Where a vehicle doesn’t reach, Girish Punjabi walks with the forest staff installing camera traps and recording signs and tracks of tigers, leopards, dhole, and sloth bears. He and his team covered nearly 850 km. on foot in 2019-20 alone… Read More
It was 9.30 a.m. in May 2022, and the forest had already gone silent under the overpowering blaze of the sun. Just as our vehicle drove up a small but steep slope, leading to a large dike that encircled a… Read More
Equipping the Enforcers and Interpreters of Law: The journey of a wildlife crime, from its undertaking to its adjudication in the court of law, is a complex affair fraught with umpteen challenges for law enforcement agencies in their struggle to… Read More
Protecting and enhancing wildlife populations could be a global warming game changer New science recently published reveals that protecting and enhancing the populations of even a limited number of wildlife species could help to keep rising global temperatures below the … Read More
Bony and dishevelled, Kanta Kamde stands barefoot outside her house. I stand with her in silence, arms wrapped around my chest, gaze lowered. It feels like a condolence visit. Then she speaks, “We had run out of firewood. The cooking… Read More
“…until we turned to another book to find the age of the Earth, the one that was written in the rocks themselves.” – Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson in ‘Cosmos’ Beauty of fossils lies not only in the fact that they … Read More
She is there. Right there, inside a neatly dug-out borrow under those shapely boulders deep inside the Pench Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh. Previously acquired camera trap footage confirms that she has a pup along with her.… Read More
An already fascinating species made more fascinating by the virtue of it being super elusive. In India, even today, first-time reports of the honey badger (Mellivora capensis), also called ratel, continue to pour in from various regions, taking one and… Read More
Nature’s laws of survival demand that predators feed on their prey. A tiger chasing a deer, a desert fox scanning the desert floor for spiny-tailed lizards, dhole bringing down a sambar stag. All normal scenarios playing out in the wildscape.… Read More
This article is part of a special WCT #TrappedInTrade blog series which is focused on the problem of growing demand for exotic wild animals in India and the urgent need for stronger wildlife laws for better regulation of the same. … Read More
The world is stressing on the need to adopt a sustainable way of life and yet the political and economic decisions are steering the society away from the coveted goal of sustainability. Take for instance wetland ecosystems – they provide … Read More
Understanding Anxiety and Distress in Times of Climate Change ‘Severe heat wave sweeps India, temperatures to rise. IMD issues yellow and orange alerts’‘Rains wreak havoc in Northeast India, landslides and floods in Assam’‘IMD warns of heavy to very heavy rainfall … Read More
The amazing complexity of multicellular organisms arises from pure simplicity – a single cell. Organisms boast of their idiosyncratic morphologies which follow seemingly distinct paths but be it a human arm or a chicken leg, it all grows from a … Read More
All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others*: A review of carnivore research in India (1947-2020) Paper titled ‘Chasms in charismatic species Research: Seventy years of carnivore science and its implications for conservation and policy in India’… Read More
In 2018, WCT President Dr. Anish Andheria sent me to the Melghat Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra, to witness the life and work of frontline forest staff, so that I could be their voice. With each of the forest guards… Read More