A sloth bear looking for food does not know where a forest ends and a town begins. If food is scarce inside the forest but easy to find near a settlement, it will follow the food. An open garbage dump filled with food scraps can offer an easy meal. If a bear finds food there repeatedly, it may learn to return. The hunt that begins as a search for food can eventually bring the animal into much closer contact with people. So, when a sloth bear is spotted on a road or near a settlement, the question is not only why the bear came there. It is also worth asking what changed in the landscape around it. Dr Harendra Singh Bargali, deputy director and head of conservation, policy and advocacy at The Corbett Foundation, has spent more than two decades studying sloth bears and human-wildlife interactions. His work offers some answers. A scientist who has spent years studying bears Dr Bargali began working on sloth bears in 1998, when he joined a long-term study funded by the Wildlife Institute of India as a research scholar. The project involved radio-collaring sloth bears to study their movement, activity, and ecology. In the...

Udhagamandalam (Tamil Nadu) [India], September 17 (ANI): A six-day 'International Training of Trainers on Biodynamic Agriculture ', an international seminar and consultation on organic farming, began at Puthu Mandhu near Udhagamandalam (Ooty) in the Nilgiris district bringing together agricultural delegates and organic farming enthusiasts from several countries as part of what organisers described as Asia's first biodynamic Training of Trainers programme. The workshop, focused on organic farming and traditional cultivation methods, was organised by a farmers' association and saw participation from delegates representing India, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines and other countries. The event was chaired by Indian Bio-Dynamic Association President Chandrasekharan and presided over by Organising Secretary Mahesh Melvin. Speaking about the objective of the programme, Chandrasekharan said the six-phase training was designed to prepare master trainers from eight different countries in both the theoretical and practical aspects of biodynamic agriculture. "We are organising a six-phase training program for the trainers from eight different countries. Biodynamic agriculture is one level above organic. This six-phase training we are giving both theoretically and practically: how to prepare various biodynamic preparations, including the compost," he said. He said the aim was to equip trainers to return to their...

The attacks took place within a span of 13 days. The animal responsible has since disappeared into the forests, leaving behind fear, protests and a large-scale search operation in one of the most densely inhabited wildlife landscapes of the Nilgiris. O’ Valley is close to a thickly populated municipality and surrounded by tea and coffee plantations, farms, labour settlements and forest patches. It is also part of an important wildlife linkage connecting the forests of Mudumalai with the Nilambur landscape of Kerala. Here, the boundary between forest and human use is rarely clear on the ground. The Forest Department has deployed about 145 camera traps, 13 cages, drones, tracking teams, veterinary personnel and kumki elephants to locate the tiger. The animal, believed to be a male aged between eight and 10 years, has nevertheless remained elusive. Camera-trap evidence indicates that it has moved between Lauriston in O’ Valley and the Singara range of Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. Officials believe it can travel five to 20 kilometres through the forest in a day and may move between the two areas every 10 to 15 days. The immediate concern is another attack. The larger concern is what the incident reveals about a landscape...

Environmental advocates and local communities have urged the Nilgiris District Collector to cease using remaining dam water for power generation due to escalating concerns over water scarcity in the region. The appeal highlights the critical need to balance energy production with the essential water requirements for domestic, agricultural, and ecological purposes.

Nilgiris District Congress Committee requests District Collector to conserve water in the district’s dams for human consumption (Source: www.thehindu.com)

The lack of rains in The Nilgiris this year has brought into focus the impacts of erratic weather to the district’s water security. However, a less visible and more alarming facet of the warming climate in the Western Ghats is its impacts on native forests in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (NBR), with researchers warning of “erratic, unpredictable seasons” leading to widespread mayhem within forest ecosystems. According to a study titled ‘Mapping forest phenological shift in Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, Western Ghats: Response to Climate Change,’ published in 2024 in ‘Remote Sensing’, an open access peer-reviewed scientific journal, researchers used satellite imagery to examine forests in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve over two decades between the years 2000 and 2020, and how they were responding to changing temperature and rainfall. Apart from recording an annual increase in temperature across the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve by 0.01 degrees Celsius every year between 1950 and 2018, they also found the average amount of rainfall decreased by 3.97 millimeters every year during the same period. These changes were having an impact on the four forest types analysed by the researchers. They mapped the ‘Start of season’, when vegetation in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve becomes green, ‘End of...

The Tamil Nadu forest department has refuted claims that drought caused the recent deaths of three elephants in the Nilgiris district. Officials stated that low rainfall alone is not sufficient scientific evidence to conclude drought as the cause.

Conservationists call for studies to understand Coonoor town capacity; they say the Ralliah Dam, the town’s primary water source, was built to cater to the needs of a fraction of the town’s current population (Source: www.thehindu.com)

In the Nilgiris, six out of 10 elephants that died between 1979 and 2011 were males. The implications for wild populations are long-term.

Why do heritage artisans remain economically vulnerable? The Toda embroidery tradition reveals how culture, markets and livelihoods intersect.

Up in the Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu, the gradual disappearance of the region’s shola grasslands has changed how birds navigate the landscape, highlighting the importance of habitat connectivity in preserving endemic biodiversity. The shola sky islands are unique montane forests separated by rolling grasslands. They’re biologically significant because they host a large number species whose global distributions are concentrated here. But changes in land use dynamics have caused a steady decline in the populations of certain birds in the region. Colonial-era plantations of exotic tree species like Acacia, Eucalyptus and Pinus, which are not native to this region, have invaded several parts of the sky islands. Between 1973 and 2017, the islands lost 516 sq km of grasslands and 63 sq km of forests. These diminished habitats have also exposed the limits of adaptability for birds. “Highlighting how land-use change shapes species’ connectivity provides a window into how species specialised to high-elevation grassland habitat types respond to habitat alterations,” said Chiti Arvind, Postdoctoral Fellow, IISER Tirupati and a co-author of a research paper studying the impacts of land use change in the shola sky islands on bird movements. Gains and losses The study covered approximately 2,900 sq km across the two...

Thuraiyur to Ooty bus timings are updated here with the latest TNSTC bus timings, including all bus stops, departure times, and fare details. Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC) Ooty bus de...