The 25-month-old cheetah is said to be an offspring of Gamini, a female cheetah translocated from South Africa. Credit: X/@byadavbjp

People gather outside American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) as more than 1,000 people, including Hezbollah fighters and medics, were wounded when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon, according to a security source, in Beirut, Lebanon on September 17, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Much-awaited J&K Assembly election begin today, 219 candidates in fray

Ending a decade-long wait, the first phase of Assembly election in 24 constituencies in seven districts of Jammu and Kashmir will be held today (September 18, 2024). Multi-tier security arrangements have been put in place for the Assembly election, the first in the Union Territory after the revocation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 in August 2019.

At least 9 dead, thousands injured as Hezbollah is hit by a wave of exploding pagers in Lebanon, Syria

Hundreds of handheld pagers exploded near simultaneously in parts of Lebanon and Syria, killing at least nine people — including members of the militant group Hezbollah and a young girl — and wounding several thousand, officials said. They pointed the finger at Israel in what appeared to be a sophisticated, remote attack. Among those wounded was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon. The mysterious incident came amid rising tensions between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah

Ready to return to work, but haunted by a ‘fear psychosis’, West Bengal doctors tell SC

Members of the West Bengal Junior Doctors Front told the Supreme Court that they would “in principle” want to rejoin work after over a month of protests against the brutal rape and murder of their young colleague at the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata following assurances from Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at a meeting, but they were still haunted by a “fear psychosis”. Appearing before a three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, senior advocate Indira Jaising, for the junior doctors, confided in the courtroom that those responsible behind the “cover-up” about the gruesome crime on August 9 were still “roaming” in the hospital and would subject them to victimisation on rejoining work.

Atishi: From educationalist to Delhi’s third woman CM

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convenor Arvind Kejriwal ended the suspense over his successor by naming 43-year-old Atishi Marlena (now known only by her first name) as the new Delhi Chief Minister. With her elevation to the top post, Ms. Atishi will be third woman Chief Minister of the Union Territory after Sushma Swaraj and Sheila Dikshit.

PM Modi lists NDA government’s 100 days’ achievements to benefit the poor, farmers, youth and women

Prime Minister Narendra Modi highlighted important steps taken by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government for the poor, farmers, youth, and women during the first 100 days of its current term. “Today marks 100 days of the NDA government’s current term. In this time, numerous key decisions have been made to benefit the poor, farmers, youth, and to empower women. Among these, the government has committed to build three crore new concrete houses and announced a ₹2 lakh crore package aimed at uplifting the youth,” Mr. Modi said addressing beneficiaries of Subhadra, a newly launched scheme for women in Odisha, at Bhubaneswar.

2 years of Project Cheetah: Hasn’t been an easy road, says Bhupender Yadav

Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said the two years of Project Cheetah have been challenging, with several hurdles, from habitat adjustments to ensuring the cubs’ survival in the wild, successfully overcome. Mr. Yadav said the project, envisioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is a globally pioneering effort, symbolising hope for successfully restoring lost wildlife populations and ecosystems.

Congress will ensure Jammu and Kashmir gets back statehood: Kharge

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said his party guarantees the rights of Jammu and Kashmir and will ensure it gets back the status of a full-fledged state. Mr. Kharge also highlighted the party’s promise of free treatment of  ₹25 lakh for every family and a super-specialty hospital in every district. He said this will create a healthy society.

Hindenburg-SEBI chief row: Madhabi Buch’s answers raise more questions, says Congress

The Congress said the “answers” being provided by SEBI chairperson Madhabi Buch and her husband raise even more questions and asserted that “the facts” that have been put out on their financial dealings have not been contradicted so far by anyone. His remarks come a day after Ms. Sitharaman said Ms. Madhabi Buch and her husband Dhaval Buch are defending themselves and putting out facts contradicting the allegations of Congress.

Jarange launches indefinite fast over Maratha quota – his sixth in a year

Maratha activist Manoj Jarange has demanded the implementation of the draft notification of the sage-soyare (relatives from the family tree) and allocated Kunbi ( Maratha sub-caste covered under OBC) certificates. The activist, who initiated the sixth indefinite hunger strike from Tuesday (September 17, 2024) midnight onwards, has been agitating since October 25. He launched the stir from midnight at his native Antarwali Sarati village of Jalna district

Manipur internet ban lifted; schools in Imphal Valley reopen

Schools, colleges and higher educational institutions in the five districts of Manipur’s Imphal Valley reopened after 10 days of violence and protests that led to the clamping of curfew in three of these districts. The internet ban in these districts was lifted on Monday. On Tuesday, Manipur Chief Minister Nongthombam Biren Singh said the 18-month-long conflict affected the State’s economy and slowed development. 

Kolkata doctor’s rape-murder case: ED raids six locations in Kolkata over RG Kar ‘financial irregularities’

Enforcement Directorate officers started simultaneous raids at six locations in Kolkata, including the residence of a TMC MLA, in connection with their investigation into the alleged financial irregularities at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, an officer of the agency said. Search operations were underway at the Sithi residence of TMC’s Serampore MLA Sudipto Roy and the house of a medicine dealer, besides four other places, he said.

Sean ’Diddy’ Combs jailed by judge after sex trafficking indictment

 Sean “Diddy” Combs headed to jail to await trial in a federal sex trafficking case that accuses him of presiding over a sordid empire of sexual crimes protected by blackmail and shocking acts of violence. The music mogul is charged with racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. The indictment against him lists allegations that go back to 2008.

Booker Prize 2024 shortlist features most women in its history

American writers Percival Everett and Rachel Kushner are among six finalists shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction this year, organisers said. Five of the six authors are women — the largest number in the prize’s 55-year history. Everett, a 2022 Booker finalist for The Trees, is again nominated for James, which reimagines Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of its main Black character, the enslaved man Jim.

Increasing tree cover is often seen as a positive outcome of biodiversity conservation, and a much-needed effort to combat climate change. What happens, then, if tree cover increases in areas that historically hosted a different habitat?

In a study published on June 5 in the journal Global Change Biology, scientists of the Universities of Witwatersrand, Cape Town, and Oxford reported that more trees in open ecosystems like savannahs and grasslands have substantially reduced the number of native grassland birds. In the African Savannah in particular, the population of grassland birds has declined by more than 20%.

Many become one

Grasslands and savannahs are biodiverse habitats in tropical and temperate regions throughout the world. They cover nearly 40% of the earth’s total landmass, and are home to many endemic and at-risk species of plants and animals. From megaherbivores like elephants, rhinoceroses, and buffaloes in Africa and Asia to grassland birds like the bustards, floricans, and grouse of the Himalayan grasslands and American prairies, open ecosystems have it all. However, we are rapidly losing them.

Activities threatening them include the conversion of grasslands, intensive agriculture, loss due to erosion, large-scale development projects, overgrazing. But lurking among these usual suspects is also a highly unusual one: trees. 

The increase of tree and shrub cover is called woody encroachment — and it is widespread across most ecosystems. Woody encroachment entails the conversion of open habitats to habitats with greater tree cover and/or shrub density. The end result is the homogenisation of an ecosystem, meaning a diverse, multi-layered ecosystem turns into a uniform layer of woody plants.

This is a dire prospect because open ecosystems are characterised by a grassy understory and a scattering of native tree species. They are generally maintained by certain natural as well as human activities like grazing and fire, which are called disturbance regimes because they work in tandem to limit the growth of tree species. But once these regimes are disrupted, trees have the calm they need to establish themselves and start woody encroachment.

When trees have ill-effects

A higher concentration of carbon dioxide in the air due to ongoing climate change also encourages deep-rooted woody plants in grasslands to proliferate.

“Increased atmospheric CO2 is likely to promote trees over grasses because the C3 photosynthetic pathway used by trees is favoured under high CO2 conditions,” Jayashree Ratnam, programme director, Wildlife Biology and Conservation at the National Center for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru, said. “Once trees become dominant in a system, they may further suppress grasses through shading and fire suppression.”

Dr. Ratnam studies the biophysical and anthropogenic drivers of tropical savannah and rangeland structure and function and forest-savannah transition zones.

Woody encroachment is widespread worldwide. Manystudieshave unearthed evidence of different drivers of encroachment in different continents. Fire suppression and fragmentation dominate in the South American grasslands whereas more carbon dioxide and variations in rainfall do so in Australia and Africa.

Inside and outside parks

Closer home, in India, grasslands occur across different climatic regimes: the country’s west sports arid grasslands; floodplain grasslands dot the Himalayan landscape; and the high-altitude Shola grasslands crown the Western Ghats, to name a few. In the Himalayan foothills, the tall, wet grasslands are biodiverse habitats inhabited by iconic species such as Indian one-horned rhinoceroses, swamp deer, Bengal floricans, swamp grass babblers, and some other endemic species.

These grasslands are highly threatened, not least because previous damage has broken them up into fragmented patches in a sea of forests, agriculture, and other human-derived habitats. Such fragmentation leaves these patches even more vulnerable than before.

Most of today’s wet grasslands occur inside protected areas such as national parks and sanctuaries. Yet woody encroachment is rampant inside these parks as well, as a February 2023 study by researchers from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata; Hainan University in China; and the Durrell Conservation Trust in the U.K., reported. Using data from remote-sensing satellites, they uncovered overwhelmingly high woody encroachment in several national parks in India and Nepal over the last three decades. The cover of grassland habitats had shrunk by 34% while tree cover in these places had increased by 8.7%.

The human hand

Woody encroachment is a direct result of human-driven factors that are changing the disturbance regimes open ecosystems need to thrive. The suppression of  the practices grasslands need to thrive stem from colonial conservation and management policies. Colonial officers in tropical countries were known to regard open ecosystems as “wastelands” because they took up space in which trees could grow instead, and provide timber. The classification allowed these habitats to be converted to plantations as well as provided ground for the colonial government to criminalise communities that practised grazing and fire management.

A different colonialism threatens open ecosystems today: instead of timber, many see trees as providers of carbon sequestration potential, and open ecosystems as encroachments that deprive humans of access to this potential.

Refusing to acknowledge the historical presence of grasslands and savannahs have also led to the ongoing failure to protect them. Woody encroachment in open ecosystems has altered biodiversity in myriad ways. There has been a big decline in grassland birds due to woody encroachment.

In the southern African countries of South Africa, Eswatini, and Lesotho, scientists used citizen science data from the ‘South African Bird Atlas Project 2’ to find a dramatic decline in the population of open ecosystem birds. Of the 191 species they analysed from 2007 to 2016, declining population trends prevailed in 121. Of these, the decline of 34 species correlated with woody encroachment.

“Succession of woody species changes the soil conditions, which changes the grass species and faunal association. Woody species invite increased predation especially of the specialist birds’ nests,” Hem Sagar Baral, a noted ornithologist and former head of the Zoological Society of London (Nepal chapter), said.

For similar reasons, woody encroachment brought down the population of grassland specialist rodents in the Banni grasslands of Kutch. These species also incurred a survivability penalty: the grass allowed them to hide from predators, but as trees cropped up, they spent more time keeping vigil and less time feeding.

An invasion by trees

Woody encroachment in grasslands has also received a leg-up from large-scale tree plantation programmes. In the Banni grasslands, studies have found that the spread of the invasive species Prosopis juliflora — which the Gujarat Forest Department planted from 1961 to combat desertification and provide firewood to communities — have since then transformed swaths of the grasslands into a Prosopis woodland.

In fact, most of India’s open ecosystems have stories to tell of ruin led by artificially introduced plants. In the Shola grasslands, eucalyptus plantations have run amok, whereas the Malabar silk-cotton tree has been running riot in the wet terai grasslands of the Himalaya.

To combat the increasing threat of woody encroachment to grasslands, it is imperative we first develop more evidence of their impact. Many studies have revealed the adverse effects of woody encroachment for biodiversity in grasslands, yet they are also the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

We also need long-term ecological monitoring in open ecosystems because they provide valuable fine-scale information. “A lot more science is needed before actions and policy-changes,” Ashish Nerlekar, a presidential postdoctoral fellow at Michigan State University who studies the ecology and conservation of open ecosystems in India, said.

In India itself, we also need to dismantle colonial terminologies like “wastelands”, which perpetuate the misclassification of open ecosystems and passively promote activities that convert them to use for other purposes.

Sutirtha Lahiri is a doctoral student in conservation science at the University of Minnesota and a recipient of the Interdisciplinary Center for the study of Global Change (ICGC) fellowship.