In 1887, 18 years before they divided Bengal into two, the British laid down a railway line through the Hoollongapar Gibbon Sanctuary, located on the south bank of the Brahmaputra river system in Jorhat district. While the railway line connected British tea plantations in Tinsukia with those in Jorhat and Dibrugarh, it divided the sanctuary into two unequal compartments—one roughly 150 hectares (370 acres), the rest roughly 1,950 hectares (4,820 acres)...
Carbon is a chemical element found widely in the universe. It is the basis of our life. But what about ‘blue carbon’?
When we think about biodiversity, we usually think only of animals, birds, insects and plants. We forget that fungi are also biodiversity. According to Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the UK, fungi are ‘distinctive organisms that digest their food externally by secreting enzymes into the environment and absorbing organic matter...
Have you ever wondered what wild-lifers do? What inspires them to go to work in the jungle? How they protect themselves in the jungle? How they count tigers? Dr Qamar Qureshi of the Wildlife Institute of India answers questions about tigers and the work he does with them.
A native Amazonian tribe, the Waorani, successfully defends its sacred homeland from destruction posed by an oil conglomerate.
The Amazon is the world’s largest and densest rainforest, truly priced as the ‘lungs of the world’. This jungle conquers over nine nationalities and houses a bewildering variety of plants and animal species seen nowhere else on the globe. All such detail might be already well-known to you along with the news about its constant destruction, which is also much lamented by everyone. However, off late, there has been some hustle within the woods.
A multi-billion dollar company had earmarked half a million acres of forestland for oil drilling in the Amazon. This would have required installation of some mining machinery and huge logging activities in turn. All of this would have fetched oil for the company but after causing humongous loss to the surrounding biodiversity, the cost of which is inestimable.
Some trace the origin of COVID-19 virus to bats but these creatures of the night are more than virus carriers.
The forest, capable of meeting our basic needs of food, shelter and fuel, can act as a model of sustainable living for all of us.
Salem is one of the largest cities in Tamil Nadu, India. More than 1 million people live here. Piyush Manush is the convener of the Salem Citizen's Forum (SCF). SCF is an informal group, involved in protecting Salem's environment. The lake was built by the British for irrigating nearby farmlands. The lake is spread across 58 acres and used to be a major water body of the city. But gradually it became a dumpsite for Salem's municipal solid waste. In 2010 SCF took over the work of cleaning the lake. But first, they had to get rid of the garbage and then desilt the waterbody.
