Thirty-one-year-old Nagarathna gingerly maneuvers a trolley-like contraption across the dairy shed with solar panel fixtures gleaming in the sun. The contraption – a solar-powered milking machine – saves Nagarathna, a…
After two consecutive years of incessant rains, floods and landslides in the month of August, the smallest district in Karnataka, Kodagu, was in for a surprise this year. The famous…
Extreme rainfall deficiencies were not the only causes of famines in semi-arid regions of southern India in the 18th to 20th centuries, according to research that blends paleoclimate reconstruction and…
Bengaluru, the fourth most populous metropolitan city in India, is a favoured market for real estate developers. This has, consequently, led to concerns about the city's environmental health. Several studies…
Arecanut and coconut plantations sweep across the landscape and eventually into forests that creep up the hills of the Western Ghats. At a distance, windmills perched on a hillock oversee…
One of the key targets of the first draft of the Global Biodiversity Framework published recently is to conserve at least 30% of global land and sea areas as protected…
Native to the Indian subcontinent, Russell’s vipers are highly venomous snakes and the major cause of mortalities and permanent disabilities each year in South Asia. Now, a new study, which…
Delhi recently launched its draft Master Plan 2041- a vision document for the city’s development over the next two decades.The draft plan envisages making Delhi environmentally sustainable, liveable, and economically…
By 2050, around 9.74 billion people are estimated to be inhabiting this planet and the requirement for food is expected to increase proportionately as well. To meet the ever-growing food demand…
It has been about 70 years since sandstone mining has been going on in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur district and there seems to be no respite for the area as the expert…
River Tillari originates at an altitude of 750 metres (2461 feet) on the gently west-tilted flatland at the Karnataka-Maharashtra border. It is dammed on the plateau and the water is…
Southern India was hit by severe drought from 2016 to 2018 arising from low rainfall during the northeast monsoon, which occurs during the winter. So severe was the impact that…
Since March 2020, scientists from the Institute of Natural History Education and Research (INHER), Pune have described seven new species of scorpions from the Western Ghats – six from the…
As Mangalore resident Spandana walked on to Padukere beach in the first week of April, a menacing sign restricting the entry of anyone connected with the marina project on to…
Morning walkers, residents of nearby residential complexes, vouch for the beauty and serenity of Jakkur Lake in Bengaluru and completely endorse and support the rejuvenation of the fairly large water…
In the Malnad region of Karnataka that covers the western and the eastern slopes of the Western Ghats, the king cobra is nothing short of a deity. Hooded cobras appear…
One morning in April 2020, early in the lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, I leaned over the terrace parapet of my home in Bengaluru, scanning the spreading branches of a…
Persistent, colder climates in the last Ice Age contributed to limiting the distribution of certain commercially and medicinally-important forest species such as cobra saffron (nagkesar) to smaller forest patches that…
India’s environment ministry has come out with a set of rules which facilitates any industrial project that starts in an ecologically sensitive coastal zone without required permissions, to compensate by…
During the monsoon season of 2011, H.M. Yeshwanth, a doctoral student studying insects, browsed the bushes of the thorny Acacia catechu plant in Hesaraghatta near Bengaluru, Karnataka and came across…