Scientists have named a newly discovered frog species from Tripura’s Jampui Hills after Padmini Varkey, a Kerala woman known to generations of Thiruvananthapuram students and activists simply as Ammachi.
biodiversity
Scientists have discovered three new spider species in India this July: one in a cave in Meghalaya, one in a forest canopy in Andhra Pradesh, and one in a stretch of grassland in Maharashtra.
A camera trap in Kuno National Park has photographed a caracal — India’s most critically endangered wild cat — for the first time in decades. The sighting is remarkable. What it means for the species is more complicated.
Karnataka has ended open-vehicle wildlife safaris across all its tiger reserves and wildlife sanctuaries. The announcement, made by Forest Minister Eshwar Khandre, is the latest in a series of safety measures following two years of escalating leopard and tiger attacks on visitors and forest-fringe communities.
A tiger found dead in Goa with teeth and claws missing. A leopard strangled in a wire snare in Odisha. A lion cub killed on a Gujarat highway. An elephant shot and mutilated at the Assam–Meghalaya border. And another elephant dead from a suspected Maoist IED in Jharkhand’s Saranda forest. Five incidents, five species, one fortnight.
India’s environment ministry has announced five thematic conservation events — one for each wild big cat species — across the country ahead of the International Big Cat Alliance Summit in New Delhi on 1 June 2026. The countdown to the Delhi Declaration has officially begun.
Two Botswana female cheetahs released at Kuno today bring Project Cheetah’s count to 57. But the real story is Madhya Pradesh’s wider conservation push — new tiger reserves, elephant plans, vulture rehabilitation, and a compensation overhaul.
Two Indian women win the Whitley Awards 2026 — the Green Oscars of conservation — for saving the Indian skimmer and the Himalayan salamander. Plus: Ahmedabad launches its first-ever monkey census, and the week’s wildlife news in brief.
For the first time in decades, Rajasthan’s Chittorgarh forest department shifted its annual wildlife census to an evening start — running through the night by moonlight and camera trap — because May daytime temperatures have become unworkable.
Clocked at 80 km/h across open grassland, the blackbuck is India’s fastest land animal. It was once nearly extinct. Now it’s running again in Chhattisgarh — after 50 years of absence.