In 1819, the British collector of Coimbatore, John Sullivan, was attracted by the Nilgiris mountains that he saw in his jurisdiction. Sullivan even built a home for his family, in…
Once firm in their base camps on the lower reaches of the mountains, alpine treelines in the Himalayas and Hengduan regions are now in a slow-motion race towards the mountaintops…
Early snow-melting triggers complex responses in alpine plant species, influencing traits like leaf composition and resource acquisition strategies, a recent study finds. The study analysed species’ response to experimentally induced…
In the Kumaon mountains in the central sector of Uttarakhand's Himalayas, a team of scientists from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Japan’s Niigata University have unearthed water droplets…
Last week I was in a group travelling in the Himalayas. Starting from the plains of Punjab, we travelled by road to an altitude of above 11,000 feet, to Chitkul,…
"Rainfed agriculture in India is a risky enterprise, owing to uncertainties in rainfall,” reads a World Bank article published in February 2023. More than half of India's net sown area…
It was a long day here, in Kachchh, when we were out in search of Gujarat’s indigenous breed of sheep, the Patanwadi. There are less than 5,000 sheep of this…
“We had to come to our homes many times in a day from the relief camp we were staying at to take care of our farm and livestock. Now, we…
David Attenborough once described the elusive manul, the world's grumpiest cat. If you were a grumpy cat, you’d probably want to avoid company, too. And what better place for solitude…
The Sherpa Indigenous community in Nepal has lived in the lap of the world’s tallest mountains for centuries. Ever since Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay and New Zealand climber Edmund Hillary…
The Spiti Valley of Himachal is a trans-Himalayan desert where people survive on only one farming season. The Spiti river is the lifeline for agricultural communities in this region. But…
Drawing attention to the restriction of elephant movement due to development and infrastructure barriers, scientists studying genetic differences between elephant populations in the country have expressed concern over genetic differences…
Thiophilus Khojol has been a farmer in Assam's Cachar district on the hill slopes along the Assam-Manipur border, for over 20 years. The district's pineapple production hit an all-time high…
On the outskirts of a bustling New Delhi, the quiet village of Mangar in Haryana has long held a secret in its caves: ancient paintings. Growing up grazing livestock in…
Aesthetically, they may not quite cut it, but these two-tiered sanitation structures, set against the sprawling cold deserts of the Indian Himalayas, have supplied organic manure to local communities for…
The first clear photographic record of two pheasant species in Arunachal Pradesh’s Upper Siang district has brought in a mixed bag of emotions among birding enthusiasts and researchers. The Himalayan…
"पहाड़ का पानी और पहाड़ की जवानी पहाड़ में नहीं रुकती " (the water of the mountains and the youth living in the mountains, never stay in mountains). This local…
Fourteen years after reports noting that India has two separate species of the gibbon - the hoolock gibbon and the eastern hoolock gibbon - a latest genetic analysis has now…
Madan Lal, a farmer from Bagtheru village in Himachal Pradesh's Bilaspur district, was hoping for a good return this year for his wheat crop sown last December. But with scanty…
An analysis of 119 years of rainfall measurements at different rain gauge stations across northeast India, has revealed a decreasing trend in summer rainfall since 1973, including in rainy Meghalaya,…