South Asia News

COLOMBO — The rich diversity of bulbuls in South Asia can be traced as far as the Sundaland region of Southeast Asia, in the islands that today make up Indonesia…

WASGAMUWA, Sri Lanka — Elephant calves arriving at dusk to drink at the Weheragala reservoir tank in Wasgamuwa National Park can be particularly playful. But one day in September 2020,…

CHITWAN NATIONAL PARK, Nepal — The rhino sniffs the morning air and grunts. Our wooden canoe slowly passes the grove where the 2-ton prehistoric animal is grazing. Here, in Chitwan,…

COLOMBO — Himesh Dilruwan Jayasinghe was on a butterfly chase in Sri Lanka’s Knuckles Mountains, in the Indian Ocean island’s central highlands. He’d tracked down a rare butterfly known as…

Jorhat, INDIA - A lone hoolock gibbon jumps from one tree branch to another before taking a big final leap across the railway tracks that fragment its forested home into…

COLOMBO — The leaf litter and other decaying plant matter that carpet Sri Lanka’s lowland rainforests are potential lurking points for numerous blood-sucking leeches and hideouts of some venomous snakes.…

COLOMBO — In its territorial waters and exclusive economic zone, Sri Lanka is home to an abundance of coastal and marine resources. And while national policies and development visions already…

MANNAR, Sri Lanka — Born in the frozen Arctic tundra, a population of Heuglin’s gull (Larus fuscus heuglini) heads to tropical Sri Lanka every year during the harsh Northern Hemisphere…

Humans have created so much plastic that it now exists from the slopes of Mount Everest to the extreme depths of the oceans. When we consider the effects of plastic…

DELHI NCR — Sunil Harsana says he always knew there were paintings in the caves near his home in Mangar, a village on the outskirts of India’s capital, New Delhi.…

NUWARA ELIYA, Sri Lanka — Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its natural significance, the Peak Wilderness rainforest in Sri Lanka’s central highlands is a difficult terrain to explore.…

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sunitha Rathnayake, a homemaker in southern Sri Lanka, was down to the last of her salt and planned to order some more from an online grocery…

MATARA, Sri Lanka — The Polhena reef and the surrounding shallow seas in southern Sri Lanka are home to a number of marine turtles that stay there year round. Randunu…

Ordinarily at this time of year, I would have just returned from fieldwork in Sri Lanka, where I have spent more than 14 years studying wild Asian elephants. Summer is…

Swinging lithely from branch to branch high up in the forest canopy, a family of hoolock gibbons hoots vigorously to guard its territory against intruders. A type of small ape…

With wildfires raging in the western U.S. and floods sweeping parts of Europe, it’s easy to forget that these regions are some of the most well-prepared to tackle climate change.…

GALLE, Sri Lanka — Buses are the most common mode of public transport in Sri Lanka. But after thousands of trips, facilitating millions of commuter rides over their operating lifetime,…

The Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka has faced many maritime disasters over the years, but none as bad as the recent incident with the MV X-Press Pearl, a freighter…

PUTTALAM, Sri Lanka — Samith Fernando runs a tour boat service in Puttalam Lagoon, a scenic spot about 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of Colombo, Sri Lanka’s commercial capital. In…

HAMBANTOTA, Sri Lanka — The first time Mahinda Samarawickrama, a farmer in Hambantota district, southern Sri Lanka, was attacked by an elephant, he’d gone down to the village reservoir at…

COLOMBO — Up to 100 turtles and 20 dolphins have washed up dead on Sri Lanka’s beaches in the past month, as experts fear a link to the leak of…

MANILA — In the town of Pilar in the central Philippines, a community of 11,308 residents looks after one of the most successful marine protected areas in the country: the…

COLOMBO — Authorities in Sri Lanka have called for a renewed focus on conserving the island’s rich coastal ecosystems, identifying the “blue economy” as key to the nation’s sustainable development.…

COLOMBO — Thor is an 11-year-old, well-built male lion at Sri Lanka’s National Zoological Gardens in the Colombo suburb of Dehiwala. He’s something of an icon at the zoo, famed…

COLOMBO — Folklore has it that babies were delivered by storks, who carried them in slings from their beaks and left them at the door of unsuspecting couples. But the…

COLOMBO — Satellite images have captured a silvery slick spreading on the surface of the sea from the burnt-out wreck of a cargo ship that sank off Colombo earlier this…

COLOMBO — Along the shoreline north of Colombo, Sri Lanka’s commercial capital, the beaches are littered with millions of tiny white pellets, each about the size of a peppercorn. “The…

COLOMBO — The X-Press Pearl cargo ship that caught fire off western Sri Lanka has begun to sink, raising alarms over oil and chemical spills that could have potentially devastating…

COLOMBO — Authorities in Sri Lanka say they have largely contained a fire on board a cargo ship off the island’s west coast, but now face the task of cleaning…

COLOMBO — Sri Lanka’s fast-flowing freshwater streams are home to a variety of beautiful fish, which, as a rule, swiftly swim away if you dip your feet into the water.…