“It is just like a human being,” said Mahipatsinh Sodha, a farmer from Gujarat’s Kachchh district, about guggal, a native plant species in the region, which the International Union for…
India's agricultural sector stands at a crucial crossroads today, grappling with numerous challenges that threaten the livelihoods of millions of farmers and the sustainability of the planet. In recent times,…
Thamirabarani is a perennial river in south India that flows through the districts of Tirunelveli and Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu. Originating from the Western Ghats, the life-giving river dribbles, sprints…
The memory came alive as I sat down to transcribe the recordings from the field. All I could hear was “pach-pach” and “sha-sha” behind my own heavy breathing from walking.…
In the last few decades, nature conservation across the world has increasingly relied on measuring the economic value of ecosystem services (ES) provided by nature, in a bid to highlight…
Community Reserves (CRs), or protected areas managed by indigenous communities, are a useful instrument to balance conservation priorities and livelihood requirements of the communities, finds a study, which examines the…
Walking on the shores of Elliot's beach in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, with an 18-member-group of children is naturalist, educator and activist, Yuvan Aves. He asks them, “Oh! So, this is…
On a January evening, standing on the precincts of the ancient Shree Dattatraya Temple, about 200 metres from the Kajli river in Maharashtra, 50-year-old Sidharth Kabnoorkar of Kondgaon-Sakharpa village told…
India's finance minister has announced two major programmes for mangrove plantation and wetlands conservation in the country's latest annual budget, drawing a mixed response among the conservation academics who welcomed…
Wetlands, which connect land and water are among the planet’s most productive and diverse habitats. They play a significant role in shaping our biosphere. Wetlands in the coastal state of…
“Nobody wishes to be a killer. To be held responsible for any being’s death can be traumatising. Let alone an elephant, even the death of a dog, a goat or…
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…
N. S. Jodha’s pioneering work on Commons in 1986 alerted us to the poor’s dependency on these resources. When the commons degrade, the poor suffers the most. However, we knew…
As fragmentation of forests, commercial plantations and uncertain weather conditions threaten the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve on the Western Ghats highlands in southern India, a community of indigenous honey harvesters say…
“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…
The Konkan region, along India’s west coast, has been a tourist attraction for several years now. Nestled between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea, this region has beaches, waterfalls,…
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…
Namdapha National Park in Arunachal Pradesh is a vast swathe of evergreen forest in the Himalayas, home to elusive clouded leopards, majestic tigers, charismatic hornbills, mystical giant squirrels, enchanting butterflies…
At an altitude of 3,900 metres, in the mountainous Himachal Pradesh, thin Bhoj trees (Himalayan birch or Betula utilus), dominate the landscape, an area known locally as Tapa-phraun (tapa meaning…
A model for an effective melange of mangrove conservation and development has emerged in a new study along the coast of the western state of Gujarat in India, which offers…
