The picturesque Munnar in Kerala, with its lush green tea gardens carpet rolling hills, sits at the south of biodiversity hotspot that is the Western Ghats. Coffee and cardamom plantations…
In conservation practice, how are protected areas identified and delineated? The first step in this is to be able to describe a protected area. According to the International Union for…
At the break of dawn in Taplejung in eastern Nepal, as a rooster crows, two men grab their slingshots and head out to work. They have a long day ahead…
Wild boars resurfaced in Kashmir after 30 years, in 2013, and their number has been growing ever since, causing concern among the local residents and wildlife experts. Although an official…
Crop raids by wild animals are increasing in Sri Lanka, and with them, the human-animal conflicts and related discourse. But a fresh debate on wildlife exploitation has arisen in the…
In September 2011, a team of researchers from the Institute of Mountain Environment (IME), University of Jammu, found a pair of jackals dead on the Jammu-Poonch national highway. “Sadly, the…
Five decades ago, findings of the first tiger census set alarm bells ringing in the government. The count of tigers had plummeted to 1,827, which was a sharp decline from…
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…
Cautioning against the “weakening” of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, India’s first and foremost legislation to protect the country’s wildlife, MK Ranjitsinh Jhala, one of the architects of the legislation,…
Fencing is a key conflict mitigation strategy in the Mysore Elephant Reserve in Karnataka, which sees regular cases of human-elephant conflict. Putting up fencing accounts for a significant proportion of…
After marathon negotiations and a clutch of protests, including a “die-in” by global youth and a walk-out by developing countries over a funding stalemate, nearly 200 nations struck a historic…
The 18th and 19th centuries' Sri Lanka saw many British naturalists studying the island’s rich biodiversity. They also contributed to profiling the same. One of them, W.W.A. Phillips, a tea…
Its call is hard to miss. A series of high-pitched and staccato chirrups reverberate through the dense forests where it is found. Follow the sound and you might spot the…
The tiger population in Nepal nearly tripled over the past 12 years. As part of global efforts to double the wild tiger population, the country's target was to have 250…
The expert appraisal committee of the Indian Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has recommended the grant of environmental and Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) clearance for a big infrastructure…
On a September morning in 2019, the 240 residents of the small and picturesque Murlen village in the Champhai district in Mizoram, were in for a surprise. Amit Kumar Bal,…
Fifty years after the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 came into existence, raising hope that human-animal conflicts would reduce and poachers who were decimating our forest and rivers of their animal…
On September 17, India will wake up to welcome African cheetahs flying 11 hours non-stop, from Namibia, in a customised aircraft. A forest patch in central India is at the…
Early morning on May 25, a Tata Sumo ‘maxi cab’ – an SUV commonly used for long distance travel across Mizoram – was stopped at the Khankawn police check gate…
In 2020, zoologist Bivek Gautam and members of his team were exploring the forests of eastern Nepal on an expedition to look for the Himalayan salamander (Tylototriton himalayanus). That's when…