Domestic livestock differ from wild herbivores in their impacts on soil carbon, and ultimately on climate, a new study shows. And given the increasing use of veterinary antibiotics on domestic…
The Western Ghats of India are broadly divided into three subdivisions — the northern, central and southern — separated by the Goa gap and the Palghat gap respectively. Due to…
A new study published in Scientific Reports has mapped priority areas in the Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve (SBR) that are highly suitable for mangrove conservation and restoration. The Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve…
Botanist Pervaiz Dar spent a good amount of time in 2012 and 2017 squatting and walking along roadsides in Kashmir, including at mountain pass Sinthan Top, surveying invasive alien plant…
The dazzling yellow bloom of the gul toor, has been a sight to soothe sore eyes in Kashmir. After a protracted winter where this colour is largely missing, this yellow…
The implementation of nature-based solutions, or NbS — a hotly debated concept that has gained traction in recent years — is seen by many policymakers as a potential means for…
Extinction is the termination of all members of a species and it occurs because of environmental forces, overexploitation or evolutionary changes. What can fossils tell us about extinction? They provide…
Asian elephants, despite needing 150 kilograms of wild fodder every day, are picky eaters, suggests a recent study in PLOS One by scientists from the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology…
Mass flowering is an enchanting phenomenon that occurs across the world. In India, the neelakurinji (Strobilanthes kunthiana) bloom, where swathes of the landscape become carpeted in flowers, is a well-known…
After marathon negotiations and a clutch of protests, including a “die-in” by global youth and a walk-out by developing countries over a funding stalemate, nearly 200 nations struck a historic…
The UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15), underway in Canada, is seeing the formalisation of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework and the signing of the “30 by 30” goal, to aid…
Ambitious and quantitative targets, with a focus on tackling the drivers of biodiversity decline, should be reflected in a successful Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), says Sandra Diaz, Argentine ecologist and…
After multiple postponements due to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments began the final round of negotiations at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Canada to thrash out a landmark deal…
When diatom hunter Karthick Balasubramanian was invited to a research expedition on the Blue Mountains of Mizoram, little did he know the trek would result in producing the first dataset…
The 18th and 19th centuries' Sri Lanka saw many British naturalists studying the island’s rich biodiversity. They also contributed to profiling the same. One of them, W.W.A. Phillips, a tea…
Sheikh Mohammad Sultan, a saffron grower in his sixties is uncertain about the future of the saffron industry in the Kashmir valley. Sultan and his family, while plucking saffron flowers,…
Right after the monsoon spell, the coastlines of India’s western states, from Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Goa to Karnataka, are lined with dark, sticky balls. These are tarballs, a “seasonal phenomena”…
Large grass-eating mammals such as yak and ibex play a crucial role in stabilising the pool of soil carbon in grazing ecosystems that are a big part of the Earth’s…
“Our habitat was once a thick jungle in which trees such as Magnolia sp., Dipterocarpus sp., Pinus sp., Phoebe hainesiana, Quercus sp. and more, as large as three to four metres…
In 2018, activist Gopal Jhaveri in Mumbai, discovered that four coconut trees in his area, Borivali, had been poisoned by miscreants to achieve a clear view for an advertisement hoarding.…
