For the past 18 months, the residents of the Sundarbans region in eastern India have been combating the threefold challenges of COVID-19 (a health emergency), cyclones (natural calamities) and conservation…
Beneath the current crisis that is brewing in the Lakshadweep, there is another unspoken crisis unfolding that threatens the very habitability of the islands, and calls into question the fevered…
Following several media reports published recently, a number of Right to Information (RTI) applications have been filed seeking information on various aspects of the Niti Aayog's development plans for Little…
A 58-page, undated “vision document” for the “sustainable development” of the Little Andaman Island in the Bay of Bengal was produced by the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog,…
German herpetologist Frank Glaw has helped describe over 200 new species from Madagascar. But the most recent one is special: Brookesia nana is a chameleon that may be the smallest reptile…
Coral reefs feature prominently in today's climate change discourse. Studies have shown how warming oceans worldwide cause corals to bleach: they lose the algae that give them their colours, become…
It was October 2013. Armed with special permission, researcher Dinal Samarasinghe was peering at preserved animal specimens at Kolkata's Zoological Survey of India. While the ZSI is a repository of…
The Indian part of the Sundarbans, the vast mangrove forest in the Bay of Bengal, consists of 102 islands, about half of them inhabited. That may not be the case…
The invasive Indian bullfrog, native to the Indian subcontinent, is currently an invasive species in the Andaman archipelago in the Bay of Bengal. Yet, little is known about the impact…
Restoration of seabird populations can help quicker recovery of reefs following bleaching events, finds a study on coral reefs around the Chagos archipelago in the central Indian Ocean, which were…
Among the jagged rocks, sinkholes and caves carved out of limestone, Baratang in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands also houses a species-rich, diverse forest that is quite different from the…
The Andaman & Nicobar islands, one of the Union Territories of India, are a group of islands between the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal. The islands receive over 3000…
Mangrove ecosystem conservationist Anil Mistry could have tread the path his predecessors and peers had taken. A path that led to chopping off forests and killing animals for fast cash,…
This is the second article in a three-part series based on Mongabay-India's travel to the Indian Sundarbans. Part One is about the highly successful dairy cooperatives in the area. Part Three sheds…
Most households in South Asia would have at some point given shelter to the common house gecko Hemidactylus frenatus. This pale colourless reptile inhabiting the corners of our ceilings, has…
What started off as a holiday in the Andamans for educators Supriya Singh and Katarina Roncevic, has turned into a two-country project to train teachers, students and parents on global…
Researchers have identified an entirely new subspecies of bamboo bat - characterised by distinctive flattened skulls - from the Andaman archipelago, that differs from other members of its species in…
Far removed from the mainland, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal support and nurture over a thousand species of animals that are exclusive to this part…
In December 2004, an unexpected wall of water swept across the Indian Ocean, leading to death and devastation across several countries, including the slender sliver of land in Bay of…
Adding to the over 13,000 species of ants that are known so far across the world, a team of researchers has discovered and documented two new endemic ant species Tetramorium…