It’s a cloudy Saturday evening at Athivana estate in Srimangala in Kodagu, Karnataka. The forest department’s Rapid Response Team (RRT) is ready to chase three elephant cows that have entered…
“What preparations should one make for children before a cyclone strikes?” asked Durga, a volunteer at a community radio station in the coastal village of Vizhuthamavadi, roughly 320 kilometres (km)…
The shola sky islands are a biologist’s delight. Surrounded by lowlands, these highest reaches of Western Ghats in peninsular India host radically different habitats and species. Covered in montane evergreen…
For sexagenarian Madoo Bhai, the world has changed beyond recognition since he was a child. He has spent his life in Chikhalda, a small village along the banks of Narmada…
Kodagu, the small hilly district in Karnataka known as the coffee capital of India, is no stranger to heavy showers. Its area of 4,102 sq. km receives as much as…
In India’s IT capital Bengaluru, sprinkled within its concrete jungle, are shady peepal trees adorned with serpent stones, bells and sacred threads, standing majestically atop gated raised platforms. Often a…
Historical references reveal that a little over a 100 years ago, during the British rule in India, the forests of Uttar Pradesh’s Mirzapur area were home to rich wildlife, including…
The monsoon rains have arrived late this year in the verdant hills of Kodagu (Coorg) in Karnataka, the coffee capital of India. For some planters, it’s a mixed blessing. A…
“The most extreme thing about the ocean is its sheer, inconceivable size. In that enormous volume – the biggest habitat on earth – lives a kaleidoscope of animals, plants, microbes…
Fifty-six-year-old Seema Adgaonkar glides through swampy mangroves in ankle-deep muck. The fragrance of Avicennia marina (the grey mangrove), the most widely-spread mangrove species in Mumbai, makes the trail pleasant despite…
Last month, June 2019, the Indian government created its first ministry for fisheries. Although it clubs fishing together, rather oddly, with animal husbandry and dairy, the move fulfills a long-standing…
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…
Reports have come in that by 2020, about 21 major Indian cities would run out of ground water. But Chennai has fast-forwarded itself to 2020 already and has little or…
“People now prefer plastic for everything,” rued Ghulam Rasool Ganie, as he deftly worked on a wicker basket, at his residence in Sogman Lolab, some hundred kilometres north of Srinagar,…
When was the last time an insect fell in your soup? Or down your collar under a bright street lamp? Insects rarely land on window panes on a rainy night…
The call of the western hoolock gibbon, a series of whoops, hoots and tones that rise in a crescendo, is background music in the villages of Meghalaya. Mornings begin with this…
The indigenous people (adivasis) living around the Kodingamali hill in Koraput district of the state of Odisha have launched a fresh agitation against the Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC). Aggrieved by…
The shade of a tree gives a much-needed respite from the sweltering heat. While checking messages on the phone, you see a movement out of the corner of your eye.…
The Bonda people, scattered across 32 remote hilltop villages on the Kondakamberu mountain range of the Eastern Ghats in the Malkangiri district of Odisha, are one of the 13 particularly…
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…