Bera in the Pali district of Rajasthan is often nicknamed ‘Leopard Country’. Widely regarded as being home to one of the highest densities of leopards found anywhere, the otherwise shy…
High up in the majestic hills of India’s northeastern state of Meghalaya lies an elusive and unusual carnivore: a pitcher plant. The species is known popularly as ‘monkey cups’ because…
Wildlife conflict is the flavour of the season. Almost everyday, we are exposed to scenes of the forest department struggling to handle jeering, stone-throwing, and hooting mobs while managing an…
For centuries, the trees in Oran, or sacred grove, near the Samvata village in Rajasthan’s Jaisalmer, have stood tall and untouched. Not a branch was cut, “not even for datoon (twig to clean…
“Forests are protected areas in name only. Sometimes we see better protection of biodiversity in the adjacent agricultural lands,” said C.S. Saneesh, a research fellow at Spatial Interaction Ecology Research…
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic caused by a zoonotic virus SARS-CoV-2, experts warn that more such situations are imminent in the future, unless humans coexist with the environment, and…
Bhojdari, in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, is a village in the rain-shadow region of the Western Ghats; it is in the upper catchment and has no river, dam or canal…
Protecting natural forests and wildlife has been a way of life for indigenous communities inside Similipal Biosphere in Odisha. Their efforts have been recognised a few years ago under the…
A thick, orange-yellow bill with a slightly longer lower mandible (jaw) is one of the most striking features of the Indian skimmer (Rynchops albicollis). This bird with pointed black wings…
Twenty-three-year-old Radheshyam Pemani Bishnoi in western Rajasthan is one of the fortunate few who has seen the critically endangered great Indian bustard (GIB) in the wild. But it was not…
As the sun moved above the horizon dividing the sky and sea, five boats approached the coast at Sana Nolia Nuagaon, a fishing village in Ganjam district of eastern Indian…
The eastern Indian state of Odisha is known worldwide for seasonally hosting olive ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea) en masse as they visit the seashore along the Bay of Bengal…
“A tiger was here…and it was not very long ago,” exclaimed Dharm Singh Gurjar looking at pugmarks on the ground, just a kilometre away from village Khohara, on the outskirts…
Farida Sheikh remembers her house in the slums in Ahmedabad feeling like a furnace, where summer temperatures have reached up to 50 degrees Celsius. But for the last four years,…
For the last decade, the southeast coast of India has been battered by weather extremities ranging from tsunamis, storms, floods to droughts. The devastation caused by tsunamis led to the…
Pinky Alawa and Sapna Rawat cautiously approach a woman drawing water from a hand-pump in the hilly part of central India, in Alirajpur district in Madhya Pradesh. The pump is…
For half a century, Tulasi Gowda’s life revolved around the saplings that she nurtured with much care and love at the Agasur nursery of the forest department as part of…
Reefs do not come to mind when one thinks of India’s coastline as coral reef establishments are limited to the waters around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Palk Bay…
With the help of a bamboo pole, Rajesh Raikwad expertly navigates his kishti, a tapered flat-bottomed boat made of iron and painted blue and green, in the Kusum Sagar talaab…
When newly-elected Member of Parliament from the east Indian state of Odisha, Pramila Bisoyi spoke in the House in her mother-tongue Odia, it was the subject of many jibes. The…