In Idukki district in Kerala, inside the Munnar Wildlife Division is the Pampadum Shola National Park. Its undulating terrain, filled with the shola grasslands and temperate forests trees, forms the…
Summer is the pilot car that the monsoon follows into the Indian peninsula from the Indian Ocean. Thus, Kerala, which is at the entry point for the southwest monsoon, is…
Cruising in a houseboat through the picturesque Vembanad Lake has been the symbol of tourism in Kerala around the world. But this symbol has incurred the wrath of traditional fishermen…
As the growing demand for natural rubber transforms Southeast Asia’s landscapes, scientists in India have warned against the unregulated expansion of rubber monocultures in seven northeastern states that together make…
K. Alagirisamy stands guarding the forest check post in Hasanur, Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve (STR). “I was the last one to spot the tiger- right here on the road,” he says,…
Kyasanur forest disease (KFD) is a tick-borne illness that was once restricted to the southern Indian state of Karnataka. It was first detected in the 1950s from Karnataka’s Shivamogga district,…
After Cyclone Ockhi caused damage and destruction in the south Kerala coast near the southwestern edge of the Indian peninsula, Friends of Marine Life (FML), an NGO working with coastal…
India has recorded a one percent jump (8,021 square km) in overall forest and tree cover between 2015 and 2017 despite population and livestock pressures, even as the green footprint…
Citizens of Kerala, the state that welcomes the southwest monsoon into the Indian peninsula, are not as confident in the recent years of the water flow in their rivers. Their…
Decades ago, water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) spread from its native ecosystem in Amazonia, Brazil, and became an invasive species in water bodies across the globe. It also reached India and…
At the southern tip of India’s Western Ghats, on the edge of a wet evergreen forest stands a tall copse of reed bamboo. Dotting the bamboo’s hollows are round, transparent…
If there is one material that finds immense use in our indoor and outdoor furnishings, besides wood, it is the cane. Sourced from a tall, climbing palm called the rattan,…
Naturalists in India have rediscovered a rare flowering plant — Arisaema translucens — after nearly 80 years. Botanist Edward Barnes first collected this plant in 1932 from the Nilgiri mountains in southern India. The plant,…