The months of March and April are busy for the people of Masiyari, a village in Madhya Pradesh, adjacent to a forest. It’s the season for mahua flower collection. Everyone…
In June 2020, 20-year-old Arnav Gandhe was on a birding visit to Pune’s Mahatma hill, an offshoot of the biodiverse Western Ghats. He was about to wrap up for the…
In a secretly recorded video, a man is heard confidently saying, “I have 560 pieces of live tortoises of size 5-12 centimetres [2-5 inches] and the tortoises can be sent…
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…
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…
Citizen apps that help residents collect data, usually with smartphones, could help plug information gaps and track illegal wildlife trade in the biodiversity-rich Himalayas, a new paper says. Investments in…
In a recent study, marine biologists forewarn a decline in sea snake populations at the Malvan coast, a major landing port in southern Maharashtra. The authors flag that mechanised vessels are…
On a cold winter morning in late 2009, Dilip Konwar, a sprightly man in his late forties, scrambled up a bamboo ladder and peeked into the dark insides under the…
Researchers have found a snake species new to science in the Himalayas — on Instagram! During the COVID-19 lockdowns, Virender Bhardwaj, a master’s student at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, explored…
Researchers recently described 12 new gecko species from the Western Ghats, 10 of which are endemic and found nowhere else in the world. Some of them got quirky names, after…
From fighting for the protection of migratory birds in northeast India to the protection of the rights of mango farmers in western India, the duo of Ritwick Dutta and Rahul…
When conservation efforts collide with policies or actions that are detrimental to the environment, it is an easier choice to pick sides. But when demarcation of critical wildlife habitats end…
“Powerbaaz”. “Main boss”. No, these descriptions don’t refer to any power-hungry politician or underworld don. It’s how the indigenous Warli people of Maharashtra see their animal god, the Waghoba. The…
Tigers once roamed the lands from Turkey in the west to the Amur river basin in the east, across south and southeast Asia all the way to the island of…
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…
The fishing cat in Odisha faces the threat of shrinking marshlands, its habitat, but experts hope that recent conservation efforts employed by the state will help it swim against the…
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…
Camels were once a prized possession for breeders in Rajasthan. Madhavram Raika, a breeder from Pali district, said that his father owned 150 camels. Of these, both young and adult…
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…
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,…
