India’s relationship between storytelling and animals is older than almost anything else in the literary record. Part 8 of 8: animation, the Panchatantra, the Jataka Tales, and the wildlife film India has not yet made for its children.
Author: poojaparvati
IWN has been covering India’s tigers since 2015. On International Tiger Day 2026, a curated roundup of the pieces that matter most — organised by theme.
Three weeks of India wildlife news, distilled: a landmark trafficking bust rescuing 440+ animals, cheetahs getting a third home at Nauradehi, a Great Indian Bustard chick surviving 40 days in Kutch, the Gir lion structural crisis, wild water buffalo returning to Kanha after a century, and early AITE 2026 tiger census results.
Maharashtra’s GR No. SAVVI-2025/PR.KR.11/VANE-11, issued on 7 May 2026, explicitly prohibits tree planting in grasslands and wetlands — the first time a government resolution has put this in writing at scale. The same order that launched a 300-crore plantation drive also protects the ecosystems most at risk from it.
A viral video of an elephant scavenging through plastic waste in Karnataka’s MM Hills is not an isolated incident — it’s part of a documented pattern that has already killed at least one elephant this year, and the same habituation behind it carries a slower, less visible risk to people too.
Northern Karnataka’s Bagalkote district is not a name that usually appears in wildlife headlines. No tiger reserve, no national park, no flagship species drawing safaris and camera crews.
In the Thar Desert of western Rajasthan, blackbuck graze at the edge of villages the way cattle do elsewhere. They do not run. They have learned, over five centuries, that they do not need to.
On 14 June 2026, forest officials in North Sikkim filmed a herd of eight Mishmi takins — the first video evidence of the species in the state, and one of the most significant confirmed records in over two decades.
Regional Indian films about wildlife carry a specificity that mainstream Bollywood struggles to match. From Tamil Nadu’s forest rangers to Kerala’s contested buffer zones and the streaming era’s new ambitions.
India’s Western Ghats draw thousands of photographers each monsoon season in search of pit vipers, cobras and endemic frogs. A King Cobra trafficking arrest in Kodagu and a peer-reviewed study documenting the disappearance of galaxy frogs from a research site suggest the cost to the animals is real and rising.