The Zoological Survey of India has an illustrious history. On 1st July, 1916, the organisation was instituted with a mission to “…to promote survey, exploration and research leading to the advancement in our knowledge of various aspects of exceptionally rich life of the erstwhile British Indian Empire” (Emphasis mine). Alfred William Alcock was a British...

January 15th was the tenth year of Wikipedia. Although, I missed being at the Bangalore TEN celebrations, along with Kalyan, some of us held the celebrations in Valparai. Here is a brief write-up I did on it as a guest contributor on the restoration blog of NCF. Pasted below is the article from there: In the little Tamil village that we know so well, it was just...

I have a dream…. If Martin Luther King were born in the forests of BR Hills in Southern Karnataka during the nineties, apart from perhaps running into Veerappan, he could’nt have expected more adventure. Nonetheless, I am sure he would still have had a dream. His dream would have to do much more with owning a television and watching an action film. It may...

The website of the Panna Tiger Reserve greets you with the pug marks of a tiger on its homepage. It carries a nice news ticker about one of the many recent awards it got from the Ministry of Tourism of the Government of India for being the best maintained and tourist-friendly national parks of the country. With over 90 staff managing the Tiger Reserve and being on...

I was in Delhi over the weekend on work and I was able to catch up on some Sunday birding with Delhibird members. Just thought of sharing my experience with them, this being my first birding outing in Delhi. Due thanks to Gopi Sundar, Anshu, KB Singh and a diverse group of members from Delhibird well represented in age, gender and profession! A particularly hot...

Aphu was a young man in his twenties when he passed away. In the hinterland of India’s largest tiger reserve, few people keep track of their age, for nobody here registers them for social welfare, nor do they have a doctor who asks them their age to fill up a column on a case sheet. Aphu’s home was in Gandhigram, a remote tribal village in the state of...