The mountainous Nilgiris district in Tamil Nadu is now witnessing an ecosystem collapse mainly due to extreme weather events. Floods that are happening almost every year are causing major landslides…
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…
Sankar grew up listening to stories of rain. For in Muthupet, where the 54-year-old’s family has been residing for about 250 years, it was the rainfall which nourished an extensive…
When it comes to taking crucial decisions, J. Innocent Divya, an administrative officer of the mountainous Nilgiris district in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, goes by the mantra…
According to legend, King Solomon had a brief encounter with a “valley of ants” and his admiration for them led him to value all life forms. The resilience of ants…
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…
A 15-year-old female elephant was found lying sick four kilometers inside the forests in Boluvampatti range in the Coimbatore forest division in Tamil Nadu on August 8. It's tough skin…
Cyclonic disturbances between April and May in the Bay of Bengal caused massive destruction in West Bengal and Bangladesh in the form of Amphan in May this year. However, they…
The long suffering residents of Chennai have been living with two dead rivers, the Adyar and the Cooum, flowing through the heart of their city. These two rivers meander sluggishly…
On July 1, what should have been a routine maintenance check in Unit 5 of the Thermal Power Station- 2 (TPS-2) of the NLC India Limited (NLCIL), formerly the Neyveli…
The Pichavaram mangroves in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, that had helped lessen the devastating impacts of the 2004 Asian tsunami in the region, capture and hold a…
Polker Kuttan, a 72-year-old Toda tribal from the Nilgiris, is like a local weather expert - he can predict the onset or delay of the seasonal rains and even the…
Esekki leans on his broad staff as he speaks, keeping a watchful eye on his flock of sheep to make sure they didn’t stray too far. “The grasslands used to…
The sun beat down mercilessly. Being in the vicinity of south India's highest peak, in one of the coldest months – December – made no difference. After a tiring morning…
Battling environmental challenges and protests, ecotourism operators in several parts of India, have called for building community resilience as they take stock of losses amid the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19)…
Then a range forest officer with Periyar Tiger Reserve (PTR) in Kerala, Raju K. Francis still remembers that distant afternoon in 1994, when he arrested elusive forest brigand Aruvi from…
Reefs do not come to mind when one thinks of India’s coastline as coral reef establishments are limited to the waters around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Palk Bay…
Effluent carrier of the Sivakasi-Virudhunagar-Toothukudi industrial belt in southern Tamil Nadu, Vaippar now looks almost like a river on a deathbed. Numerous chemical factories dot both banks of the east-flowing…
Venkatesh Kesav and his friends, equipped with gloves, spades, and dustbins, have a weekly ritual of cleaning a 10-acre pond in the Sholinganallur area in Chennai, the capital of Tamil…
Record high oceanic temperatures triggered an unprecedented global-scale coral bleaching event from 2014 to 2017, which was the longest-lasting and most severe. More than 75 percent of the world’s tropical…