Gopal Sarkar, a 54-year-old farmer from Jalpaiguri district in the northern part of West Bengal, faced difficulties cultivating vegetables this past winter. His one-hectare plot is covered by a 4-5…
Every January, coinciding with the winter solstice and the harvest festival of Sankranti, the village of Mathurapur in South 24 Parganas, West Bengal, gears up for an unsual fair. Known…
Certain species of elasmobranch, such as sharks, are among the most overfished species in the Indian seas. A new survey documenting their consumption in India suggests one group of stakeholders,…
The end of March marks the mahua flowering season in the dry forest regions of central Indian highlands and adjoining Chota Nagpur Plateau (CNP); the air becomes thick with the…
In a tiny village of Tardaha Kapasati, in West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas district, volunteers were handing out papers to the residents. The papers contained images of West Bengal’s state…
Researchers investigated knowledge of biodiversity, particularly non-timber forest products (NTFPs), among local urban residents in West Bengal and found that increasing local communities’ connectedness with nature is an important way to…
Earlier this year, on February 15, West Bengal forest department officials apprehended a middle-aged man as he was cycling from Patan beel, a wetland sprawling over more than 100 hectares,…
As you walk down this particular wide but cracked road in a West Bengal village, it is evident that something catastrophic has happened here. There are crumbling houses all around.…
Compared to a year ago, Sanjit Biswas now worries less about his profits from farming. A small farmer owning a one-acre farm at Hazarinagar village in Hanskhali block of Nadia…
The Dhapa landfill, a major unsegregated solid waste dumping ground in Kolkata, has been growing for over three decades, since 1987. It is set to be cleared by June 2024,…
A new study published in Scientific Reports has mapped priority areas in the Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve (SBR) that are highly suitable for mangrove conservation and restoration. The Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve…
Prasanjit Mandal, 30, lives in Farakka, West Bengal, and his traditional line of work is fishing. However, these days, he also drives an autorickshaw to make a living. At times,…
Asian elephants, despite needing 150 kilograms of wild fodder every day, are picky eaters, suggests a recent study in PLOS One by scientists from the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology…
Thirty-five-year-old Ramaprasad Maiti, a resident of a Sundarbans island, has moved houses 17 times in his lifetime as erosion tore them down and washed them into the river one by…
Heatwaves, floods, flash droughts and cyclones are increasingly becoming regular events in India. The cities facing such climate events have been experiencing high economic losses and loss of lives due…
A majestic and charismatic mega-herbivore, the one-horned rhino (Rhinoceros unicornis) now numbers around 4,034 individuals found only in the grasslands of India and Nepal, Due to significant human-induced pressures like…
A 700 to 800 metres stretch of mangroves to the west of Pakhiraloy ferry ghat on an island in the Indian Sundarbans, part of a plantation project in 2020, was…
Satellite images of the Sundarbans mangroves along the Bay of Bengal, that capture changes before and after tropical cyclones, are helping make sense of mangrove damage from extreme weather events…
In 2018, fishery scientist Ashim Nath, with the help of local fisher community, netted the hilsa fish along upstream and downstream locations on the Hooghly river on India’s east coast.…
Rows of grey cement blocks look like gravestones in an abandoned cemetery. The dilapidated single-storeyed house, adjacent to a field, seems like a setting for a horror film. Less…