Sarala Khaling

Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment | ATREE · Regional Office for Eastern Himalaya-Northeast India and Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation

Studies on human-elephant interactions are typically confined to a single country. Since elephants traverse international boundaries, it is critical to comprehend human-elephant interactions along their migration routes and recognize the significance of conserving these animals. A rapid appraisal was conducted to primarily understand the human-elep...

With the recently adopted Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), the significance of ecosystem health and the need for increasing the protected area/other effective area-based conservation measures (OECM) coverage has been reiterated. Ecosystem health assessment or Red Listing of Ecosystems is the headline indicator for target A of GBF. The indicator...

In the socio-ecological landscapes of tropical mountains, including the highly diverse Eastern Himalaya, fragments of natural forests have been traditionally managed as part of different agriculture systems. Recent studies have recognized their role as important biodiversity repositories outside protected areas. However, basic information on forest...

his paper examines progress and limitations in the transition from current dependence on carbon-based energy toward clean, renewable, and socially just energy in the Hindu Kush Himalaya and the Andes. Focusing on electricity production from sustainable hydropower, solar, and wind energy, the assessment does not cover biomass energy, although this i...

The process of incorporating the priorities of local communities in developing countries is important in the formulation of effective policies for environmental and natural resource conservation. With this outlook, this study was conducted to assess community priorities and socio-cultural values associated with ecosystem services provided by the so...

A socio-ecological assessment of agro-pastoral and forest ecosystems services and human wellbeing in remote eastern Himalayan village, conducted by an interdisciplinary team of ecologists, and an environmental sociologist.

Ecologists and conservation biologists conducting long-term research programs in the tropics must confront serious ethical challenges that revolve around economic inequalities, cultural differences, supporting the local communities as much as possible, and sharing the knowledge produced by the research. In this collective article, researchers share...

About the agriculture transition of Dzongu from shifting to settled agriculture

The separation of people from their landscapes undergirds conservation action, especially in the global south. Such a ‘fortress conservation’ approach is based on the flawed idea that local people’s use of forests endangers biodiversity and therefore habitats should be protected by force if necessary. Such a conservation approach runs contrary to t...

The study was undertaken from March–May 2019 to explore the butterflies in the human-modified tea dominated landscape of Darjeeling Hills and understanding the diversity, community structure, habitat specialization, and conservation status of butterflies in an organic tea estate. Sampling was done in the two representative ecosystems of tea plantat...

Conventional well-being assessments quantify household dependence on ecosystem services in narrow economic terms. But well-being transcends disciplines, cultures and scales. Several frameworks have emerged for understanding what well-being is or could mean. We assessed how natural and policy-driven environmental changes affect the well-being of for...

Chitwan National Park had the only surviving greater one-homed rhino population in Nepal until the 1980s. To reduce the threat of losing this population to natural calamities, catastrophic events and poaching, rhinos were translocated to the Bardia National Park (BNP) and the Suklaphanta. Wildlife Reserve (SWR). Translocations have thus been used a...

Forest fire, largely caused by human, has changed the Terai forest ecosystems. Of the total, 58% forest fire were deliberate burning by grazers, poachers, hunters and non-timber forest product collectors. Forest fire due to negligence (22%) and accident (20%) also had a significant share. The major causes of the fire were carelessness of passer-by,...

Call counts of Satyr Tragopan Tragopan satyra were conducted in the Singhalila National Park, Darjeeling, India, for three years (1995–1997). Twenty-eight groups of calling birds were recorded in 1995, 19 in 1996 and 24 in 1997 with mean density estimates (groups/km2) of 6.19/km2, 4.52/km2 and 5.46/km2 respectively. During the three years, the numb...