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…
The World Bank estimates that 34.4 percent of India’s population is urban, marking a steady rise in city-dwellers over the past six decades. As the demand for land for housing…
After a tiring search operation to locate a leopard in a crowded locality of Nashik city in Maharashtra, wildlife rescuers identified its location through CCTV footage of a residential apartment.…
Ramveer Tanwar, a 26-year-old engineer, gave up a cushy job to work on reviving wetlands in Greater Noida. As urbanisation and modern structures have taken over the region, there’s shrinking…
Mosquito-like aquatic insects called chironomids are natural reservoirs of epidemic and pandemic-causing strains of cholera bacterium, a study by Indian and Israeli researchers has found. Monitoring and controlling the hardy…
Kusum, 14, and Pushpa, 12, (both names changed) ran away from their home in Singrauli, Madhya Pradesh in 2019, as their family didn’t have enough food to survive after losing…
The word ‘hill forest’ often brings up an imagery of a tall cliff draped in dense greenery, rising from the plains, peaking high to vanish amidst the mist. Though that…
To a mind that’s taught to see vast swathes of land where no large trees but “mere” grass and shrubs grow as inconsequential, Hesaraghatta’s distinction as a unique habitat for…
A 60 percent rise in India’s leopard population has been recorded in 2018, compared to 2014, but there is one area in the country, the northeastern landscape, where its population…
Twelve-year-old Sarah vividly remembers the first stargazing trip her parents took her to, about 70 kilometers from Bengaluru, just for a glimpse of the comet Neowise. Her father, who proposed…
It’s not uncommon in India to see cattle grazing in farms and backyards, ruminating by the road, or even causing a minor inconvenience to vehicles. Replace cattle with herds of…
Sloth bears are the world's only bears built to eat ants. They love their occasional meat tidbits of course but thrive mostly on ants, insects, fruits and wild berries. Their…
It had been over 25 years since Neelamma N. Reddy went scouring for greens in Varthur lake. The lake then was a veritable buffet of greens and fish for her.…
On September 16, when Subhash Chandran, a scuba diver, along with four others, went for their first underwater clean-up post the lockdown at Rushikonda beach in Visakhapatnam, they found floating…
Of the insect world’s many architects, the termites are undoubtedly the reigning monarchs. The earthen mounds that these tiny insects construct out of soil, water and their own saliva, are…
