A forest sanctuary in eastern Rajasthan is turning out to hold tigers with cubs alongside nearly 30 identified leopards, a combination that conservationists say makes it a key site for helping the state’s tigers recover.
WWF India
India’s Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change told delegates from more than 100 countries in Jaipur that India’s Ramsar-listed wetlands have grown from 24 to 101 in a decade.
Four of Asia’s hornbill species have a genome to call their own for the first time.
A gharial went missing in Rajasthan’s canal network in March. It took two forest departments, three sightings and five months of patient tracking to bring it home.
A camera trap at Veerangana Durgavati Tiger Reserve has photographed the rusty-spotted cat for the first time — Asia’s smallest wild cat, confirmed in Madhya Pradesh’s newest and largest tiger reserve.
♦ Globally, nature provides services worth around US$125 trillion a year, according to WWF’s Living Planet Report.
♦ In the 20th century, freshwater fish have had the highest extinction rate worldwide among vertebrates.
♦ Nearly 200 million people depend on coral reefs for protection against storm surge and waves.
♦ Rainforests are shrinking: almost 20% of the Amazon has disappeared in just 50 years.
♦ In the last 50 years, global average temperature has risen at 170 times the background rate.
♦ At least 70% of new small molecule drugs introduced over the past 25 years have come from a natural source.
♦ Almost 6 billion tonnes of fish and other seafood have been taken from the world’s oceans since 1950.
♦ Today, 90% of the world’s seabirds are estimated to have fragments of plastic in their stomach.
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