Habitat Fragmentation News

The call of the western hoolock gibbon, a series of whoops, hoots and tones that rise in a crescendo, is background music in the villages of Meghalaya. Mornings begin with this…

Standing in the middle of a grassy hill, Thorthey Gooden looked around. The grass was short, just an inch long – like a lawn drying out in the summer. In…

One of the most biodiverse regions of the Western Ghats, the Nilgiris (the blue mountains) comprise a range of ecosystems including dry deciduous forests at its base, dense evergreen forests…

Roughness of the terrain is an essential factor driving tiger gene flow in the northern Western Ghats as well as in Central India, finds a new study. Additionally, in both…

Already struggling with the loss and fragmentation of its habitat, the Endangered species of the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) will be faced with further “heavy loss” in its habitat over…

Carnivores of the wild have always fascinated the human race. Worldwide, extensive efforts have been made and large fortunes spent to revive the number of some of the top predators…

As communities in the Western Ghats prepare for the national elections, the Munnar-Devikulam region and its fragile ecology are turning hot subjects of political debate not only in Idukki constituency…

A novel approach by Indian scientists to assess the water and ecological footprints in Kali river basin in the Western Ghats of peninsular India has revealed declining native vegetation in…

Land acquisition for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream project, the bullet train, is far from over, but just ahead of India’s parliamentary elections the project has now received the Coastal Regulation…

Imagine your home, a vast open space with gentle hillocks, grassy fields and massive boulders, is slowly encroached upon by a growing city, hungry for land. The hills are levelled,…

A compilation of harrier roosts in India suggests that the wintering populations of these migrant birds of prey have declined between 1985 and 2015. “Harrier roost counts have shown a…

Very few tropical forests around the world enjoy uninterrupted contiguity. Most are divided into uneven, small fragments, cut off from each other, their boundaries marked by roads or farms. But as…

With forest cover projected to shrink in the elephant landscape of northeast India, conservationists and a handful of growers of the iconic Assam and Darjeeling teas are experimenting with a…

After being criticised by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) for failing to finalise the ecologically sensitive area (ESA) in the Western Ghats region, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate…

Often a defining feature of any landscape, a “boundary” as perceived by humans, is almost never seen as a limit by other species. On the other hand, a road or…

The much-publicised “bullet train” is estimated to speed through the Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor in about two hours. But its development is cutting through decades of work by Mother Nature and its…

As more and more elephant habitats are falling under the ever-growing influence of humans, elephants are often coming into contact with people, whether they are passing through human-inhabited landscapes, or…

The memorial in the middle of the farm reads: ‘Chetan Dadarao Khobragade. Birth: 8/8/1995. Death: 13/5/2018’. It wasn’t an age to die. It wasn’t a way to die. Death probably…

The arrival of monsoon rains in India is an annual milestone for the country. The blustery winds, loaded skies and torrential rains are signs of a good year not just…

The whole genome of the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris), India’s national animal, has been decoded for the first time in a bid to understand its natural history and…