Category: Environment

The white-bellied heron (Ardea insignis)is among the world’s most elusive birds, nesting along fast-flowing rivers lined with old growth forests. “India has a population of six to nine individuals distributed in three rivers: Noa-Dehing River, Lahm River and Lohit River,” Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bengaluru, project manager Yumlam Benjamin Bida...

A new study led by researchers from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) and other institutions has compiled InvenTree-meta, the largest meta-dataset of tree inventory studies from India.   The database brings together information from 465 published studies conducted between 1991 and 2023, spanning more than 4,650 hectares of forests across all of India’s biomes.  Contributing to global...

On May 21, India recorded its highest peak demand of 270.8 gigawatt (GW) during the day, an increase of approximately 90 GW from the same window in 2019. While power generators often meet India’s summer peak, the demand again increases at night, especially due to the use of air conditioners. This underscores the need for...

Just a few months after the Border Security Force (BSF) explored the curious prospect of releasing snakes and crocodiles into rivers at the Indo-Bangladesh border to deter “illegal activities,” the security force has now initiated another controversial feasibility study for a colossal project to safeguard the area. This time, as The Hindu reported, it is...

In the high seas off west Africa, a fisherman on a Chinese longline tuna vessel cuts the fins off a live shark before throwing it back in the water to suffocate and drown. Its lucrative appendages will be landed at the port of Dakar before being shipped onward to Asia for use in shark fin...

For half a century, millions of workers have repeated a task across the deserts in northern China: inserting forearm-length sticks into shifting sand, first in a row, then in an intersecting line, gradually forming a grid. Then saplings are planted at the centre of each small square. The technique, known as “straw checkerboards”, is a...

Wildlife ecology in India looks different today than it did a decade ago. Climate change, habitat fragmentation, invasive species, and rapid development are all reshaping ecosystems faster than scholars can document them. Thus, ecologists are interested in how biodiversity has changed as well as how it is likely to change next. Just these questions shaped...

A team of scientists has, for the first time in India, identified and genetically characterised a virus that often causes rapid death in captive psittacine birds, raising concerns about the health of exotic pets and conservation of threatened parrot species. Psittacine, which means relating to or resembling a parrot, describes the bird family Psittacidae and...

A massive decline in bovine milk production in India, especially among buffaloes in the trans-Gangetic plains of northwestern India — one of the country’s biggest sources of milk — has now been attributed to climate change. The phenomenon has a profound impact on the milk industry that caters to consumers every day. While climate change significantly undermines livestock...

At the Bonn climate talks in Germany on June 8-18, alongside the usual laundry list of contested themes like climate finance, tipping points became an unexpected source of debate and controversy. According to the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, India urged care and clarity in using terms like “tipping points”, which it said would present challenges around...