Category: Environment

The Great Guava Heist: Rose-ringed Parakeets, Coppersmith Barbets and a Guava Tree

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There is a certain amount of drama taking place on my guava tree these days.

The Rose-ringed Parakeets arrive in noisy pairs, settle among the branches and get to work. The Coppersmith Barbets are quieter visitors, but no less interested. Between them, they can make a considerable dent in the morning’s guava harvest.

What puzzles me is what happens next.

Guavas fall to the ground, some barely touched, others with chunks missing. A perfectly good-looking fruit may have a hole in it and be abandoned. Another has been pecked open and left hanging precariously from its stalk. And there is a constant barrage of small fruit pieces from the tree as the parakeets feast.

Why, I wonder, do they throw so much of it down?

Perhaps I am looking at it from entirely the wrong end of the telescope.

The parakeets’ breakfast

Rose-ringed Parakeets are wonderfully equipped for attacking fruit. That large, curved red bill is not just for making an impressive entrance. It is a powerful cutting and gripping tool, and the bird can hold food with its foot while working on it with its bill.

A parakeet may bite into a guava, take several mouthfuls and then move on. It may be looking for the softer, riper flesh, avoiding a harder portion or simply deciding that another fruit looks more attractive.

And when you are sitting in a tree full of guavas, there is little reason to persevere with a disappointing one.

The next guava is only a beak-length away.

Enter the Coppersmith

The Coppersmith Barbet is a very different personality. Smaller, stockier and beautifully marked, it is much less conspicuous than the parakeet. Its name comes from its extraordinarily persistent call, which sounds remarkably like a tiny coppersmith hammering away at metal.

Barbets are fruit-eaters, and a guava is clearly an attractive proposition. They can make a small opening in the fruit and work their way into the flesh, leaving behind something that looks as though a miniature woodworker has been at it.

Watching the two species together makes one thing clear: birds don’t necessarily approach a fruit as a human would.

For us, a guava is one object. For a bird, it is skin, flesh, seeds, texture, ripeness and energy—all of which can be assessed in a matter of seconds.

The tree has its own plan

There is another player in this little drama: the guava tree itself.

The tree has invested energy in producing fruit because fruit is one of the ways plants persuade animals to transport their seeds. The flesh attracts the animal; the seeds get a chance to travel.

A seed that simply falls beneath its parent tree has to compete with that parent for light, water and nutrients. A seed carried elsewhere has a chance of finding a little patch of ground of its own.

Birds are excellent seed couriers because they move from tree to tree and garden to garden. Some seeds pass through their digestive systems; others may simply fall or be carried away with pieces of fruit.

Not every seed will become a tree, of course. Nature is not in the business of giving every seed a happy ending. It works through numbers, chance and a great deal of trial and error.

And then there are the leftovers

The story does not end when a guava falls.

Ants may discover it. Fruit flies certainly might. Beetles and other insects can take advantage of the exposed flesh. Squirrels may investigate. Eventually fungi and bacteria will break it down and return its nutrients to the soil.

The guava tree is therefore feeding a much larger community than the two birds that first attracted my attention.

This is something we often forget when we look at nature through human eyes. We tend to see individual transactions: the bird ate the guava; the rest was left behind.

Nature sees a chain.

Birds have always been opportunists

The same principle can be seen all around us.

Bulbuls peck at berries. Mynas investigate fruit and food scraps. Squirrels take enthusiastic bites from mangoes and guavas. Crows carry food away, tear it apart and sometimes abandon pieces.

Other birds have developed completely different strategies. Woodpeckers drill into wood in search of insects. Kingfishers plunge into water for fish. Bee-eaters catch insects in flight. Sunbirds probe flowers for nectar.

Each has evolved a way of getting the nutrients it needs without spending more energy than necessary.

So perhaps the Rose-ringed Parakeets and Coppersmith Barbets are not being careless at all.

They are simply being birds.

A poem about birds and a guava tree

And then I came across a poem that seemed to have wandered straight into my garden.

In “Birds on the Guava Tree,” A. P. Govindankutty describes waking to the sounds of birds feeding on almost-ripe guavas in the backyard of his home. There is a crow on the mango tree, squirrels nearby and the general soundtrack of an Indian morning.

But the poem takes the observation somewhere beyond birds and fruit. The poet watches the birds and thinks about what nature gives us—and about what human beings do with what they have been given.

His conclusion is particularly lovely.

It is but fair that the birds eat,

Year after year, all the fruits,

Leaving none for me to pluck,

For they do not rob, hoard or trade

Nor do they kill each other

For power or pelf.

Indeed it must be for them

The trees grow on earth,

Flower and bear fruit,

For they never cut them down.

— A. P. Govindankutty, Birds on the Guava Tree

I like the poem because it changes the question.

I began by wondering why the birds were leaving so many guavas on the ground. The poet asks us to look at the relationship between birds and trees in a completely different way.

After all, the guava tree is not really my tree.

The parakeets don’t think so. The barbets certainly don’t. And judging by the insects, squirrels and other visitors who turn up for whatever is left behind, they are not the only ones with a claim on it.

I may continue picking up the fallen guavas.

But the next time I see a Rose-ringed Parakeet tearing into one, or hear the Coppersmith Barbet calling from the branches, I think I shall be a little less possessive.

After all, as Govindankutty reminds us, it is for them that the trees flower and bear fruit!

–Meena

Pachy Poop

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Last week, on the occasion of World Elephant Day, Mamata recounted from memories of Dr. Raman Sukumar, India’s foremost elephant-researcher.

We continue on the pachyderm theme this week, but today we focus on……elephant dung! On World Elephant Day, we usually celebrate the things that make elephants magnificent—their intelligence, memory, extraordinary family bonds and sheer size. We talk about forests, wildlife corridors, poaching and the urgent need to protect these gentle giants. But there is another elephant story worth telling, and it begins, rather unglamorously, on the forest floor: with dung.

Long before humans filled compost bins, saved kitchen scraps and debated the perfect balance of “browns” and “greens”, elephants were already participating in one of nature’s most elegant recycling systems. An elephant eats a phenomenal amount of vegetation every day—grass, leaves, bark, roots, fruit and branches—and because not everything it consumes is completely digested, plenty of partially processed plant material eventually makes its way back into the environment. What we see as a pile of dung is, in ecological terms, a package of nutrients and organic matter ready to be put to work again.

Once elephant dung lands on the forest floor, an entire community of organisms gets involved. Dung beetles, flies, fungi, bacteria and other decomposers begin breaking down the material, while insects use it as a source of food and, in some cases, as a place to lay their eggs. As the dung decomposes, nutrients are gradually returned to the soil, helping to maintain the fertility and health of the ecosystem. What looks like the least glamorous part of an elephant’s daily routine is actually an important link in the larger cycle of life.

This is one of the reasons the idea of “waste” is so different in nature. In a healthy ecosystem, one organism’s leftovers can become another organism’s resource. There is no rubbish truck waiting at the edge of the forest and no landfill quietly filling up somewhere out of sight. Organic matter is continually broken down, transformed and returned to the system. Elephant dung is simply one particularly impressive example of this natural circular economy.

There is another role that makes elephant dung especially important: seed dispersal. Elephants consume huge quantities of fruit and vegetation, and many of the seeds they swallow can survive the journey through their digestive systems. Because elephants travel considerable distances in search of food and water, they can carry those seeds far from the parent plant before depositing them in their dung. In effect, the elephant becomes a very large and very mobile seed-distribution system, helping plants spread across the landscape.

And there is something rather clever about where those seeds arrive. They are not simply dropped onto the ground; they emerge surrounded by organic material that is already beginning to decompose. That dung can provide nutrients and moisture while insects and microorganisms continue breaking it down. In the right conditions, the seed may eventually germinate and become part of the next generation of vegetation. An elephant eats a fruit in one part of the landscape and, sometime later, may help establish a new plant somewhere else.

The forest gets a meal, a seed dispersal service and a dose of fertiliser, all from the same animal. This is why elephants are often described as ecosystem engineers. Their impact extends well beyond their own bodies. Their feeding habits can alter vegetation, their movements can open pathways through habitats, and their dung redistributes nutrients and seeds. When elephant populations decline, the consequences can therefore reach much further than simply having fewer elephants. The animals are part of a web of ecological processes that help keep their habitats functioning.

It is only when we understand this natural process that the idea of turning elephant dung into human-made compost becomes truly interesting. In sanctuaries, conservation centres and other managed settings where elephant dung is collected responsibly, it can be composted and transformed into a useful soil amendment. Through controlled decomposition, the organic material breaks down into a darker, more stable substance that can help improve soil structure and return nutrients to the ground.

Some organisations have taken this a step further by developing elephant-dung compost as a source of income that can support conservation and animal-care programmes. There is something wonderfully circular about the idea: an elephant eats plants, produces dung, that dung is composted, the compost helps plants grow, and those plants can once again become part of the landscape on which elephants and other animals depend.

On a recent visit to Kerala, I visited one such sanctuary (Panamkuzhy Elephant Sanctuary)), and my most treasured buy was a package of Elephant Dung Compost! But perhaps it is important not to let the human version of the story overshadow the original one. Elephant dung does not need us to make it valuable. In the wild, it already has an important ecological purpose. Composting it is simply our way of working with a process that nature has been running very successfully for thousands, perhaps millions, of years.

And maybe that is one of the quieter lessons we can take from elephants this World Elephant Day. We often think about what we can do for nature—what we should conserve, restore, recycle or protect—but elephants can remind us that nature is already remarkably good at managing resources when we allow its systems to function. What leaves one organism can nourish another; what appears to be waste can become food, habitat, nutrients or the beginning of new life.

So elephant dung is part of what the elephant gives back to the landscape: nutrients returned to soil, food for insects and microorganisms, and sometimes the very beginning of another tree. Reinforcing the message that every species has its place in the ecosystem. And nature has its own balance.We just have to let it be.

Happy Elephant Day!

–Meena

A Passion for Pachyderms: R. Sukumar

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Photo: https://twas.org/article/elephants-and-people

August 12 is marked annually as World Elephant Day. It is a day dedicated to raising awareness about the urgent issues faced by elephants in the wild due to a number of factors including poaching for ivory, habitat loss and human-elephant conflicts. Initiated in 2012 as a plea to stop poaching, this day has grown into a full-scale movement linking scientists, rangers, and ordinary citizens with one goal: to keep elephants alive in their own habitats.

While this day brings together people from diverse areas of interest (perhaps for one day of the year), there are scientists who have dedicated their life to studying and understanding these majestic creatures. Research is an essential input for the management and conservation of elephants. In India, the scientific study on the ecology and the behavior of the elephant began as early as the 1970s. During this period a major study on elephants was carried out by the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Bangalore.

Following this, several scientific and research institutions in India have been studying various aspects of elephants in India.

One of the earliest scientists to study elephants in India has been Raman Sukumar. His jumbo journey began almost five decades ago. What sparked his interest, which grew into a passion, and led to significant contributions to the study of elephants?

Here is his story in his own words.

There was no hint during my early days of what I was eventually going to do. I was the usual city-bred child interested in games and various hobbies. I was very fond of books, an interest that I attribute to my maternal grandfather who was a bookseller. My maternal grandmother seems to have recognized a streak of the naturalist in me quite early on. I recall that for some reason she used to call me a vanavasi much before I ever went to a forest.

It was only when I reached high school that my eyes opened to the profound beauty of living creatures. At that time the world was also waking up to the crisis facing our environment—caused by pollution and the reckless exploitation of nature. The modern conservation movement was gathering momentum.

I had a passion for science and wanted to work in conservation. With this goal in mind I pursued botany at Loyola College and later at Vivekanand College in Madras. I was fortunate to have teachers who encouraged creative pursuits outside the framework of the regular syllabus.

I was also fortunate to be in Madras, which is almost unique in having a national park, the Guindy National Park, within the city. I spent most of my weekends at Guindy Park in the company of Selvakumar who was pursuing his studies in zoology. He had an amazing ability to describe anything, from an ant to a whale.

I still did not have the faintest idea of getting involved with elephants, although a passion for these pachyderms must have been latent in me. My first sighting of a wild elephant was not at all spectacular. In fact, I doubt if I saw an elephant at all. Our class was on a botanical tour of Mudumalai which is well known for its elephant population. I was talking to the Warden of Mudumalai when a rickety car rolled up and a familiar figure leaned out and boomed: “Hey boy what are you doing here?” It was Siddharth Buch, a naturalist-photographer and one of my earliest gurus in wildlife pursuits. He and some friends had driven from Madras in a rickety old jalopy. He enquired whether I had seen any elephants. I explained to him that we had only just arrived. He asked me to hop in as they were going for a drive along the Mayar river.

We had hardly gone a kilometer when Siddharth stopped the car and pointed towards a hillock and said “There is an elephant moving up the slope”. I strained my eyes but could not see any elephant. “Can’t you see the black shape moving through the bushes? That’s the back of the elephant.” It was midday and the jungle was a patchwork of light and shadow. I guess I did see something darker than a shadow but I could not see it moving. It may have been a rock but I nodded dutifully, meaning that I could indeed see a dark shape. “There my boy! I have shown you your first wild elephant!” announced Siddharth triumphantly. Whatever the true identity of that object, with the benefit of hindsight I must caution readers unaccustomed to the ways of wild elephants that it is always better to mistake a rock for an elephant than an elephant for a rock.

In August 1979 I joined the doctoral programme in ecology at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. Madhav Gadgil had established the country’s first academic programme in modern ecology. When the time came to select a research topic for my thesis Madhav suggested some problems, among them a study of elephant-human conflict. My ears pricked up when he mentioned elephants. I had wanted to work on large mammals and what was better than studying elephants, although I must confess that such a thought had never occurred to me earlier.

Thus began my study of elephants in southern India in 1980, and which continues for the rest of my life. Over nearly five decades I have been studying them, photographing them, chasing them, and being chased by them. To even begin to understand this fascinating animal one has to spend several years in the field. Every month, every year, one learns some new facet of its character.

Elephants can be funny. Elephants can be frightening. They can be heartwarming and their study can be addicting. If the tiger is the spirit of the jungle, secret and elusive, the elephant is its body, large, majestic, making its presence felt with authority.

We at CEE were fortunate to have interacted with Dr Sukumar, and gained tremendously from his long experience and patient guidance. This piece by him, written at our request, was originally published in a CEE publication Walking the Wild Path. Dr Sukumar was also one of the reviewers of CEE’s NatureScope India for the special issue on Endangered Elephants.   

Raman Sukumar is Professor and Chairman at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, and Founder Trustee of the Asian Nature Conservation Foundation, Bangalore, India. He is the author of several books.

–Mamata

Purple Tongues and an Ancient Land: Why India Was Once Called Jambudweep

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This has been a spectacular year for jamuns. Friends have been arriving at my doorstep with bowls of freshly picked fruit. Street vendors are doing brisk business. The paving beneath our neighbourhood tree is squishy and squashy with purple. Even the birds appear to be celebrating. Bulbuls squabble noisily over the ripest fruits, parakeets descend in unruly flocks.

As always, theories abound. “It mean there is going to be drought,” says one person with great confidence. Another attributes it to the delayed rains. A third insists that trees produce more fruit when they are stressed. But horticulturists point out that fruiting depends on a complex interplay of weather, flowering, pollination, soil moisture and tree health. A dry spell at one stage may help fruit set; a prolonged drought at another can reduce it. Hence they caution against any simple cause-and-effect attributions.

Whatever the reason for this year’s abundance, it has reminded me how easily we overlook one of India’s most extraordinary native trees.

The jamun (Syzygium cumini) has grown on this land for thousands of years. It belongs here. Long before apples arrived from colder climates or kiwis and dragon fruit found a place in our supermarkets, the jamun flourished in forests, along riverbanks, in village commons and temple courtyards. It asked for very little in return. A mature tree can withstand fierce summers, survive erratic rainfall, provide generous shade and still produce an astonishing crop of fruit when the monsoon arrives.

Its flowers feed bees and other pollinators. Its dense canopy shelters birds through the hottest months of the year. When the fruits ripen, they become a banquet for parrots, barbets, bulbuls, mynas, fruit bats, monkeys and squirrels. The fruits that fall to the ground feed insects and enrich the soil. A single old jamun tree supports an entire community of life, quietly performing ecological services long before we coined terms such as “biodiversity” and “ecosystem services.”

For us humans, the jamun has always been more than a seasonal treat. Rich in antioxidants, iron, vitamin C and fibre, it has occupied a respected place in Ayurveda for centuries. The seeds are traditionally dried and powdered, particularly for managing blood sugar, while the bark and leaves have found their way into a variety of medicinal preparations. Modern science continues to investigate many of these traditional uses, and although not every claim has been conclusively proven, there is little doubt that the jamun deserves its reputation as one of our healthiest indigenous fruits.

Yet what fascinates me most is not its nutritional value or even its ecological importance. It is the extraordinary honour that our ancestors bestowed upon it.

There was a time when this land was known not only as Bharat, but also as Jambudweep.

The name is deceptively simple. In Sanskrit, jambu means the jamun tree, while dvipa refers to a great landmass or continent. Put together, the name means “the land of the jamun.” It appears in Hindu Puranas, in Buddhist texts and in Jain cosmology. Each tradition interprets Jambudweep a little differently—sometimes as the central continent of the known world, sometimes more specifically as the Indian subcontinent—but all recognise it as the land associated with the magnificent jambu tree.

So even today, every sankalpa begins with “Jambudweepe, Bharata Varshe, Bharata Khande”. A Sankalpa is a formal intention or vow made by a priest or an individual before starting a puja, homa, or vrat. We can think of it like a cosmic address. Just as you use a GPS to pinpoint your exact location on Earth, a Sankalpa uses ancient geography to state exactly where and when you are performing the ritual. It tells the universe your location on a grand, cosmic scale before focusing on your specific name, family lineage, and current location.

An entire civilisation identified itself with a tree.

Modern nations usually derive their names from tribes, kingdoms, rivers or rulers. They commemorate conquests, dynasties and political boundaries. Ancient India, on the other hand, also chose to remember a tree that must have been so widespread, so familiar and so deeply woven into everyday life that it became a symbol of the land itself.

The old texts speak of gigantic jamun trees growing on mountain slopes, their fruits so abundant that the juice flowed into nearby streams, tinting the waters a deep purple. No one imagines these accounts to be literal descriptions. Ancient literature delighted in metaphor and imagination. But beneath the poetry lies an important historical clue. Vast stretches of the subcontinent must once have supported thriving populations of jamun trees, making them one of the defining features of the landscape.

It is a reminder that our ancestors viewed trees not simply as resources to be harvested or obstacles to development. They were companions in daily life, providers of food and medicine, landmarks for travellers, gathering places for communities and, occasionally, symbols worthy of naming an entire civilisation.

How things have changed! We get excited about imported blueberries and Californian cherries, discuss the merits of avocados with great seriousness and happily pay premium prices for fruits that have travelled halfway around the world. Meanwhile, the jamun arrives quietly every monsoon, sold from baskets lined with newspaper, accompanied by a small paper packet of salt and chilli powder. It stains our fingers, our lips and invariably our clothes, yet never complains about the lack of sophisticated marketing.

Sadly, many of the old jamun trees have disappeared. Expanding cities, road widening and shrinking open spaces have claimed countless mature specimens. Because the fruit bruises easily and has a short shelf life, it has never become a commercial superstar in the way that mangoes or apples have. And so, without quite noticing, we have allowed one of our most remarkable native trees to fade into the background.

This year’s generous harvest, whatever the weather’s role in producing it, feels like a timely reminder. We should celebrate the jamun not merely because it is delicious or healthy, but because it is part of our natural and cultural inheritance. Every old tree that survives deserves to be protected. Every new one that is planted is an investment not just in shade and fruit, but in biodiversity, history and memory.

So the next season when you buy a paper cone of jamuns from a roadside vendor, savour them slowly. Let your tongue turn gloriously purple. Watch the birds helping themselves to the fruits higher up the branches. And remember that you are tasting a fruit so deeply embedded in India’s landscape and imagination that it once lent its name to an entire civilisation.

Jambudweep—the Land of the Jamun. It is an ancient name, but perhaps it still has something important to teach us about belonging, gratitude and the quiet grandeur of a tree we have too often taken for granted.Summary

–Meena

Twiggy: The Quirky Bagworm Moth

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At first glance, it looks like a tiny piece of dried grass crawling across a wall.

Or perhaps a bundle of twigs that has mysteriously come to life.

Look closely, and you may be witnessing one of nature’s most ingenious engineers—the bagworm moth.

Bagworm moths belong to the family Psychidae, a group of over 1,300 species found across the world. India alone is home to more than a hundred recorded species, many of which remain little known outside scientific circles. Despite their modest size, these insects display a level of architectural skill that would put many builders to shame.

A House You Can Carry

Unlike most caterpillars, a bagworm larva begins life by building itself a portable home.

Using silk as mortar, it gathers whatever materials lie nearby—tiny twigs, dry leaves, grass blades, bark flakes, seeds, even grains of sand. Every species has its own choice of materials and characteristic style. Some create neat spindle-shaped cases, others make rough bundles of sticks, while tropical species may construct surprisingly elaborate structures.

The result is a camouflage masterpiece.

To an unsuspecting bird, the moving caterpillar looks like nothing more than a fragment of the tree itself.

And unlike a snail that outgrows its shell, the bagworm keeps enlarging its home as it grows, carefully adding fresh material throughout its larval life.

India’s Hidden Diversity

Bagworms occur throughout India—from the Himalayan foothills to the Western Ghats, from dry deciduous forests to urban gardens.

Entomologists from the Zoological Survey of India have documented more than 106 Indian species, although many more almost certainly await discovery, especially in biodiversity hotspots like the Western Ghats and Northeast India.

Several Indian species belong to genera such as Eumeta, Cryptothelea, Clania, Mahasena and Eumasia. Many feed on a wide range of plants, while others specialise on lichens growing on tree trunks.

People commonly refer to them simply as “bag caterpillars,” “case moths,” or by descriptive names equivalent to “leaf-bag insects” or “twig-case worms.” In Hindi, for instance, ‘jhola illi’ may be used; in Marathi, ‘pishvi ali’; in Kannda, ‘chila  ulu’; in Tamil, ‘pai or kuudu puzhu’, etc.   Generally, they are recognised more by the little bags hanging from trees than by the moth itself.

The Caterpillar That Never Really Leaves Home

The story becomes even stranger when adulthood arrives.

Male bagworms emerge as small, winged moths with feathery antennae, flying actively in search of mates.

Many females, however, never develop wings at all. Females of these species spend virtually their entire lives inside the protective case they built as caterpillars. They neither fly nor wander. Instead, they remain inside the bag while releasing pheromones that attract males. After mating, they lay eggs within the same case, and the next generation begins life inside the home built by their mother.

Nature has produced many unusual lifestyles, but few are as remarkable as an adult moth that never truly leaves its childhood home.

Forest Engineers in Miniature

The bag is much more than camouflage.

It protects the caterpillar from birds, parasitic wasps, spiders and sudden changes in temperature. Some cases are even pretty rain-proof.

Researchers believe the bags also reduce water loss during hot weather and provide insulation against cold nights.

The silk itself is extraordinarily strong. Scientists have noted that bagworm silk possesses impressive durability, making it of interest in materials research.

Friends…and Occasionally Foes

Most Indian bagworms quietly recycle plant material and form part of healthy forest ecosystems.

A few species, however, can become agricultural or horticultural pests when their numbers increase dramatically. They feed on leaves of ornamental plants, fruit trees and plantation crops, occasionally causing noticeable defoliation. Fortunately, such outbreaks are relatively uncommon, and natural predators usually help keep populations under control.

More to Come!

As recently as 2023, researchers described a previously unknown bagworm, Eumasia venefica, from Kerala. Unlike many relatives, its larvae have a close association with lichens and possess unusual case-building habits, reminding us that India’s insect diversity still contains many surprises.

Watch out for those walking twiggy bundles! Who knows if you will stumble on a new one!

–Meena

The Golden Mystery: Amber and the Lost Amber Room

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Every year, 26 June is observed as International Amber Day, a celebration of one of nature’s most extraordinary creations. Unlike gemstones that are forged under immense heat and pressure deep within the Earth, amber begins life as something far more ordinary—sticky tree resin. Over millions of years, this resin hardens and fossilizes into a warm, golden substance that has fascinated people across cultures for thousands of years.

Amber is often called “sunshine trapped in stone.” Its rich honey, butterscotch, cognac, and cherry hues have inspired myths, jewellery, medicine, scientific discoveries, and one of history’s greatest unsolved mysteries—the disappearance of the legendary Amber Room.

Nature’s Time Capsule

Amber is not tree sap, as is commonly believed. Sap carries water and nutrients within a tree. Resin, on the other hand, is a protective substance produced when a tree is injured, sealing wounds and defending against insects and disease.

When resin flows over small insects, spiders, feathers, leaves, flowers, or even tiny lizards, these organisms can become trapped. If conditions are just right, the resin is buried under sediments and, over millions of years, transforms into amber. Unlike most fossils, which preserve bones or shells, amber often preserves entire organisms in astonishing three-dimensional detail.

These inclusions make amber invaluable to scientists. Tiny air bubbles reveal the atmosphere of prehistoric forests. Preserved pollen helps reconstruct ancient ecosystems. Even microscopic bacteria and fungi have survived inside amber for tens of millions of years.

For palaeontologists, amber is less a gemstone than a perfectly preserved archive of life on Earth. In fact, amber entered popular imagination through Jurassic Park, whose opening premise is that a mosquito that had fed on a dinosaur millions of years ago becomes trapped in sticky tree resin, which later fossilizes into amber, supposedly preserving the dinosaur’s blood—and its DNA—inside the mosquito’s abdomen. Scientists in the story use this DNA to clone dinosaurs, making amber the unlikely hero of one of cinema’s most iconic scientific adventures. While the preservation of insects in amber is entirely real, the survival of usable dinosaur DNA for 66 million years is not supported by modern science. Even so, the film brilliantly transformed a little-known fossil into a symbol of prehistoric mystery, inspiring countless people to take an interest in palaeontology and the natural world.

The Gold of the Baltic

Although amber is found in several parts of the world—including Myanmar, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Canada, and even parts of India—the finest and most abundant deposits occur around the Baltic Sea.

For over 5,000 years, Baltic amber travelled across Europe through the famous Amber Road, an ancient trade route linking northern Europe with the Mediterranean. Long before the Silk Road became famous, merchants carried amber southwards in exchange for wine, glass, spices, and precious metals. The Romans valued amber so highly that it sometimes fetched prices exceeding those of gold by weight.

Many cultures also believed amber possessed healing powers. It was worn to ward off illness, ground into powders for medicine, and even carried as a protective charm.

The Eighth Wonder of the World

If amber itself is remarkable, its most famous artistic creation was extraordinary.

The Amber Room was one of the most lavish interiors ever built.

Constructed in the early eighteenth century in the Kingdom of Prussia, it featured over six tonnes of amber painstakingly carved into intricate decorative panels. Craftsmen combined amber mosaics with gold leaf, mirrors, gemstones, and exquisite carvings to create walls that glowed with warm golden light.

In 1716, Frederick William I presented the room as a diplomatic gift to Peter the Great, symbolizing growing ties between Prussia and Russia.

The room was eventually installed in the magnificent Catherine Palace, where generations of visitors marvelled at what many described as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”

Sunlight reflecting from thousands of amber tiles created an almost magical glow unlike anything else in European architecture.

A Treasure Lost During War

The Amber Room’s greatest chapter is also its saddest.

During the Second World War, German forces invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Conservators attempted to protect the fragile amber panels, but the material had become too brittle to dismantle safely. Instead, they covered the room with wallpaper in the hope that occupying forces might overlook it.

The attempt failed.

Specialist German units removed the entire room in just over a day, packed it into dozens of crates, and transported it to the Königsberg Castle, where it was publicly displayed once again.

Then, it vanished.

As Allied bombing intensified and the war drew to a close, the Amber Room disappeared. Whether it was destroyed in fires, hidden in underground bunkers, loaded onto ships that later sank, or concealed in forgotten mines remains unknown.

Despite decades of investigations across Germany, Poland, Russia, and the Baltic region, no verified trace of the original Amber Room has ever been found.

The mystery has inspired countless books, documentaries, archaeological expeditions, and treasure hunters. Every few years, reports emerge claiming that the room has finally been located in caves, tunnels, castles, or shipwrecks. None has yet been confirmed.

The Amber Room remains one of the greatest missing treasures of the twentieth century.

Recreating a Masterpiece

The story, however, did not end with its disappearance.

In 1979, Soviet conservators embarked on an ambitious project to recreate the Amber Room using surviving photographs, architectural drawings, and traditional amber-working techniques.

The painstaking restoration took more than two decades. Craftsmen had to relearn skills that had nearly disappeared, sourcing thousands of kilograms of Baltic amber and hand-carving each decorative panel.

The reconstructed Amber Room was formally inaugurated in 2003, coinciding with the 300th anniversary of Saint Petersburg.

Visitors today can once again experience something close to the original splendour, even though the fate of the authentic masterpiece remains unknown.

Why Amber Still Matters

On International Amber Day, perhaps the greatest lesson is that the most valuable treasures are not always those that glitter the brightest. Sometimes they are those that preserve the memories of worlds long gone—whether hidden inside a tiny fossilized drop of resin or concealed somewhere, perhaps still waiting to reveal the final chapter of the Amber Room’s remarkable story.

–Meena

PIC: SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE

A Pesky Problem: Pest Management

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This week we have been exploring quaint expressions that describe human situations using animal analogies. Sometimes these become ‘bees in our bonnet’ as new analogies and comparisons buzz around in our imagination! One of these analogies is our description of someone as a “pest”, and our irritated response to such a person “Don’t pester me!”

Why is the word associated with persistent irritating behaviour in human beings? For that we need to go back to nature.  

A pest is defined as any living thing which humans consider troublesome to themselves, their possessions, or the environment. This includes plants, pathogens, invertebrates, vertebrates or any organism that harms an ecosystem. In its broadest sense a pest is a competitor to humanity. Pests can cause issues with crops, human, or animal health, buildings, and wilderness areas.

Looking at insects alone, it is estimated that 900 million insect types can be ‘pests’ not in nature, but in a world where humans have modified nature to suit their own requirements. And the human species has always found ways, though not wise at times, to tackle insects and other living organisms that they did not like, or want around them. From the earliest times, the battle between humans and ‘pests’ has taken many forms.

Cave dwellers probably swatted mosquitoes or used smoke to ward off the bloodsuckers. As far back as 2500 BC, people used sulfur compounds to control mites and insects. In 1200 B.C., the Chinese deployed predatory ants against pests such as beetles and caterpillars.

With growing populations, and crowded and insanitary living conditions bed bugs and rats proliferated. One of the first publicly advertised pest control companies was the 1690 company H. Tiffin and Son Ltd. in London. The company promoted rat and bed bug control using methods and chemical compounds they invented. Their trademark was “Bug Destroyers to Her Majesty and the Royal Family.”

Probably one of the hardest pests to control are rats. Over the ages, methods to control rats have tried everything from chemicals, plant extracts, prayers, chants, terrier dogs, and music. Ratsbane was one of the first chemicals used. Barbers sold it in the Middle Ages. Then it became a popular item sold by street vendors. Vermin exterminators became a legitimate and in-demand profession. Till date, rats continue to pose a cheeky challenge to every counter measure to control them, and proliferate even in the most sophisticated cities of the world (New York has a serious rat infestation issue).  

Pests are a major threat to health worldwide. Many insects are the primary or intermediate hosts or carriers that transmit debilitating human diseases, ranging from malaria, to Lymes Disease, to Zika. Rodents and birds are also secondary hosts for a large number of diseases transmitted by the parasites that they carry into the human environment — ticks, lice, fleas and mites.

Crops are also at risk from pests which include aphids, caterpillars, whiteflies, locusts and mites. These insects cause damage by feeding on foliage, sucking plant sap, or transmitting diseases. These pests can devastate agricultural yields, reducing quality and quantity, and leading to significant food shortages.

Pests are equally threatening in human habitations. Termites, wood-boring beetles, carpenter ants, and rodents Termites, wood-boring beetles, carpenter ants, and rodents are the primary pests that destroy buildings by compromising structural integrity.

The universal frustration to successfully manage and control pests in every sphere of life, spurred a global effort to increase awareness about pest-related challenges and professional pest control solutions.

On 6 June 2017 the Chinese Pest Control Association hosted 300 participants including industry experts, media representatives, researchers and academic professionals to discuss how to promote awareness about the role of pest management in public health protection. In 2018, the Global Summit of Pest Management Services for Public Health and Food Safety was held in Portugal, and it was agreed to accord international recognition to an annual World Pest Day.

Since then World Pest Day is observed annually on June 6th across the world. The initiative aims to improve public, government and media awareness, strengthen the professional image of the pest management industry, encourage scientific pest control and highlight major threats caused by small pests. The day promotes scientific and responsible pest control practices while creating awareness about the threats posed by pests worldwide.

Sadly, in the past decade the threat of pest-borne diseases is growing due to climate change, international travel, globalization of trade and increasing urbanization taking over the natural habitats of disease-bearing pests. A better understanding of these diseases is essential for managing them in the future.

Parallely there is ever-growing need to produce more food, fodder, fibre and wood. The lifestyles of a number of insects seem to clash with people’s economic interests. There is a competition for resources and humans tend to describe all competitors as pests that have to be fought on a war footing. When the ‘wonder drug’ DDT was invented in 1939 we thought that the war against pests had been won. But soon insects developed a resistance to pesticides. Fighting pests with chemicals alone is not the answer as we have also learned that these chemicals can have terrible side effects on all living things including humans. We can neither turn back to a chemical-free earth, nor can we continue to poison ourselves.

While technology and researches in more effective chemical measures to counter pests continue to advance, what is perhaps being lost is a better understanding of the ‘pests’ and some traditional, and less toxic ways of meeting the challenge. One way is to take a closer look at pest species and their interaction with the environment, especially in agriculture. A combination of cultural, biological, physical and chemical techniques to manage and control pests is called Integrated Pest Management (IPM).  

IPM is an eco-system-based long-term strategy that minimizes economic costs while protecting human health and the environment by using chemical pesticides only as a last resort.  Effective IPM aims at a synergistic integration of five main methods.

Making the environment inhospitable to pests through crop rotation, planting pest-resistant crop varieties, and proper sanitation (removing food and water sources).

Using natural predators especially certain birds, parasites, or pathogens to manage pest populations (e.g., introducing ladybugs to eat aphids or utilizing bio-pesticides).

Using traps, barriers, netting, or temperature manipulation to physically block or remove pests.

Applying synthetic or natural pesticides in a highly targeted manner taking care to minimize unnecessary environmental impact.

Using genetically modified, resistant plant hybrids or crops (like Bt corn) that naturally deter specific pests.

IPM provides a sustainable, eco-friendly alternative that keeps pest populations in check while preserving ecosystem harmony.

“Pest” is a word conveniently created by us to describe whatever we perceive as a deterrent to our well-being. In Nature every creature has a role to play, the distortion of the role begins when we disturb or alter the natural balance.

In an age when technology seems to be the panacea for all ills, it would be wise to stop and remember, as well as respect, that the health of the ecosystem is the key determinant for the health of all living things.

–Mamata

Borim Kim: Climate Activist Every Action Counts

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As we get ready to celebrate one more World Environment Day, for a few days, positive stories about actions to ‘save’ the environment will share space with the daily dose of gloom and doom that have become our daily fare. This week Meena wrote about how Governments are trying to make an impact, or measure the impact of global and national efforts to mitigate the overwhelming consequences of so many wrong steps.

While these are large-scale projects undertaken on large scales, throughout the history of environmental efforts, there have also been heart-warming stories of smaller efforts by small groups, communities, and even individuals, who have taken up causes and worked relentlessly for these. Most of these do not make the headlines, but they do make a difference in their own time and space. And some of these receive recognition.

One of these recognitions is The Goldman Environmental Prize. It was founded in 1989 by San Francisco civic leaders and philanthropists Richard and Rhoda Goldman as a way to demonstrate the international nature of environmental problems and draw public attention to the global need for action.

The Goldman Prize recognizes grassroots environmental champions for significant efforts to protect and restore the natural environment. It considers those leading campaigns locally, and effecting positive change through community participation as ‘grassroots leaders’. It is a recognition of “People of ordinary backgrounds doing extraordinary things to save our Earth”.

The Prize believes that a strong environmental movement requires diverse talents, perspectives, and leadership. Often referred to as the Green Nobel, the awards are conferred every year to outstanding environmental advocates from each of the world’s six inhabited geographic regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands and Island nations, North America, South and Central America.

The 2026 Goldman Environmental Prizes were announced on Earth Day this year. A unique feature of this year’s prizes is that all the six winners are women!

Let us celebrate these women this month. Starting with Asia, and young blood

BORIS KIM

Activist Boris Kim and her organization Youth 4 Climate Change won the first youth-led climate litigation in Asia.

It was the summer of 2018, and South Korea was in the throes of a record-breaking heat wave. Borim Kim had just graduated from college and was working on energy conservation in a self-sufficient community in Seoul. The heat wave took a heavy toll as people struggled in buildings with no air conditioning. Borim realized that people, as individuals, could not escape the impacts of climate change. In her search for a way to become safer in the face of climate crisis, Borim found that many young people had similar concerns, but no solutions. This led her to start Youth 4 Climate Action (Y4CA).

Y4CA wanted to move the conversation away from individual solutions to the crisis, and work toward a fundamental transformation in society. The group started by organizing climate strikes and setting up meetings with decision-makers, including South Korea’s minister of education and minister of climate, energy, and environment. But the group soon realized that that just by demanding change, their safety in the face of the climate crisis was not guaranteed.

So in 2020, Borim decided to turn to the judiciary, which could require the legislature to act. Along with Y4CA, she organized a group of 19 youth who sued the South Korean government in the country’s constitutional court. Their suit, the first of its kind in Asia, made the case that the government was violating young people’s fundamental right to live in a clean environment by failing to adequately act on the climate crisis. Specifically, the plaintiffs contended that the government’s existing emissions reductions targets at the time — which sought to reduce emissions to 30 percent below 2020 levels by 2030 — were too weak. They argued that the absence of any additional planning past 2030 left future generations vulnerable. (Borim was not among the initial 19 plaintiffs, but she later joined the case, along with more than 200 others.)

In 2024, in a groundbreaking victory for the youth, the court agreed that the right to a clean environment includes protection from harms related to climate change. On that basis, it found that the government was violating youths’ rights by failing set emissions reductions targets for 2031 through 2049, in line with an existing national pledge to meet net-zero emissions by 2050. It ordered the Korean National Assembly to set such targets by February 2026.

Though the case represented the first youth-led national level climate victory outside of Europe, the plaintiffs didn’t win on all of their claims. Also due to political instability and inertia, the set targets were not achieved.

While the specific goal could not be achieved, the youth movement and the response from the judiciary were milestones in themselves. It was an affirmation that South Korean citizens had a basic right to “exist safely in the face of climate change”. As Borim Kim said, Ultimately, it created a red line from which the country’s climate policies would not go backwards.

Borim Kim continues to work to ensure that climate action moves forward in South Korea. Y4CA is also sharing lessons learned with other youth-led groups across Asia, including a group from Japan that is bringing a constitutional climate claim there. And she’s continuing to build the climate movement in South Korea. That includes making sure that youth and those who most directly face the inequalities of climate change have a voice in decision-making.

Borim Kim is the face of the future for the new generation that must bear the heavy brunt of climate change. A true ‘grassroots leader’ and deserving winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize.

Happy World Environment Day 2026.

–Mamata

The Report Card Nature Gives Us

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Every year, World Environment Day arrives with familiar images — children planting saplings, speeches about sustainability, green logos replacing corporate blue for a day, and social media flooded with pictures of forests, oceans, and endangered animals.

And then, by the next morning, the world goes back to business as usual.

Factories continue to pollute rivers. Wetlands quietly disappear under concrete. Species vanish before most people even learn their names. Cities expand. Forests shrink. Temperatures rise.

Which raises an uncomfortable question: if every country claims to care about nature, who is actually doing a good job?

Surprisingly, the world has no single official answer.

There is no universally accepted “Nature Conservation Score” for countries. No equivalent of a cricket points table or Olympic medal tally for ecological responsibility. Instead, scientists, universities, conservation groups, and international organisations have created different systems to measure different aspects of environmental performance.

One of the best-known systems is the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), developed by Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy and Columbia University. The EPI attempts to rank countries using indicators such as air quality, climate policies, biodiversity protection, water management, pollution control, and ecosystem vitality. In essence, it asks a broad question: How seriously is a country managing its environmental responsibilities?

The rankings often produce interesting results. Countries celebrated for economic growth may perform poorly environmentally. Others, less visible on the global stage, emerge as ecological leaders because of stronger conservation policies or lower environmental damage.

But the EPI is only one lens.

More recently, researchers introduced a more focused Nature Conservation Index (NCI) — an attempt to specifically measure how well countries protect biodiversity and ecosystems. Unlike broader environmental rankings, the NCI looks more directly at habitat conservation, threats to species, land-use pressures, governance systems, and future ecological risks.

This distinction matters. A country may have good urban pollution control but still destroy forests. Another may generate renewable energy while severely damaging wetlands. Environmental protection is a complex web of interconnected systems.

Then there is the Living Planet Index, produced by World Wildlife Fund. This index does not mainly rank countries. Instead, it tracks wildlife populations across the planet. And its findings are sobering. Many species populations worldwide have shown dramatic declines over the past decades. The Living Planet Index functions almost like a planetary pulse monitor. It asks: Is life itself becoming richer or poorer?

Another globally influential system comes from the International Union for Conservation of Nature — better known through its famous Red List of threatened species. The Red List categorises plants and animals according to extinction risk: vulnerable, endangered, critically endangered, and so on. When a species enters those categories, it becomes more than a scientific statistic. It becomes a warning signal about collapsing ecosystems.

Meanwhile, the Convention on Biological Diversity, linked to the United Nations, tracks biodiversity targets globally. Countries commit to goals involving protected areas, restoration, invasive species control, and ecosystem protection. These are not rankings in the conventional sense, but they form a vast international attempt to monitor humanity’s relationship with nature.

Why do all these measurements matter?

Because societies pay attention to what they measure.

Governments obsess over GDP growth because GDP is measured constantly. Investors track stock indices daily. Universities chase rankings. Sports teams live by points tables.

Environmental indicators attempt to bring the same discipline to ecological survival.

Without measurement, environmental destruction easily hides behind rhetoric. Governments can announce “green missions” while rivers die quietly. Corporations can advertise sustainability while their activities may lead ecosystems to degrade invisibly. Numbers are imperfect, but they create accountability.

And they also expose an uncomfortable truth: economic success and ecological wisdom are not always the same thing In fact, they are usually contrary..

Modern economies often reward extraction more than preservation. A forest cut down for mining can increase GDP immediately. A wetland converted into real estate may generate investment and jobs. Yet the ecological loss — biodiversity, groundwater recharge, carbon storage, flood protection — rarely appears in economic accounting.

India illustrates the challenge vividly. Few countries possess India’s ecological diversity — Himalayan ecosystems, rainforests, mangroves, coral reefs, deserts, grasslands, and rich wildlife habitats. At the same time, India faces immense developmental pressures: urbanisation, infrastructure expansion, industrialisation, mining, and rising consumption.

This creates difficult questions with no easy answers.

How much forest should be sacrificed for highways?

Can renewable energy projects damage fragile ecosystems?

How should tourism be balanced against biodiversity protection?

Every country now faces versions of these dilemmas.

That is why World Environment Day should perhaps evolve beyond symbolic tree-planting ceremonies and recycled slogans. The real environmental challenge is not whether humanity loves nature in theory. It is whether nations are willing to measure honestly what they are destroying, preserving, or restoring.

Nature conservation measures try to correct this blindness. Because ultimately, these indices are not really judging forests or rivers. They are judging us. They ask whether humanity is behaving like a responsible custodian of the planet — or merely a temporary consumer exhausting an inheritance built over millions of years.

And perhaps the most unsettling reality is this:

Nature does not care about our speeches, campaigns, or hashtags.

It responds only to actions.

–Meena

Nature’s Rule-Breakers: Flora and Fauna That Refuse to Behave “Normally”

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When we are children, nature is explained to us in neat categories. Birds fly. Fish swim. Spiders spin webs. Plants make food from sunlight and quietly stay rooted in place. Mammals give birth to live young.

And then, slowly, nature begins to reveal its mischievous side.

A spider hunts like a tiger instead of spinning a web. A fish walks on land. A plant eats insects. A mammal lays eggs. A mushroom traps worms. The more one studies biology, the more one realises that evolution has very little respect for the tidy boxes humans create.

Take the Huntsman spider, for instance. Most of us imagine spiders as patient architects sitting in intricate webs, waiting for prey to blunder in. The huntsman spider does something entirely different. It stalks and ambushes prey, relying on speed and agility rather than silken traps. In many ways, it behaves more like a tiny leopard than a conventional spider.

It is not alone.

The Jumping spider has remarkably sharp vision and leaps onto prey with astonishing precision. The Wolf spider actively chases its victims across the ground. The Trapdoor spider lives in underground burrows and springs out like an ambush attacker in a war film.

These creatures remind us that even within a single group, evolution can produce wildly different lifestyles.

Then there are mammals — supposedly the most familiar class of animals to humans. Mammals, we are taught, give birth to live young. Except some do not.

The Platypus looks as though it was assembled from spare parts: duck bill, otter feet, beaver tail — and it lays eggs, and it is a mammal! The male even has venomous spurs. Its cousin, the Short-beaked echidna, also lays eggs despite being a mammal covered in fur.These monotremes are evolutionary oddities, survivors from a far older branch of mammalian history. If they were discovered as fossils rather than living creatures, many scientists might have assumed them to be fictional hybrids.

Birds, too, refuse to follow the script.

We instinctively associate birds with flight, yet the Ostrich abandoned the skies to become the world’s fastest running bird. The Penguin transformed wings into underwater flippers and effectively “flies” through the sea instead of air. The Kiwi of New Zealand behaves almost like a nocturnal mammal, shuffling through forests at night with a powerful sense of smell.

And some creatures seem unable to decide whether they belong on land or in water. The Mudskipper spends large amounts of time outside water, “walking” across mudflats using its fins. The Walking catfish can wriggle across land between ponds. The Climbing perch survives out of water for surprisingly long periods.

Plants provide perhaps the most startling examples of all because we rarely think of them as active or predatory. The Venus flytrap snaps shut on insects with startling speed. Pitcher plant species lure prey into liquid-filled traps where victims drown and decompose. The Sundew uses sticky tentacles to ensnare insects. The underwater Bladderwort employs tiny vacuum traps. These carnivorous plants evolved in nutrient-poor soils where ordinary plant life struggled. Instead of relying solely on the earth for nourishment, they turned to meat.

Some plants go further still and become outright thieves. The parasitic Dodder wraps itself around other plants and steals nutrients directly from them. The Indian pipe is ghostly white because it lacks chlorophyll almost entirely.

Even fungi refuse to stay within expectations. Certain fungi trap microscopic worms using tiny snares and digest them alive. The common Oyster mushroom can behave like a microscopic predator. Ophiocordyceps unilateralis goes a step further, infecting ants and manipulating their behaviour before killing them in locations ideal for fungal growth.

Nature’s rebels are not limited to these. The Electric eel generates electricity powerful enough to stun prey. The Leaf sheep, a tiny sea slug, steals chloroplasts from algae and briefly becomes “solar-powered.” The New Caledonian crow manufactures tools, while the Naked mole-rat lives in colonies resembling ant societies, complete with a queen.

The deeper one looks into nature, the clearer it becomes that “normal” is mostly a human invention. Evolution does not work toward ideals or categories. It experiments endlessly. If a strange adaptation improves survival — whether that means a spider abandoning webs, a fish walking on land, or a plant eating insects — nature keeps it.

In fact, these biological rebels may teach us the most important lesson of all: survival often belongs not to the strongest or fastest, but to the adaptable, the unconventional, and the creatures willing to break the rules.

–Meena

Pic: Hunstman spider, Meena Raghunathan