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…
Northeast India is home to more than 200 tribes. For the centuries before the government declared forests as ‘protected’, these were the communities that took care of these biodiversity hotspots.…
Three decades ago, in 1992, the Constitution 73rd (on Panchayat Raj) and 74th Amendment Acts (on Nagarpalika or urban local bodies) were enacted. These were the first definitive steps to…
This summer it will be thirty years since the Rio Earth Summit. Unlike the earlier decadal anniversaries, this year the United Nations is not celebrating an event to mark the…
About three years ago, the silence of a quiet evening was broken for Dinesh Das as an adult male wild elephant entered the courtyard of his tin-roofed house in Rani,…
In the mountainous district of Wayanad in Kerala, the Meenangadi grama panchayat has launched a process for turning their area carbon neutral. The measures, planned and implemented by the local…
At a time when India’s standing forests are under threat – with 14 percent of the country’s tree cover being lost in 2019-20 alone, according to Washington-based Global Forest Watch -…
Located in Amarpur block of district Dindori in Madhya Pradesh, Lalpur village is widely divided into two hamlets, Banwasi Tola and Muqaddam Tola. While Banwasi Tola depends on poultry as…
Many things signal the imbalance of the natural world. For Tokugha Sumi, a school headmaster, a village council member and the son of the headman of Sapotami village in Nagaland,…
While the world as we know it has changed, following the coronavirus pandemic, what hasn’t changed is starting the new year with hope and optimism. Even as we approach 2022…
On Monday, the Indian government referred the Biological Diversity Act Amendment Bill (2021) to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC). The Bill was developed to amend certain provisions of the Biological…
Located in the West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh, the 100 square kilometre Sessa Orchid Sanctuary is home to more than 200 species of orchids including several endemic and rare…
All the children and men in a village taking a day off once a year to go fishing together may sound like a tale from bygone days, but this Kashmir…
"Pristine wilderness" — a natural zone free of people — as a conservation idea is an erroneous construct, a new study says. It fails to reflect the reality of how…
