The river Khanduli emanates from the Mansarovar dam, situated south of Ranthambore National Park and heads along the Eastern boundary of Sawai Mansingh Sanctuary. It gradually drifts Southeast and merges with the mighty Chambal, in the National Chambal Sanctuary. The Khanduli flows through a mixed-use landscape comprising of forest, agricultural fields and plantations. However, like the Chambal, the Khanduli river floods heavily during the monsoon and as a consequence the most dominant features along its course are its ravines. These … Read More
Conflict or Coexistence – Villagers and Elephants, Nagarahole
Villagers walking past a herd of elephants in the Kabini backwaters, Nagarahole National Park. Photographed in May 2008 at Kabini backwaters. … Read More
Elephants and People, Nagarahole
This is was taken on the Kabini backwaters in Nagarahole Tiger Reserve. There were several hundred elephants, leopard, tiger and on the other bank there were humans grazing cattle. Could the disturbance to the wild animals be brought down? In summer, the backwaters sees elephants from all three states.… Read More
The Leopards of Mumbai
Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) in the north of Mumbai seems to have always been associated with leopards attacking humans. However, a little delving into the patterns of attacks finds that conflict is a recent phenomenon. The attacks began around the nineties and took on its worst form in 2004, when in a single month in May, nineteen attacks on people were reported. Now again, post-2006, there have been no attacks on humans.
Recently the Forest Department of SGNP (headed … Read More
Rusty-spotted Cat, Maharashtra
The Rusty-spotted Cat (Prionailurus rubiginosus) is the smallest wild cat species that occurs only in India and Sri Lanka. Available information relies on a few sightings across its range and the species is thought to be rare. I discovered a breeding population of rusty spotted cats from a human-dominated agricultural landscape in W. Maharashtra. I propose that we should also focus on agricultural landscapes, which are likely to have high rodent densities, to study some of the smaller … Read More
Agriculture That Benefits Wildlife
The tallest flying bird in the world – the Sarus crane – thrives in the intensely cultivated floodplains of Uttar Pradesh. Can the birds withstand the pressures of a country on the fast track to development?
The fertile Gangetic floodplain has supported dense human population for centuries—much of the land is cultivated, having been converted almost entirely to small-holder farmer systems at least 300 years ago. Despite these pressures, the world’s largest known breeding populations of sarus cranes and black-necked … Read More
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