Meet India's Frog Man, the champion of our amphibian diversity. This week, The Economist magazine featured him on its cover, a rare recognition for an Indian scientist. But for Biju, being in the limelight is an opportunity to make people aware of our vanishing wealth - 66% of Indian amphibians are under the threat of extinction, and if these little creatures vanish, a major ecological imbalance would follow.
"Amphibians were the first land animals and have a 350-million-year history. They are an environmental barometer and we can analyse the quality of our environment by studying them. We cannot imagine life without frogs. If there are no frogs, it would not be possible to grow anything in our fields," he says.
Biju, who works in the Systematics Lab of DU's Environmental Studies department, has been spending seven months a year in the forests of the Northeast and the Western Ghats for the past two decades. It's with this experience that he says the 'dream forest' cover of the Northeast will be lost forever in 20 years' time if urgent interventions are not made. Read the full report here.
Source: Manash Pratim Gohain, TNN, New Delhi.
