THE TRUTH ABOUT: Wildlife institute of india - Caught on Camera

Champawat and the Kumaon Foothills: The Man-Eater Road Almost Nobody Drives

The number 436 is carved into the history of Champawat before you arrive: that is how many people the Champawat tigress killed across Nepal and the Kumaon hills before Jim Corbett shot her in 1907, a toll that still stands as the highest recorded for any wild animal. The town…

Times Life · Nov 2

Wular and Hokersar: How Siltation Is Shrinking Kashmir's Freshwater Wetlands

Wular Lake in Bandipora district once spread across roughly 260 square kilometres. Today, depending on the season and the survey, that figure sits somewhere between 80 and 130 square kilometres. The rest has become reed beds, agricultural encroachments, and shallow mud flats that dry out in summer. Hokersar, a Ramsar-designated…

Times Life · Oct 27

Loktak Lake's Floating Islands Are the Last Home of Manipur's Sangai Deer

The sangai deer does not walk on land. It walks on water, or close enough. In Loktak Lake, Manipur's largest freshwater lake, decomposing organic matter, soil, and vegetation have compressed over centuries into thick floating mats called phumdi. The sangai, Cervus eldi eldi, has evolved hooves splayed wide enough to…

Times Life · Oct 27

Why India Calls Its Grasslands Wasteland and What That Word Has Cost Wildlife

The Great Indian Bustard weighs up to 15 kilograms, stands a metre tall, and is functionally extinct in the wild, with fewer than 150 individuals surviving across Rajasthan and Gujarat. It is the world's heaviest flying bird. It needs open grassland to breed, to forage, and to display. What it…

Times Life · Oct 24

How Lantana Camara Is Quietly Destroying India's Tiger Reserves

Lantana camara produces a berry that looks edible, smells faintly sweet, and is mildly toxic to most mammals. That detail captures the plant's entire strategy: it offers just enough to get dispersed, and then it poisons the competition. Brought to India by the British as a hedge ornamental in the…

Times Life · Oct 23

Why the Same Railway Tracks Keep Killing Elephants in India

India has roughly 30,000 wild Asian elephants, the largest population outside Africa, and each year trains kill between 20 and 30 of them. The deaths are not spread evenly across the 68,000-kilometre rail network. A handful of track sections, some no longer than a few kilometres, account for a disproportionate…

Times Life · Oct 22

Wildlife Underpasses on Indian Highways: What They Are and Who Uses Them

A camera trap set inside a concrete culvert beneath NH-44 in Madhya Pradesh once captured a tiger padding through at 2 a.m., unhurried, following a scent trail that predated the road above it by centuries. The underpass had been there for three years before the tiger showed up. That gap,…

Times Life · Oct 22

What Dead Animals on Indian Highways Tell Scientists About the Wild

The Carcass as a Data PointA mongoose on NH-48. A star tortoise on the Mysuru-Bengaluru expressway. A wolf spider the size of a palm on a rural district road in Vidarbha. None of these deaths made news. Each one, if recorded with GPS coordinates, a timestamp, and a species ID,…

Times Life · Oct 21

Power Lines Are Killing India's Great Indian Bustard. Here's What the Supreme Court Ordered

A Bird That Cannot See What Will Kill ItThe Great Indian Bustard, Ardeotis nigriceps, carries up to 15 kilograms on a frame built for open grassland, not evasive flight. Its eyes sit on the sides of its head, giving it a wide field of vision for ground-level predators but almost…

Times Life · Oct 20

How Geckos, Turtles and Monitor Lizards Are Smuggled Out of India

The Animals Most TargetedIndia's three most trafficked reptiles each have a different reason for their value. The Indian star tortoise (Geochelone elegans) is prized in the exotic pet trade across Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States for its geometric shell patterning. The tokay gecko (Gekko gecko), found across northeastern…

Times Life · Oct 17