Category: Uncategorized
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Small Parks, Big Stories: Tracking Birds in Parks
During my internship, I worked in Delhi’s urban parks, places I hadn’t initially considered ecologically significant. Though the city’s lakes caught my attention first, it was the birds that truly transformed my viewing of urban nature. What began as a routine two-credit assignment turned into a deeper exploration of biodiversity in seemingly ordinary green spaces,…
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His songs at 2 a.m.
At 2 a.m., when the city seems finally at rest, a sudden drawn-out whistle pierces the silence—sweeeeeeeeeee. It is the Oriental Magpie Robin (Copsychus saularis), a bird many may never have noticed in flight, yet one whose voice is etched into the urban soundscape. By day, it is a striking figure in black and white,…
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Terminating the Termites: A story of urban resilience
“While we have been trying to save the world’s crumbling pre-urban ecosystem, we have been ignoring the fact that nature has already been putting up the scaffolds to build novel, urban ecosystems for the future.” Menno Schilthuizen, Darwin Comes to Town (2018) More than half of the world’s population now resides in cities. But cities…
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Urbanization: Fate of Ecosystem and Native Flora?
By Vipin Kumar Urban development for the provisioning of shelter to the ever increasing population transforms agricultural land into concrete jungles, and forests into agricultural land, thereby causing habitat degradation and fragmentation. This increases the extinction rate of wild flora and fauna several folds. This geographical landscape disturbance also results in nutrient cycle disturbance and…