Ravi Chellam

“Before the war, cheetah conservation received limited funding from the government,” Parchizadeh said. “But after the war, I doubt that the government has any money left for the conservation of the cheetah.”

news.mongabay.com/2026/04/war-on… The Asiatic cheetah once roamed from the Arabian Peninsula to India, but today is found only in Iran, and fewer than 30 remain. With the country embroiled in war, the future of this subspecies’ is uncertain.

“What is really interesting is that areas where conservation has been more socially embedded, where protection is supported by local people and relationships rather than only formal enforcement, seem to be holding up better under these conditions,” he added.

So far, the impact of war on conservation writ large, Ebrahimi said, is “quite uneven. It is not simply negative or positive, but very context dependent.”

“The shrinking space for nongovernmental engagement is one of the most serious risks to conservation outcomes.”

In Iran, this shift is particularly concerning, as effective conservation has always depended on collaboration and trust between different actors,” they said.

Crises “tend to reduce participation in governance,” the unnamed conservationist said. “Nongovernmental involvement declines sharply, and conservation becomes more centralized and state-controlled.

“The [possible] extinction of the world’s rarest cat has become a symbol of our challenges and responsibilities towards Iran’s nature,” said department head Shina Ansari.

Gujarat sees a GIB chick after a decade, through a novel conservation measure - the jumpstart approach, coordinated by the Ministry, State Forest Departments of Rajasthan and Gujarat, and Wildlife Institute of India. Envisioned by PM Shri @narendramodi ji in 2011 to conserve GIB in its natural habitats including Gujrat, Project GIB was launched in 2016. As a result the number of birds in conservation breeding centres, started at Sam and Ramdevra in Rajasthan, have reached 73 with addition of 5 new chicks in this season and we are moving ahead towards rewilding of birds in near future. In achieving another milestone, a female GIB, tagged in August 2025, had laid an infertile egg in Kutch, as this population has lost all its males long back. In a major trans-state conservation effort, a captive-bred GIB egg from the conservation breeding program in Rajasthan was transported by road over 19 hours in a handheld portable incubator and was replaced in the nest on 22 March. The female completed incubating this fertile egg and hatched it on March 26. The field monitoring team found the young chick being reared by its foster mother. This effort is among one of the many steps to recover the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard populations. With the commitment to save GIB, we are making great progress in India’s conservation journey. Congratulations to all scientists, field officers and wildlife enthusiasts who made this possible. We are keeping our fingers crossed for the survival of the chick. At the same time we remain committed to leaving no stone unturned to make the endeavour successful. 🎥 The GIB takes a stroll with her chick.

After a Decade, Great Indian Bustard sighted in Gujarat, A major Milestone Under Project GIB, Envisioned by PM Shri @narendramodi ji in 2011. Through A Remarkable Conservation Effort Between Rajasthan & Gujarat Teams, Chick Successfully Hatched & is Now Being Cared For by Its Foster Mother A Hopeful Step Toward Saving This Critically Endangered Species. 🐦🇮🇳

When development is guided primarily by strategic cartography, forests, coastlines and river basins risk being reduced to interchangeable sites of infrastructure deployment.

outlookindia.com/national/ecolo… It reflected an emerging institutional disposition: large infrastructure in ecologically sensitive frontier regions is increasingly assessed through a balance of strategic necessity and procedural compliance,...

...endemic habitats and locally embedded ecological knowledge tied to specific terrains. Over time, such substitution produces a silent ecological deficit—compliant on paper, cumulative in ecological consequence.

By allowing ecological loss in biodiversity hotspots to be offset through plantations in distant states, policy frameworks implicitly treat ecosystems as interchangeable. This may fulfil statutory obligations, but it obscures the irreversible loss of primary forests,...