The southern state of Tamil Nadu has recently declared Tamil Yeoman (Cirrochroa thais) as its state butterfly to symbolise its rich natural and cultural heritage, in a move aimed at…
Turn page 266, the last one of Voice of a Sentient Highland, and you would have transitioned through myriad emotions. Wonder, as author Godwin Vasanth Bosco's knowledge of the land…
Ironical as it may sound, the legacy of an India-born British hunter from India’s colonial past is now living on in the conservation efforts of a nature society, founded in…
Matriarch grandmas, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews: elephants, much like us, have complex social lives. But Asian elephants from southern India could be changing their social lives, to adapt to…
Since it was first detected in a small village in the Karnataka Western Ghats in 1957, the Kyasanur Forest Disease (KFD) or monkey fever has affected over 9000 people across…
It is noon and the scorching heat of Chennai’s sun hits across S. Punitha’s face. She has just filled her first pot for the day from a hand pump in…
Microscopic plastic particles and colourants have been detected inside the commercially important Asian green mussel Perna viridis from a fishing harbour in Chennai for the first time in a preliminary…
The black and white image of a beaming youth with a life-affirming smile adorns the nearly worn-out entrance of the wildlife range office located a little away from the famous…
Standing in the middle of a grassy hill, Thorthey Gooden looked around. The grass was short, just an inch long – like a lawn drying out in the summer. In…
Since the 2014 national elections, the capital city of Tamil Nadu has witnessed major environmental calamities, from the disastrous floods of December 2015 to the giant oil spill outside Kamarajar…
It is an era of rapid urban expansion that ignores sustainable urban planning principles until disaster strikes. The city of Chennai in Tamil Nadu is no exception to this rule.…
Age-old adversaries to ships, barnacles and green mussels have been thriving comfortably in the coastal waters of Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu, in the vicinity of India’s first indigenously built nuclear…
Despite being one of the oldest water-regulator structures in the world that is still functional, the Kallanai dam or the Grand Anicut looks almost empty with not much water to…
In Thiruvaiyaru, the famous village where Carnatic music legend Thyagaraja lived and died, river Kaveri looked almost dry and desolate. The subject of a never-ending water-sharing dispute between Tamil Nadu…
Transport corporations in India are gradually junking rickety old buses that spew blankets of thick black smoke, to make an ambitious and direct leap to cleaner and sophisticated electric buses.…
The narrow two-lane road from Nagapattinam to Thiruvarur is flanked by paddy fields, with palmyrah trees demarcating the road and the fields. Places such as Sikkal and Manjakkollai, though more…
The recent Madras High Court order to evict encroachers from the banks of water bodies in the Nilgiris came as a shot in the arm for the citizens of Coonoor,…
In a small fishing hamlet in Tamil Nadu, a community leader opens his smartphone and searches his contacts for “Map Saravanan” to make sure the number is saved correctly. Amused…
As India attempts to eliminate malaria over the next decade, researchers have for the first time unearthed presence of human malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum in wild bonnet and rhesus monkeys…
"When some visitors ask ‘how do the birds know this lake is full’, I simply tell them that I telephone the migratory birds and inform them,” said Ramesh mockingly as…