Documenting India’s civilisational and natural heritage.
Scientists from the ICAR-National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources (ICAR-NBFGR), Lucknow, have described the new species as Chromis veneta sp. nov., following detailed genetic and morphological studies of blue-green chromis collected during marine biodiversity research in Lakshadweep.
Strofes Technologies says it has received a work order to install long-range camera surveillance for cheetah monitoring at Virangana Durgavati Tiger Reserve, marking another deployment of Indian-built monitoring technology in a protected area being prepared for the future expansion of Project Cheetah.
The Wildlife Conservation Trust (WCT), in collaboration with Netherlands-based Addax Data Science, has developed a species-recognition model specifically for the Central Indian landscape. The system has been designed to automatically process camera-trap imagery and classify wildlife into 40 distinct categories.
Named Apristurus drona, the new shark was described by Sweta Beura, K. K. Bineesh and Dhriti Banerjee of the Zoological Survey of India. Their study was published on June 9, 2026, in the taxonomic journal Zootaxa. The researchers propose the common name Arabian slender catshark.
The team selected 12 locations situated between about 8 and 44 kilometres from the Western Ghats. Each sacred grove was paired with a nearby home garden located roughly one to two kilometres away. Fieldwork was conducted during January and February of 2024 and 2025, when insectivorous birds are particularly active in the region.
Thoothukudi’s salt pans are more than industrial landscapes. Their shallow saline waters can provide productive feeding and resting habitat for waterbirds. The combination of open water, exposed mud, microorganisms and other aquatic food resources creates conditions that attract flamingos and numerous smaller migratory species during their seasonal movements.
The new species has been recorded from deep waters off Kerala and the Wadge Bank region, where specimens were collected at depths ranging from approximately 400 to 600 metres. The largest known individual measured 131.5 centimetres, making the Arabian Skate a substantial member of India’s deep-sea batoid fauna.
Ongole cattle take their name from Ongole in present-day Prakasam district of Andhra Pradesh. Historically the area formed part of Nellore district, explaining why the breed was also widely known internationally as Nellore cattle.
Beyond creating a genetic reference for each species, the scientists reconstructed aspects of their ancient population history. Their analysis indicates that all four experienced substantial declines in effective population size during climatic fluctuations of the Pleistocene, revealing that the evolutionary history of these birds was shaped by environmental change long before today’s pressures from deforestation, hunting and habitat fragmentation emerged.
The release, carried out on 7 August 2026, included five Slender-billed Vultures (Gyps tenuirostris) and five White-rumped Vultures (Gyps bengalensis). The birds were released from the Jatayu Soft Release Centre at Tewaripal in Biswanath district under a long-running conservation programme aimed at rebuilding wild populations of South Asia’s severely depleted Gyps vultures.
