Zebra loach a popular aquarium species is being “unsustainably fished” out of Western Ghats’ waters to grace fish tanks across the world, says a new study underscoring the execution of…
When cyclone Yaas hit on May 26, it inundated several coastal villages in the Sundarbans region in West Bengal. Jharkhali, a low-lying village in South 24 Parganas district of West…
Abha Toppo resides in Hatighisa village in Darjeeling district of North Bengal, around 20 kilometres from Siliguri city, the gateway to northeast India. Her village is a few metres away from…
Shilpa Gayen shudders to recall the moment when she almost lost her life after strong winds blowing in her village brought down her mud house on May 26, the day…
Degrading quality of natural water bodies and rivers, coupled with climate change impacts, could set the stage for alien (invasive) species to take root, multiply and alter aquatic flora and…
Disasters today are no more natural - with climate change knocking at our doors reminding us of our disrespectful actions towards nature, we are left to wonder which extreme event…
“You think anything will ever grow here again?” – asked Tapas Mondal (name changed to protect identity) while he stood beside a stream gushing with fresh water with hills and…
India’s environment ministry has come out with a set of rules which facilitates any industrial project that starts in an ecologically sensitive coastal zone without required permissions, to compensate by…
The World Bank estimates that 34.4 percent of India’s population is urban, marking a steady rise in city-dwellers over the past six decades. As the demand for land for housing…
Mosquito-like aquatic insects called chironomids are natural reservoirs of epidemic and pandemic-causing strains of cholera bacterium, a study by Indian and Israeli researchers has found. Monitoring and controlling the hardy…
When Super Cyclone Amphan hit 24 South Parganas district of West Bengal in May last year, it broke embankments, allowing seawater to directly enter the rice fields destroying the crop.…
Reconstruction of 700 years of the Brahmaputra river’s water flow in the monsoon season, based on tree-ring data, suggests that the transboundary river’s real flood risk is likely an underestimate…
The endangered Ganges river dolphin and species of threatened freshwater turtle and otter are wildlife “most at risk” from getting tangled up in waste fishing gear adrift in the transboundary…
Jamir Ali runs a tea-stall at Paschim Rajbati village, four kilometres from the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport on the outskirts of the eastern Indian metropolis of Kolkata. A…
Riverbank erosion along the Ganga is becoming a frequent affair in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district. However, this year, the erosion also took place in villages that hadn’t seen such erosion…
Earlier this year, on April 9, when a ship full of fly ash collapsed in river Hooghly near Kulpi in West Bengal’s South 24-Parganas area, a cloud of grey dust…
The Sundarbans mangrove ecosystem in India is evaluated as ‘endangered’ by a global team of researchers using the IUCN's Red List of Ecosystems framework. The clearing of mangroves dating back…
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…
Sankizahan in Kultali area of the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove ecosystem made of islands, rivers and creeks, used to be a village of fishermen who hunted on traditional and…
Around mid-April, when Siddik Mollah, a fisherman at a village called Boyarmari, located in the district of North 24 Parganas in West Bengal, found that day-by-day shrimps were growing unhindered…