The fraught politics and ethics of climate rankings [Commentary]
India’s poor score on the 2026 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) has reignited an old debate about fairness with developing countries. Different climate rankings diverge because they rest on different ethical premises, not because one is wrong. India would be better served by reading multiple indices together and taking a consistent, principled stance.
Free-ranging dogs, changing livelihoods reshape an agro-pastoral landscape
Rapid socio-economic changes in Spiti are transforming the region’s traditional agro-pastoral system, impacting livestock rearing and farming. Livestock, particularly sheep and goats, have declined over the past two decades, with free-ranging domestic dogs emerging as a major driver of losses. Study says managing free-ranging dogs through integrated, community-led approaches is critical to protecting livelihoods, reducing […]
ATREE unveils LakeRevive tool for science-based lake restoration
The scientific lake restoration requires moving beyond one-size-fits-all interventions and towards context-specific planning, researchers said at the workshop on Friday. Priyanka Jamwal, Senior Fellow at ATREE, argued that restoration goals should be based on context-specific lake health indicators (water, biodiversity and community) rather than uniform water quality standards. This is where the LakeRevive 1.0 tool […]
How snails use chemistry to modify their mucus materials
Aravind Madhyastha, a land-snail researcher at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment who was not involved in the study, says that this evolutionary ingenuity behind the epiphragm is “especially significant.” Turning something “soft and slimy into a mineralized barrier that helps the snail survive drought or cold shows that mucus is […]
From Rights To Revival: How Forest Rights Act Revived An Economy
Tiriya village in Chhattisgarh made its Gram Sabha functional, formed working committees, and set in motion a system of patrols, fines, and resource planning to protect and conserve its forests. This governance model not only revived the village’s resources but also created new income opportunities for its youth
Researchers Develop a Non-invasive and Ethical Swabbing Method for Collecting Amphibian DNA for Research
Researchers have successfully demonstrated that a simple cotton swab rubbed gently over a frog’s skin can provide enough high-quality DNA to study endangered species without causing them any harm. This breakthrough offers a novel method for conservation efforts in the Western Ghats and urban India, where nearly half of all amphibian species are currently at […]
Chennai Researchers Launch City’s First Comprehensive Frog Survey
In 1981, American biologist Paul Ehrlich proposed the ‘rivet-popper’ hypothesis, likening species in an ecosystem to the thousands of rivets that hold an aeroplane together. Remove one, and it may keep flying. Remove several, and it may still stay in the air. But take out a critical rivet, and the plane could collapse.
India’s river linking project could cause an explosion of invasives, threatening native ecosystems
Researchers from the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) and Yenepoya (Deemed to be University) examined how the proposed network of 15,000 kilometres of canals and 3,000 reservoirs would alter India’s biological landscape. The researchers discovered that areas the government hopes to protect, such as biodiversity hotspots like the Krishna, Godavari, […]
India’s Rarest Heron Faces a Silent End as New Dam Ignores Its Home
Once a dam in the Lohit river basin is built, it could alter the water’s turbidity and flow, and lead to the local extinction of white-bellied herons. The bird was first scientifically described in 1878, based on specimens from the Teesta region. The species does not occur there today. In fact, it has been ‘critically […]
Maharashtra: Researchers Identify New Spider Species ‘Tigidia singhal’ in Ahilyanagar District
Researchers have discovered a new trapdoor spider species, Tigidia singhal, in the rocky semi-arid grasslands near the Rehekuri Blackbuck Sanctuary in Karjat tehsil of Ahilyanagar district. The discovery has been published in the latest issue of Arachnology, the journal of the British Arachnological Society.
