Sholas and the Sholakili

The Sholas, montane grassland-forests of the Western Ghats are an endangered ecosystem. The Sholakili tells you why. Comic from my column with The Hindu Sunday Magazine. 

Neelakurinji Bloom at Munnar

Neelakurinji flowers (Strobilanthes kunthiana) bloom once in twelve years, and are blooming in Munnar, Kerala right now! Here's a comic celebrating this spectacle of nature from my column with Mid-Day today.

5 Reasons to Preserve the Western Ghats

Need one reason to save the Western Ghats? I'll give you five!

The comic appears in my column with Mid-Day today, in the wake of the ongoing tussle between the central and state governments about the centre's decision to notify 56,825 square kilometres of the Western Ghats as an eco-sensitive zone, to which the state governments (Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and specially Kerala) have cited an objection. You can show support for the preservation of the Ghats by following the steps here and lending your voice to the Conservation India campaign- http://www.conservationindia.org/campaigns/western-ghats . 

Endemics of the Western Ghats (ATREE-CEPF)

A poster illustrated for ATREE- CEPF with caricatures of the endemic fauna of the Western Ghats that the prolific Bangalore-based NGO funds research on. The illustrations were created for a workshop conducted by ATREE in June 2015, and were printed and used as posters and coffee mugs. Working on these illustrations gave me a chance to get to know some animals like the Cave Catfish, the Kondana Bush Rat and the Miss Kerala Fish, that I had never heard of before! The lot also includes some elusive, spectacular and even bizarre creatures like the Brown Palm Civet, the Salim Ali's Fruit Bat, the Yellow Bush Frog, the Malabar Gliding Frog, the Nilgiri Langur, the Grizzled Giant Squirrel, the White-bellied Shortwing, the Nilgiri Laughingthrush, the Nilgiri Marten, the Nilgiri Tahr, the Nilgiri Woodpigeon, the Indian Purple Frog and the Lion-tailed Macaque.

(Canvas for the coffee mug)

A big thanks to Dr. Bhaskar Acharya for commissioning me for the project and for associating me with CEPF and ATREE!

Tahr-mented?

The home of the Nilgiri Tahr, the Shola grasslands are fast being replaced by tea estates. This member of the goat family is a precious Western Ghats endemic, listed as endangered by the IUCN with a current population of about 2000.

The Nilgiri Tahr or the Nilgiri Ibex is an endemic of the Western Ghats. It has been discovered to be a closer relative of sheep rather than its namesake. Classified along with the Himalayn and the Arabian Tahrs earlier, the Nilgiri Tahr has now been accorded its own genus. 

The tahr is fast losing its habitat to tea and spice plantations across its range. Eravikulam National Park in Kerala has the highest density and largest surviving population of Nilgiri tahr. 

First published in Saevus in the May-June 2013 issue.

This work by Rohan Chakravarty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.