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…
Over the last decade alone, more than 100 frog species new to science have been discovered in India. One of them is the Kalinga cricket frog (Minervarya kalinga), a plain-looking…
Three decades ago, 65-year-old Jayamma had an opportunity to buy a small plot of land at Hosahalli, on the fringes of Bengaluru, where she worked as a tailor in a…
A nondescript village in Malavalli taluk in Mandya district of Karnataka, Dasanadoddi, is a little over 100 km from the capital city of Bengaluru. With narrow tarred roads snaking through…
Flanked by the Outer Ring Road, where unceasing traffic spews noxious fumes, and a concreted canal where heaps of plastics float amid sewage, the Hennur Lake biodiversity park in Bengaluru…
The blanket of pollutants that seems to have found permanence in the air of India’s cities is not just taking its toll on human health. Pollutants are causing behavioural changes,…
In 2008, Nandini N., a professor at the Department of Environmental Science at Bangalore University, started documenting Bengaluru’s biodiversity for its first People’s Biodiversity Register (PBR). She was a member…
When Ph.D. student Vaishali Bhaumik cut open specimens of emigrant butterflies as part of her research, she noticed that the abdomen of the female dispersing butterflies were chock full of…
Changes in key climatic factors — especially rainfall — have been observed over Karnataka, according to an assessment by the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNDMC). Some experts attribute…
In 2002-03, G. Krishna Prasad, a weekend farmer and director of the organic farmers’ collective, Sahaja Samrudha, spotted a plot growing ragi in Bengaluru’s Lavelle Road. Older Bengaluru residents like…
For the people of Kodagu, August could well be the cruelest month of the year. In the last three consecutive years, incessant rains in the first two weeks of August…
Ups and downs don’t seem to end for the farming community in Karnataka. After the COVID-19 associated lockdown caused severe losses to the farmers, whose produce got spoilt in the…