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.
wildlife crime
India has close to 30 species of freshwater turtles and tortoises. Seventeen of them carry Schedule I protection under the Wildlife Protection Act — the same schedule that covers tigers. Most people have never heard of a single one.
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.
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.
Six hundred and twenty-three forest guards. Fourteen divisions and tiger reserves. One system that follows a wildlife crime case from the first FIR all the way to the courtroom.
On International Leopard Day 2026, IWN looks at India’s most misunderstood big cat — 13,874 individuals counted, thousands living outside protected areas, and a country still figuring out how to share space with them.
Forest officials in Karnataka’s Shivamogga seized 45 country-made explosive devices from a habitual poacher on 19 April 2026. Here’s what handi bombs are, how they work, and why they’re one of the most dangerous threats to Indian wildlife.
In an endeavour to ensure the safety of turtles during nesting and hatching seasons, wildlife officials and stakeholders […]
To preserve the tiger population, the government of the southern Indian state of Telangana has decided to set […]