Uncategorized

Museum specimens, the Zoological Survey of India used to unlock morphological mysteries of the South Asian treeshrews. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT GUWAHATI Scientists from the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) have resolved longstanding taxonomic ambiguities surrounding South Asian treeshrews – small, insectivorous mammals often misidentified due to their superficial resemblance to squirrels. Drawing upon … Read more

A mother and child making observations in a garden. | Photo Credit: Getty Images Visakhapatnam is all set to join a global celebration of curiosity and conservation as the City Nature Challenge (CNC) 2025 kicks off from April 25 to 28. A worldwide citizen science event powered by the iNaturalist app, this initiative invites Nature … Read more

MLA and BEMUL Chairman Balachandra Jarkiholi speaking to reporters in Belagavi on April 15, 2025. | Photo Credit: P.K. BADIGER “Belagavi District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union (BEMUL) has achieved a profit of ₹13.20 crore in the last year. This is unprecedented since the establishment of the union in 1985,” Balachandra Jarkiholi , Chairman of BEMUL, … Read more

Minister for Forests, Ecology, and Environment Minister Eshwar Khandre holding a review meeting with the forest department officials at Kollegal in Chamarajanagar district on Thursday. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement Taking note of the use of low-intensity crude bombs to kill wild boars in villages bordering forests, Minister for Forests, Ecology, and Environment Eshwar Khandre … Read more

A tagged Curlew sandpiper spotted and photographed by birder Jithesh Babu at Kelambakkam backwaters on April 18, 2025. | Photo Credit: Jithesh Babu When a wintering bird doubles back to its breeding grounds to attend to the visceral business of procreation, it becomes essentially “unreachable” for the human friends it has made in its wintering … Read more

“My first sighting of a male blackbuck was ethereal. This huge, big male with horns sticking out like swords, body glistening, standing against the sun in the morning,” remembers the Bengaluru-based natural history filmmaker and the co-founder of Trailing Wild Productions, Sumanth Kuduvalli. It was in 2013 at Maidanahalli at the Jayamangali Blackbuck Reserve, in … Read more

Kannada and Culture Minister and Koppal in-charge Shivaraj Tangadagi inspecting crop damage in Koppal district of Karnataka on April 13, 2025. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT Recent hailstorms have caused significant damage to agriculture in Koppal district in Karnataka, affecting 12,722.46 hectares of paddy crops. “Of this, 4,895.33 hectares of crop damage occurred in Karatagi … Read more

Like it or not, it’s clear: every year, India must face down intense heat waves and erratic but also often intense bursts of rainfall. In a bid to find as many ways out of the consequences — or at least their ability to surprise governments — as possible, the country has turned to artificial intelligence … Read more

  Image for representation. | Photo Credit: The Hindu The Union Labour Ministry has advised all States and Union Territories to take effective measures to reduce the impact of extreme heatwaves on workers and labourers engaged in different sectors. Talking to reporters here on Tuesday, Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said his Ministry has written to … Read more

  A tiger near Khitauli village of Katni district in the buffer zone of the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve’s Khitauli range, Madhya Pradesh. File | Photo Credit: The Hindu The Madhya Pradesh Cabinet on Tuesday in-principle approved the development of buffer zones in the State’s nine tiger reserves, the government said. Ga6789 The in-principle approval of … Read more

People walk on a dusty road in the town of Byrnihat, Meghalaya, March 29, 2025. | Photo Credit: Reuters Two-year-old Sumaiya Ansari, a resident of India’s Byrnihat town, ranked the world’s most polluted metropolitan area by Swiss Group IQAir, was battling breathing problems for several days before she was hospitalised in March and given oxygen … Read more

Sunflower blooms at Ooranvila | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement How does a day spent around sunflowers and marigold blooms sound? Or a walk around a millet farm or angling for fish? Throw in a pet show and some healthy food. Interested? Then head to Ooranvila for an experience of all these and more. The village, … Read more

Green Humour | Photo Credit: Rohan Chakravarty Green Humour | Photo Credit: Rohan Chakravarty On April 14, Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezos-owned rocket tourism company, launched six women into space. The 10-minute spaceflight included the pop star Katy Perry and Bezos’ partner, Lauren Sánchez. It was the first all-women trip to space in more than … Read more

Using solar energy may be better for the environment than burning through fossil fuels, but the process still isn’t exactly perfect. Making silicon-based solar panels is energetically expensive and we still don’t know what to do with the silicon once the panels are done being used. There is a cheaper way to make solar panels, … Read more

There’s a harmless addiction that many people share: knuckle-cracking. That ‘pop’, better than the one from squeezing bubble wrap, results from the synovial fluid between your joints releasing a small bubble of nitrogen when you twist or compress your fingers or toes. It’s also a reminder of the centrality of nitrogen to life. The fifth-most … Read more

Aghanashini Estuary in Uttara Kannada is one of the Ramsar sites. | Photo Credit: file photo Secretary General of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, Dr. Musonda Mumba, on Sunday said that India has more Ramsar sites compared to China. Dr. Mumba, participating in the Sinhasi Social Impact Conference 2 – Wetland Conservation and Climate Change, … Read more

Climate experts have proposed urgent measures, including paid heat leave, free water ATMs at labour hubs and legal recognition for the ‘right to cool’, to protect India’s informal workforce during the extreme summer months. More than 80% of Delhi’s workers, including street vendors, construction labourers and ragpickers, face severe health risks and income loss due … Read more

A drone view of the house belonging to Pasijah and other buildings, surrounded by mangrove planted by her, in Rejosari Senik, February 19, 2025. | Photo Credit: Reuters Rejosari Senik is a hamlet in the Demak district of Indonesia’s Central Java province. In the 1970s, the distance between the hamlet and the nearest shoreline, on … Read more

File photo of the NHPC’s 2,000 MW Lower Subansiri project being constructed in Arunachal Pradesh. | Photo Credit: RITU RAJ KONWAR The NHPC’s plan to start generating electricity from the 2000 megawatt Lower Subansiri Hydroelectric Project (LSHP) has triggered downstream impact worries in Assam, specifically because an independent reservoir management authority recommended by an Environment … Read more

Farmers from anywhere in Karnataka can participate in the santhe if they register themselves with the KRRS in advance. The organisers are planning to give priority for the first 100 enrolments. | Photo Credit: Murali Kumar K In an unique move to help farmers in an unequal agricultural market, the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS … Read more

On April 13 this year, a group of residents gathered in north Chennai to discuss the problems arising out of the first waste-to-energy plant. They were stoutly against the plant. T.K. Shanmugham, president of the Federation of North Chennai Residents’ Welfare Associations, says residents posted their views on social media after Re Sustainability, the company … Read more

A citizen forum in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district has opposed the Odisha government’s move to allot 100 acres of land in proximity of Similipal Biosphere for a private hotel. | Photo Credit: BISWARANJAN ROUT A citizen forum in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district has opposed the Odisha government’s move to allot 100 acres of land in proximity of Similipal Biosphere … Read more

Attention of the highest order, they say, is prayer. And our prayers have been misdirected for a while now. We have forgotten as a species that we are merely a thread in nature’s web. Here are 10 books, old and new; meditations on walking, observing, and simply, being. Reminders that the earth and what it … Read more

Priya Ranganathan’s first encounter with a Myristica swamp was back in 2019 when she was working as a research assistant at the Bengaluru-based Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) on a hydro-ecology project. As part of a field trip with other researchers, she was exploring the Aghanashini, one of the rivers … Read more

Smoke rises from a coal-powered steel plant at Hehal village near Ranchi. File | Photo Credit: AP The Union Environment Ministry should roll back its 2015 policy mandating all of India’s 537 coal-fired plants to install a class of equipment called Flue Gas Desulphurisation (FGD) in order to reduce sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions. Instead, it … Read more

Mouse deer at its enclosure at Indira Gandhi Zoological Park in Visakhapatnam. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT Tiny paws are pattering about at the wild dog enclosure, while little hooves are finding their first steps at the Indian gaur section of Indira Gandhi Zoological Park. The green natural premises of the zoo park is alive … Read more

A frame grab provided by the Schmidt Ocean Institute shows a colossal squid, or Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, in its natural habitat, during an Ocean Census flagship expedition in the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean | Photo Credit: AP A colossal squid has been caught on camera for the first time in the deep … Read more

Earth Day | Green Humour by Rohan Chakravarty on the rediscovery of an ancient velvet worm species in Arunachal Pradesh

A man walks through floodwater after heavy rain caused flooding in Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina, March 29, 2025. | Photo Credit: Reuters Europe faced its most widespread flooding last year since 2013, with 30% of the continent’s river network hit by significant floods, scientists said on Tuesday, as fossil fuel-driven climate change continued to prompt … Read more

The Sterlite Plant in Thoothukudi. File | Photo Credit: The Hindu With Sterlite Copper shifting its machinery out of Thoothukudi, a new question emerges: Is it a gain for other States? The answer depends on your viewpoint — as a citizen, vendor, contractor, activist, pacifist, community leader, or administrator. The smelter at Thoothukudi was shut … Read more