In protected areas, artificial light at night can affect wildlife in several ways, potentially changing where animals live and move, how they navigate, their reproductive behaviour and interactions between predators and prey.
A new study examines how artificial light at night (ALAN), including the diffuse glow produced when artificial light scatters in the atmosphere, affects the night-time environments of protected areas in Kerala’s Western Ghats.
The study not only investigates illumination within protected areas but also how surrounding human settlements, roads, places of worship, tourism facilities and other activity centres may contribute to light pollution.
The researchers assessed 21 protected areas, using satellite-derived night-time light data from 2024 and infrastructure information from OpenStreetMap. The study mentions that these protected areas are close to human habitation, exposing them to ALAN. They examined light exposure within protected areas and in five surrounding distance zones: 0-2 km, 2-5 km, 5-10 km, 10-20 km and 20-30 km.
Light levels varied considerably between reserves studied, with Periyar Tiger Reserve West recording the highest average and maximum light levels measured by satellite data.
One of the main takeaways is that within protected areas, the density of places of worship was most strongly associated with light levels. “We found ALAN to be closely related to places of worship with high levels of artificial light and illumination at night,” informs Haripriya S., the lead author of the study. In the surrounding areas, however, road density and the density of places of interest, such as activity centres, were the main predictors of light levels, suggesting that the sources associated with light pollution differ by location.
Distance also mattered: Light levels were higher in areas more than 5 km from protected area boundaries. The study found the highest contribution of light in the 10-20 km zone, followed by the 20-30 km zone, where the contribution was statistically similar. This indicates that light affecting protected areas does not come only from nearby sources. Light from across the wider landscape also adds to the overall exposure.
Since artificial light pollution, which is a less studied area, can potentially affect animal behaviour and can adversely impact the ecosystem, the author says she wishes to look further into the subject in the future, adding to the already existing literature.
Banner image: Representative image of a road lit up at night by Mayur Patel via Pexels.
Species File: Exploring India’s biodiversity, one species at a time.
Decades after disappearing from Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, the gaur or Indian bison made a comeback following conservation efforts, according to media reports. In 2011-12, a herd of 40 gaur were reintroduced from Kanha Tiger Reserve, and today, Bandhavgarh’s gaur population stands at over 220.
The gaur (Bos gaurus) is the world’s largest wild bovine. Bulls can grow up to two metres in height, and weigh about 1,500 kg — as much as a car! Males have dark, almost black coats, while females are a lighter reddish-brown. Both have upward-curving horns and a shoulder hump, most prominent in adult males.
Despite their size, gaur are shy animals, living in small herds often led by a matriarch. They graze and browse on grasses, bamboo, and leaves, thus dispersing seeds, tilling the soil and maintaining ecosystem balance. They are also prey for animals like tigers, leopards, and the dholes.
Gaur inhabit evergreen and deciduous forests across the Western Ghats and central and northeastern India, and are the state animals of Goa and Bihar. They also occur in Nepal, Bhutan, China and parts of Southeast Asia. Their estimated global population is between 13,000 and 30,000, with about 85% in India.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Species categorises the gaur as ‘vulnerable’. In India, it receives the highest legal protection under Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
Habitat fragmentation and loss, mainly due to agriculture, the spread of invasive species and development, are their main threats. This pushes them towards farmlands and closer to human habitations, increasing risk of conflict. In places like Niligiris and Kodagu, gaurs are adapting by becoming nocturnal to avoid human interactions, whereas in places like Coonoor and Kotagiri, where tea estates offer less cover than coffee plantations, they have overcome their shy nature to coexist with humans all times of the day.
In a story that Mongabay-India published in 2025, T. Ramesh, a senior scientist at the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History, said: “Today, most of grasslands have been taken over by invasive species, leaving little for the gaur to feed on. This forces them to move into interface areas or zones shared by both humans and wildlife, leading to conflicts.”
Read more about how the shrinking grasslands of Bandipur are affecting gaur, living alongside gaurs, and why gaurs are moving out of forests.
Banner image: A gaur or Indian bison. Image by Pranav Chaugule via Pexels.
A 19-month cheetah died from pellet wounds on October 27 at a veterinary facility in Jabalpur. The male cub was the offspring of Nirva, a South African cheetah brought to India under Project Cheetah, India’s effort to reintroduce the species decades after it was declared extinct in the country.
Following the death of the cheetah, KNG22, the Union government has deputed a team comprising the Inspector General of Forests, National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), the Additional Director of the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) and the Regional Deputy Director of WCCB to investigate the incident on the ground. The Madhya Pradesh government has also constituted a Special Task Force (STF) with forest and police officers, to investigate the death.
KNG22, born in India to six-year-old Nirva, was found injured on October 25 in the territorial forests of Morena, outside the protected area of Kuno National Park.
The Madhya Pradesh Forest Department found the cheetah in Compartment No. 748 in the Sheopur Territorial Forest Division and provided intensive veterinary care and emergency surgery at the veterinary facility in Jabalpur.
An initial X-ray and a subsequent CT scan at the Department of Veterinary Surgery and Radiology, NDVSU, Jabalpur, revealed multiple foreign bodies that had damaged the cheetah’s internal organs, musculoskeletal system and nervous system. During emergency surgery, five firearm pellets were recovered from his body.
“Despite the medical intervention, the cheetah succumbed to its injuries on 27 October 2026,” read a press note from Sameeta Rajora, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and Chief Wildlife Warden, Madhya Pradesh.
Mongabay-India had earlier reported on the challenges facing Project Cheetah as young males begin exploring the wild. In a separate incident, media reports said that two cheetahs entered a cattle shed in Bamori village in Sheopur district early on the morning of October 25, the same day KNG22 was attacked. They killed two calves while their owner slept just metres away, spreading panic among villagers.
With KNG22’s death, India’s cheetah population stands at 58, comprising 52 cheetahs in Kuno National Park, four in Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary and two in Veerangana Durgavati Tiger Reserve (VDTR), according to the press note.
Banner image: A male cheetah in South Africa. KNG22 was an India-born male cub of six-year-old South African cheetah Nirva, who was brought to India under Project Cheetah. Representative image courtesy of AfricanConservation via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Species File: Exploring India’s biodiversity, one species at a time.
With their flattened bodies and wing-like fins, rays are a striking sight when they glide in ocean waters. But many rays face an uncertain future: a recent study found that most Important Shark and Ray Areas (ISRAs) in Indian waters along the Bay of Bengal fall outside marine protected areas, leaving critical breeding and nursery habitats vulnerable.
Rays are cartilaginous fish closely related to sharks. Found worldwide, they are mostly marine, though a few species live in freshwater lakes and rivers. Most ray species are benthic (dwelling on the ocean floor), while a few live in the open ocean. Depending on the species, they feed on zooplankton, krill, fish, molluscs, worms, crustaceans, and marine mammals, thereby shaping seabed communities and cycling nutrients.
There are diverse groups of rays, ranging from manta rays (the largest type, with some growing as wide as a minibus) to stingrays, which have whip-like venomous tails. Nearly all rays have flattened, disc-shaped bodies with wing-like pectoral fins.
A unique lineage is the rhino rays (order Rhinopristiformes), which have flattened, ray-like bodies but shark-like tails and pointed snouts. These comprise 68 species of saw-fishes, wedgefishes, giant guitar-fishes, guitarfishes and banjo rays.
According to the IUCN Red List, rhino rays are the world’s most threatened marine fish, with over 70% of assessed species considered threatened, and nearly half critically endangered. About 23 rhino ray species are protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) under Appendices I and II, which completely bans and strictly regulates trade, respectively. In India, about 15 species of rhino rays, such as the bottlenose wedgefish (Rhynchobatus australiae) and bowmouth guitarfish (Rhina ancylostoma), are listed in Schedule I of India’s Wildlife Protection Amendment Act 2022, offering the highest level of protection.
Fisheries are the largest threat to rhino rays. Like other sharks and rays, they grow slowly and produce few offspring, making it hard for populations to recover from overfishing. Once targeted primarily for their fins, they are now frequently caught as bycatch. Fins are exported for international markets, and meat is consumed locally.
Ray skins have also recently become popular in commercial trade. In an article published in Mongabay-India in 2025, Rima Jabado, chair of the IUCN Shark Specialist Group, said: “This is really concerning because these large rays, which are skinned, are coastal and they are being targeted in many countries not for their meat but specifically for their skin.”
Read more about how local ecological knowledge is aiding rhino ray conservation, why key shark and ray habitats in India remain unprotected, and how social media can help track shark and ray consumption.
Banner image: A manta ray. Image by Svetlana Obysova via Pexels.
Nepal, which suffered a catastrophic debris flow and flash flood on August 26, is slated to receive $21.6 million from the United Nations’ Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD).
The decision to “provisionally” release the funds was finalised during an “extraordinary meeting” convened by the Fund’s board on October 22. Nepal will still need to apply for this funding, and the Board will consider the request at its next meeting, the tenth FRLD Board meeting, this December.
“Following Nepal’s formal letter on August 31, 2026 requesting support from the Fund, the FRLD Board commenced to assess available options. Backed by strong solidarity from the whole Board, intensive consultations were held throughout September and October, culminating in today’s extraordinary Board meeting, in accordance with the Board’s Rules of Procedure,” an FRLD press statement said.
The FRLD was constituted in 2023 with the specific purpose of providing rapid financial support to developing countries struggling with the economic and non-economic losses and damages associated with climate-driven extreme weather events.
The demand by developing countries for a funding facility for losses and damages had been simmering at the climate Conference of Parties (COP) meetings for decades. The decision to provisionally release funding to Nepal comes ahead of the COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, scheduled to take place from November 9 to November 20.
Climate change was “a destabilising factor” in the Nepal flash flood, according to a report by the World Weather Attribution. The trigger was the rapid collapse of a 2-square-kilometre wall of rock and glacier ice, but “warming and permafrost degradation likely weakened the source rock wall by increasing bedrock temperatures and thawing ice within fractures,” said the WWA which conducts rapid attribution studies to quantify how climate change influences the intensity and likelihood of an extreme weather event.
About 1,300 people – including hundreds of Indian pilgrims – died in the Nepal floods. Damages were estimated to be up to $2.69 billion. The Nepal government told the FRLD that the initial cost of recovery and reconstruction would cost $4.71 billion.
“The Loss and Damage Fund took a historic first step by responding to Nepal, but this cannot be a one-off,” said Harjeet Singh, Global Convenor of the Fill the Fund campaign, in a statement. “No country should have to endure a catastrophe and wait seven weeks, through historic letters and relentless pressure, just to unlock the Fund’s first-ever emergency meeting. We must set up a permanent rapid-response system that moves support in days, not months.”
Banner image: Residents pull a zipline to help people commute across the Trishuli river in the aftermath of flash floods at Bidur in Nuwakot district, Nepal in September 2026. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
New research from the Centre for Wildlife Studies evaluated changing fire regimes in wildlife reserves across three Indian landscapes, finding that burned area rose most steeply in the Eastern Ghats between 2002 and 2022, at 9.3% per year.
The rising fires in the Eastern Ghats show that it has a more fire-prone combination of vegetation, climate, and repeated human ignition than the Western Ghats, while Central India sits in between.
The study evaluated roughly 20,000 square kilometres of protected forest land across 13 reserves. Both human and climate factors explained between 21 and 77% of annual fire activity across individual reserves, with drought and community fire use both playing major, but regionally varying roles.
A region- and reserve-specific deconstruction of forest fires is essential to understanding how different rainfall, temperature, and land use regimes, as well as population densities, affect fire occurrence, the researchers argue.
For example, high human population density was strongly associated with more frequent fires in Kawal Wildlife Sanctuary (Telangana) and Nagarjunasagar-Srisailam Tiger Reserve (Andhra Pradesh), but in Nagarahole and Bandipur National Parks (Karnataka), similar conditions were linked with fewer fires.
“Various factors could be contributing to this paradoxical trend in burned areas in India, including forest management, land-use change, changes in fire ignitions, anthropogenic climate change and natural climate variability,” the study says.
Using satellite-derived burned-area data from NASA’s MODIS sensor, the study found that burned area in the Western Ghats declined by 10.8% per year. It suggests that local factors, including wetter conditions and changing land use, may be offsetting drought- or human-driven fire pressure. The Western Ghats had a fire-return interval of 92 years (the average number of years between successive fires in the same place), compared with 31 years in Central India and 14 years in the Eastern Ghats.
Intensifying fires in the Eastern Ghats are driving the growth of fire resistant grasses like Cymbopogon “and creating regeneration challenges for native trees,” while too little fire in parts of the Western Ghats “risks allowing woody plants to encroach on the open grasslands that support herbivores,” a press release of the study says.
“Wildfires are ubiquitous across various eco-regions of India. However, each region is characterised by variation in trends, drivers, and ecological challenges. Integrated fire management that accounts for climate, vegetation, and human factors is important for fire management and policy in Indian ecosystems,” Narendran Kodandapani, lead author of the study, said.
Banner image: A wildfire in Bandipur National Park, Karnataka, in 2019. Image by NaveenNkadalaveni via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Species File: Exploring India’s biodiversity, one species at a time.
A creature of the open grasslands, where there’s nowhere to hide, the blackbuck’s evolutionary survival trick is endurance — it can sprint incredibly fast, sometimes even fast enough to have once outrun the Asiatic cheetah when it still prevailed in India.
The blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra) is the sole living member of its genus.
In a 2025 story published in Mongabay-India, Mihir Godbole, founder of The Grasslands Trust-India, said: “Blackbucks … are key indicators that grassland species cannot do well in any other habitats.”
Female blackbucks are light brown and live in herds, sometimes led by a mature male. Younger males live in bachelor groups until they mature, at which point they establish their own territories, develop a black-brown coat, and grow corkscrewed horns. During mating season, males form display territories called leks, leaping and calling to attract females.
Once spread across the Indian subcontinent, blackbuck populations were decimated by trophy hunting under British rule. The species is now extinct in the wild in Pakistan and Bangladesh and survives in small protected pockets in Nepal, while the majority live in India.
A 2016 estimate put the Indian population at roughly 35,000. They live in the open grassland habitats and are found across 13 states, with strongholds in Velavadar, Tal Chhapar, Point Calimere, and Karnataka’s Ranebennur and Jayamangali reserves.
The IUCN lists the blackbuck as least concern, indicating that its population is widespread and abundant. In India, it’s protected under Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, offering it the highest protection from hunting, poaching and trading. It is the state animal of Punjab, Haryana, and Andhra Pradesh, and is considered sacred by the Bishnoi community of western Rajasthan.
Habitat loss is the main threat to the blackbuck, as grasslands have historically been dismissed as “wastelands” and converted for agriculture or infrastructure projects, or encroached by invasive plants. Feral dogs are another growing danger — in Haryana’s Hisar district alone, over 360 blackbuck were killed by dogs between 2016 and 2020.
Read more about blackbucks outside protected reserves, threats to blackbucks from feral dogs, and community conservation of blackbucks in Odisha.
Banner image: Male blackbucks fight at Sagareshwar Wildlife Sanctuary. Image by Inside Indian Jungle via Flickr (CC PDM 1.0).
Are invasive plants better at competing with species in places they invade than species in their native range? A paper investigated this using Erigeron canadensis, commonly known as Canadian horseweed, to find that plants from non-native populations had 19.2% higher competitive ability than those from native populations.
In the study, that advantage was evident across two watering conditions — watered and drought. Although drought reduced competitive ability overall by 12.9%, the difference between native and non-native populations was not significant.
Canadian horseweed is native to North and Central America that has spread widely across Europe, Asia and other regions. In some introduced areas, it can suppress other plant species and reduce local plant diversity.
The researchers conducted a large glasshouse experiment involving plants from 100 native and 165 non-native populations of Erigeron canadensis. They grew the plants under different conditions, including adequate water and drought, and tested how they performed when growing alone, alongside individuals of their own species, and alongside other plant species.
The paper suggests that the competitive advantage evolved independently in different regions. Genetic analyses identified four clusters, but increased competitive ability was evident in two. The result suggests that similar evolutionary changes can emerge independently rather than being explained solely by the spread of one already competitive lineage.
One of the crucial findings was that the advantage was associated with interactions with other species, rather than competition between individuals of the same species. Non-native plants showed 28.4% greater competitive tolerance and 38% greater competitive suppression under interspecific competition. These differences were not found under intraspecific competition. In other words, the advantage was specifically associated with competing against other plant species, not with competing against members of their own species.
The findings suggest that if non-native populations attain greater competitive ability, they may increasingly suppress other plants and contribute to reduced native plant diversity. The ecological impacts of an invasive species therefore may not remain constant after introduction.
The paper, however, cautions that it remains uncertain what drives the competitive ability and whether it is a general response because “the evidence is largely based on studies with limited sampling, inadequate consideration of population co-ancestry, and oversimplified estimates of competitive ability”.
Banner image: Canadian horseweed or Erigeron canadensis photographed in North America. Image by Aaron Volkening via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
