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.
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On International Tiger Day, Maharashtra put its money where its reserves are.
In December 2024, Zeenat the tigress crossed three states and eluded capture for three weeks. This July, she’s raising four cubs in Similipal — and rewriting how her journey gets told.
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.
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.
Every year before the monsoon, the Western Ghats glow with synchronous fireflies — and this March, scientists published India’s first-ever firefly checklist: 92 species, more than 60% found nowhere else on Earth.
A landmark DNA study traces pangolin trafficking routes to Northeast India. An Assam conservationist wins the National Geographic Wayfinder Award for saving the greater adjutant stork. And the wetlands of Thoothukudi are alive with common coots — a quiet signal of ecological recovery.
India has no single word for what happens when a community embroiders a peacock onto a shawl, paints a tiger onto a temple wall, or weaves a blackbuck into a carpet — and has been doing so for five centuries.
DRI officers intercepted two suspects near Pune Railway Station on May 20, recovering three live Malabar giant squirrels and seven Indian star tortoises — both protected under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act.
Two separate mining proposals in Chandrapur district, Maharashtra — one for iron ore, one for coal — are moving through India’s wildlife clearance system. Both affect forest land in the Brahmapuri division, a corridor that connects Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve with forests across Gadchiroli, Nawegaon-Nagzira, and Chhattisgarh. Here is what the facts say.
