Category: Environment

Rain comes down steadily, painting the skies a dull grey and sending a chill breeze wafting through the windows of high-rise buildings. On the street below, water creeps out of cracks and pores. Next to the highway lies a lake but the boundary between water and land has blurred. What was once contained spreads across...

Early this year, when Craig, one of Africa’s “super tusker” elephants, died in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park, tributes poured in from across the world. Photographs of his very large ivory tusks, nearly brushing the ground as he walked with Mount Kilimanjaro in the background, resurfaced online. Tourists shared memories of sightings and safari guides recalled...

The natural El Nino cycle, which warps weather worldwide, is both adding to and shaped by a warming world, meteorologists said. A new study calculated that an unusual recent twist in the warming and cooling cycle that includes El Nino and its counterpart La Nina can help explain the scientific mystery of why earth’s already...

The story so far: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) recently concluded a high-stakes legal battle over the ‘Holistic Development of Great Nicobar Island’, and ruled that all environment safeguards are in place for the Great Nicobar Island Project. This integrated project, estimated to cost ₹80,000-90,000 crore, has been at the centre of a debate between...

India is among just four countries that contribute almost 70% to the world’s total applied toxicity (TAT) in the form of pesticide, which is directed at agricultural pests, but in affect unleashes huge collateral damage among “non-target” species (that is, species that pesticides claimed as collateral). In 2022, at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, countries...

A total of 238 bird species were documented across Thiruvananthapuram district during the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC), an annual four-day global citizen science initiative held from February 13 to 16. Endemic species such as Grey-fronted Green-Pigeon, Malabar Imperial-Pigeon, Malabar Grey Hornbill, Malabar Flameback, Malabar Parakeet, Malabar Woodshrike, Malabar Starling, Nilgiri Flowerpecker were listed from...

There continues to be intense debate worldwide about the definition of biological sex, boosted by some recent executive orders. The official theme of LGBTQ+ History Month (February) this year is ‘Science & Innovation’ and the natural universe is replete with examples of how the simple binary of sexes and genders to which some people would...

Humans have climbed to the top of the food chain by skillfully hunting, trapping, and fishing for other animals at scales that far exceed other predators, altering how the animals behave and earning the tag of a “super-predator”. But a new study led by the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), suggests...

The spectre of climate change has come to haunt one of the ocean’s most ubiquitous — yet vulnerable — turtles: the strong-jawed loggerhead, named after its exceptionally large head. These omnivorous marine reptiles have been impacted in at least four ways by global warming. As the ocean warms and marine produce dwindle, these turtles are nesting earlier in the year, and more worryingly, they are producing...

The colours of the natural world are not what they once were. More than half of the oceans have become greener over the last 20 years, and forests are turning brown prematurely. Various species of flora and fauna have also been changing their colours to adapt to rising temperatures, loss of habitats, and pollution. This...