt how to [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Land use change is one of those terms that we read about frequently and gloss over it. We read about lakes being converted to high rises, forests being turned farmland or grazing land, ponds being made into fisheries – all of this and more. It happens all the time, everywhere. Since we learnt how to grow food, we have been changing this planet’s surface. And over thousands of years, we have extracted, pulled, transformed and moulded land to our needs and benefits. All of this has led to the wide extent of land degradation that we are facing today – that is undermining the well-being of two fifths of humanity (i.e. 3.2 billion people), driving species extinctions and intensifying climate change. Vegetation loss, forest clearance, wetland drainage, grassland conversion, urban sprawl and pollution, are together leaving a deep impact on human health and happiness. We have substantially transformed 75% of our land surface, which will rise to 90% by 2050. In the first such evidence-based assessment of land degradation and restoration released on March 26 in Medellin, Colombia, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has concluded that land degradation has reached the point where it has become a major contributor to mass human migration and increased conflict. The three-year assessment report by IPBES, which is termed as the IPCC for biodiversity, was led by more than 100 leading experts from 45 countries, and distilled information from 3,000 scientific, governmental, indigenous and local knowledge sources. But all&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://india.mongabay.com/2018/04/interview-land-degradation-is-affecting-two-fifths-of-humanity/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://india.mongabay.com/2018/04/interview-land-degradation-is-affecting-two-fifths-of-humanity/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
														</item>
			</channel>
</rss>