At least 65 dead in Nepal and India amid flooding and landslides.

At least 65 people have died in a series of flooding and landslide events in Nepal and India since Friday 3 October 2025. The majority of the deaths have occurred in the Ilam District of Nepal, where 37 people have died in a series of landslide events, with many more still missing. At least eight more people have been killed in floods, landslides, and lightning strikes elsewhere in Nepal. In India, at least 20 people have died in flash floods and landslips in the Darjeeling District of West Bengal, which borders onto Ilam District in Nepal.

A landslide in Ilam District, Nepal, which occurred on Saturday 4 October 2025. National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority.

The events are associated with heavy rains caused by an ongoing Monsoon Season in Nepal, which typically begins in June and ends around the middle of September. The annual monsoon in Nepal claims a large number of lives each year, and late rains such as these bring with them additional problems, as by September the ground in low lying areas of Nepal is often waterlogged, and the waters rivers and lakes high, if not actually overflowing. This means that even if the rains stop soon, their effects are likely to be felt for some time yet. Sadly, while late rains were once a rare event, they are becoming more common as a result of global warming, which is resulting in a hotter, wetter climate in the region.

Monsoons are tropical sea breezes triggered by heating of the land during the warmer part of the year (summer). Both the land and sea are warmed by the Sun, but the land has a lower ability to absorb heat, radiating it back so that the air above landmasses becomes significantly warmer than that over the sea, causing the air above the land to rise and drawing in water from over the sea; since this has also been warmed it carries a high evaporated water content, and brings with it heavy rainfall. In the tropical dry season, the situation is reversed, as the air over the land cools more rapidly with the seasons, leading to warmer air over the sea, and thus breezes moving from the shore to the sea (where air is rising more rapidly) and a drying of the climate. This situation is particularly intense in South Asia, due to the presence of the Himalayas. High mountain ranges tend to force winds hitting them upwards, which amplifies the South Asian Summer Monsoon, with higher winds leading to more upward air movement, thus drawing in further air from the sea.

Diagrammatic representation of wind and rainfall patterns in a tropical monsoon climate. Geosciences/University of Arizona.

See also...

Cyclone Amphan kills at least 87 in India and Bangladesh.

At least 87 people have died in India and Bangladesh after Cyclone Amphan made landfall in the Indian State of West Bengal on Wednesday 20 May 2020, bringing with it winds at speeds of up to185 km per hour and a storm surge 4 m high. The majority of the deaths have occurred in West Bengal, where 72 people are known to have died, with a further twelve recorded deaths in Bangladesh and three in the Indian state of Odisha. Kolkata alone has suffered twelve known fatalities, as well as widespread flooding in low-lying parts of the city, and widespread power failures. The districts of North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, and Minakha districts are reported to have suffered widespread devastation, with widespread flooding and tens of thousands of homes destroyed. In Bangladesh around half a million people are reported to have been made homeless and around five million have lost electricity. The number of deaths is thought to have been greatly reduced by the evacuation of around 2.4 million people from low-lying areas in Bangladesh and about 650 000 people from low-lying areas in West Bengal and Odisha.

Flooding in Bangladesh as Cyclone Amphan made landfall on Wednesday 20 May 2020. Xinhua.

Tropical storms, called Cyclones in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific, are caused by solar energy heating the air above the oceans, which causes the air to rise leading to an inrush of air. If this happens over a large enough area the inrushing air will start to circulate, as the rotation of the Earth causes the winds closer to the equator to move eastwards compared to those further away (the Coriolis Effect). This leads to tropical storms rotating clockwise in the southern hemisphere and anticlockwise in the northern hemisphere. These storms tend to grow in strength as they move across the ocean and lose it as they pass over land (this is not completely true: many tropical storms peter out without reaching land due to wider atmospheric patterns), since the land tends to absorb solar energy while the sea reflects it.

 A house destroyed by a falling tree in Nadia District, West Bengal, during the passage of Cyclone Amphan. PTI.

Despite the obvious danger of winds of this speed, which can physically blow people, and other large objects, away as well as damaging buildings and uprooting trees, the real danger from these storms comes from the flooding they bring. Each drop millibar drop in air-pressure leads to an approximate 1 cm rise in sea level, with big tropical storms capable of causing a storm surge of several meters. This is always accompanied by heavy rainfall, since warm air over the ocean leads to evaporation of sea water, which is then carried with the storm. These combined often lead to catastrophic flooding in areas hit by tropical storms.

Damage in Kolkata following the passage of Cyclone Amphan on 20 May 2020. Sandipan Chatterjee/Outlook India,

See also...

 

Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.

Cuon alpinus: Understanding the distribution of Dholes in northeast India.

The Dhole, or Asian Wild Dog, Cuon alpinus, is an Endangered social carnivore found in forested landscapes of South and Southeast Asia. Historically widespread across Asia, the species’ range has contracted by about 80%. The current distribution extends across most of South and Southeast Asia and parts of China but is largely restricted to protected areas. The protected forest landscapes south of the River Ganges in India are a stronghold for the species, with the largest Dhole population. However, the species has undergone local extirpation across parts of its former range as a result of declines of prey species, loss of habitat and, potentially, disease. Information on Dholes in northeast India in particular is limited, despite the fact that this landscape shares continuous forest with Myanmar and Southeast Asia, forming an important part of the species' global range.

A Dhole, or Asian Wild Dog, Cuon alpinus. David Raju/Wikimedia Commons.

In a paper published in the journal Orynx on 23 October 2019, Priya Singh of Researchers for Wildlife Conservation at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, and the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Florida, Arjun Srivastha of the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at the University of Florida, and David Macdonald of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford, provide a compilation of dhole presence records from across northeast India using data extracted from multiple sources.

Current knowledge of Dholes in north-east India is restricted to landscapes north of the River Brahmaputra. This is primarily because of the paucity of baseline ecological data from the region, given its undulating terrain, difficulty of access, wet climatic conditions, and socio-political insurgencies.

Using data from camera-trap surveys Singh et al. examine factors influencing fine-scale site-use by Dholes in Dampa Tiger Reserve in Mizoram State. They discuss the implications of their results for Dhole conservation in northeast India, where the focus of wildlife managers is directed mainly towards population recoveries of and local recolonisation by the Tiger, Panthera tigris. They further provide recommendations for management interventions that could facilitate conservation of Dholes in this hitherto neglected landscape.

Dampa Tiger Reserve lies in the Indo-Myanmar Biodiversity Hotspot. The reserve is contiguous with the Chittagong Hill Tract region of Bangladesh to the west. The core area of the Reserve covers 500 km², and the multi-use buffer covers an area of 488 km². The Lushai Hills traverse the reserve, with altitudes of 250-1100 m. Mean annual rainfall is 2000-2500 mm. The Reserve supports a high diversity of Carnivores, including, in addition to the Dhole, four species of Felids and two species of Ursids. In the course of the study Singh et al. also recorded the Elephant, Elephas maximus, Gaur, Bos gaurus, Sambar, Rusa unicolor, Red Serow, Capricornis rubidus, Muntjac, Muntiacus muntjak, and Wild Pig, Sus scrofa.

Northeast India, with the Dampa Tiger Reserve in Mizoram and locations where the Dhole, Cuon alpinus, has been recorded, with corresponding reliability scores. Singh et al. (2019).

Singh et al. compiled Dhole presence records for nine northeastern states: Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura, and West Bengal. They searched for records from 1990 onwards in newspaper reports, scientific articles, grey literature (including species checklists), and reports by Forest Department personnel, local informants and naturalists working in the region. For each record they noted the type of evidence (direct/indirect), the date of the sighting, the administrative status of location (protected/non-protected), and the source person or reference. They assigned reliability scores for each record, from 1 to 5, with 1 being most reliable, and 5 least reliable.

From December 2014 to March 2015, Singh et al. deployed 79 pairs of Cuddeback Ambush IR camera traps across 80 km² in the northeast of Dampa Tiger Reserve’s core area. At each station they placed two cameras facing each other, about 30 cm above the ground, on either side of forest trails or on riverbeds. Mean inter-trap distance was 1.02 km, with traps remaining active for an average of 64 days. Although the stations were intended to photograph wild Felids, they also photographed other Carnivores. Dholes generally use forest trails and riverbeds for movement, marking territories and hunting, and our sampling design therefore incorporated areas used by the species.

Singh et al. obtained presence records from 80 locations for 1990-2018, of which we considered 41 records from 2010–2018 with reliability scores of 1-3. In the case of multiple records for the same site, they considered the most recent record with the highest reliability score. Most records were from Arunachal Pradesh (14) and Assam (8), with five records from Mizoram and Nagaland, four from West Bengal, three from Meghalaya and two from Sikkim. There were no recent records of Dholes from Manipur and Tripura. A total of 5033 camera trap-days in Dampa Tiger Reserve generated 500 photoencounters of Dholes, comprising 92 detections (one per 24 hour duration) across 33 sites. 

Singh et al. found photo-capture frequencies of key prey species: Sambar (236), Muntjac (145), Wild Pig (92); to be positive influences, as were the distance to reserve boundary, and photo-capture frequencies of Forest Department personnel, while photo-capture frequencies of other humans were  negative influences on site-use by Dholes.

There are records of Dholes across several areas of northeast India, including in unprotected areas. Previous global assessments indicated that the species faced near or complete local extirpation to the south of the River Brahmaputra, something refuted by Sigh et al.'s findings from Dampa Tiger Reserve. Corroborating current knowledge from other landscapes, showed a positive relationship between Dhole site-use and Sambar presence. Across their extant distribution, the range of Dholes overlaps with that of Tigers and Leopards, Panthera pardus. Wildlife managers in this region and elsewhere subscribe to unsubstantiated notions that dhole presence impedes colonisation by Tigers, and consequently treat Dholes as a problem species. On the contrary, Tigers, Leopards and Dholes can co-exist provided protected areas support adequate densities of medium- to large-sized prey species.

Dampa Tiger Reserve is an important refuge for Dholes in northeast India. It supports large tracts of inviolate protected spaces, and habitat connectivity with forested landscapes of the Chittagong Hill Tract region to the west, Mamit Forest Division to the north and Thorangtlang Wildlife Sanctuary to the south. Singh et al's camera-trap data indicate the presence of a guild of large herbivores in the Reserve, with at least five prey species of medium and large ungulate herbivores, facilitating the long-term persistence of dholes there. The findings re-emphasise the importance of protected areas, which can serve as source sites for sustaining Dhole populations across the region.

In areas with low prey densities, carnivores may have significant dependence on livestock, and are consequently stigmatised. There is a strong negative relationship between Dholes and livestock owners in Arunachal Pradesh and other locations in the region. Given that Dholes also occur outside protected areas in this region, they are potentially vulnerable to retributory killing. Negative interactions between people and Dholes necessitate interventions to reduce poaching and facilitate recovery of prey, especially for species such as Sambar that are impacted by low recovery rates following prolonged poaching. Singh et al.'s findings need to be augmented with a systematic survey across the locations they identified, specifically in the states of Mizoram and Nagaland, to facilitate a pan-northeast India strategy for Dhole conservation.

See also...

Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.

Collapse at illegal coal mine traps three in West Bengal.

Three men are trapped bellow ground following a collapse at an unlicensed coal mine in Paschim Bardhaman District in West Bengal on Sunday 13 October 2019. Four men were underground in the mine, in the village of Aldhi, when the collapse occurred. The fourth man was able to escape and raise the alarm, but rescue attempts by local police and a specialist team from Eastern Coalfield Limited have been thwarted by poisonous methane gas within the mine, making it unlikely there will be any further survivors.

The approximate location of the 13 October Aldhi mine collapse. Google Maps.

Coal is formed when buried organic material, principally wood, in heated and pressurised, forcing off hydrogen and oxygen (i.e. water) and leaving more-or-less pure carbon. Methane is formed by the decay of organic material within the coal. There is typically little pore-space within coal, but the methane can be trapped in a liquid form under pressure. Some countries have started to extract this gas as a fuel in its own right. When this pressure is released suddenly, as by mining activity, then the methane turns back to a gas, expanding rapidly causing, an explosion. This is a bit like the pressure being released on a carbonated drink; the term 'explosion' does not necessarily imply fire in this context, although as methane is flammable this is quite likely.

Fire is much feared in coal mines due to this combination of flammable gas and solids, with methane and coal dust both potentially explosive when they come into contact with naked flames. To make matters worse, the limited oxygen supply in mines often means that such fires will involve incomplete combustion, in which all the oxygen is used up, but instead of forming carbon dioxide forms the much more deadly carbon dioxide, with potentially lethal consequences for anyone in the mine.

Coal is also comprised more or less of pure carbon, and therefore reacts freely with oxygen (particularly when in dust form), to create carbon dioxide and (more-deadly) carbon monoxide, while at the same time depleting the supply of oxygen. This means that subterranean coal mines need good ventilation systems, and that fatalities can occur if these break down.

The mine is of a type known locally as a 'rat hole', due to the small nature of the entrance holes, in which miners dig into the side of a hill using hand tools, until they reach a seam of valuable minerals, usually coal, but limestone, kaolin, clay, granite, glass sand, and uranium ore are also sometimes excavated in this way. Despite the best efforts local authorities, such mines thrive across the Ranigunj-Asansol Coal Belt of West Bengal, where a lack of economic prospects creates a ready supply of cheap labour. Many such mines are controlled by organised criminal groups, and tend to be well hidden to disguise them from both the authorities and rival gangs.

See also...

Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.

Leopard attack thwarted by Dog in Darjeeling.

A Dog has thwarted a Leopard attack on its owner in the town of Sonada in Darjeeling District, West Bengal State, India. The incident happened on Wednesday 14 August 2019, when Aruna Lama, 58, heard a disturbance in a storage area beneath her kitchen, where the family kept some live Chickens. She went to investigate the noise, and when she opened the door, was pounced on by a Leopard, which seized her by the head and trying to drag her away. The Leopard quickly abandoned the attack when it was set upon by the family Dog, a four-year-old Tibetan Mastiff Cross called, Tiger, who was adopted by the family in 2017 after being found in a half-starved state. Confronted with the angry Dog the Leopard fled the scene, with Dog in pursuit, and has not been seen since, though officials from the Indian Forest Service are attempting to capture it for relocation.

Aruna Lama, 58, of Sonada in Darjeeling, saved from a Leopard attack by her Dog on 14 August 2019. Times of India.

Leopards are considered to be Vulnerable under the terms of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species, with the Indian subspecies, Panthera pardus fusca, considered to be particularly vulnerable due to India's rapidly rising Human population, which has resulted in agriculture and other Human activities expanding into many former wilderness areas. For this reason the Indian Forest Service usually try to relocate Leopards that come into conflict with Humans to more remote areas, preferably within national parks, though the extent to which local people co-operate is variable.

Tiger, a four-year-old Tibetan Mastiff cross that saved his owner from a Leopard attack in Darjeeling on 14 August 2019. Times of India.

See also...

Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.

Mesoshieldophyes varecae: A new species of Eriophyoid Mite from Darjeeling.

Mites (Acari) are small Arachnids related to Harvestmen (Opilones). They are one of the most numerous and diverse Arthropod groups, with over 48 000 known species, but are often overlooked due to their small size. Many Mites are parasitic, with species targeting Insects, Vertebrates, Plants and even Fungi. The earliest known fossil Mites are found in the Early Devonian Rhynie Chert of Scotland, making them about 410 million years old. The Eriophyoidea are a group of herbivorous mites, many Eriophyoid Mites cause plants to form galls (tissue growths which cover and protect the parasite), but others are free living. All Eriophyoid Mites show reduced leg numbers, with free living species having at most two pairs of legs, and gall-forming species only one. Like Mites as a whole, the Eriophyoidea is an ancient group, with the oldest known example coming from Late Triassic amber from Italy.

In a paper published in the journal ZooKeys on 9 May 2019, Samiran Chakrabarti of the Post-Graduate Department of Zoology at Vidyasagar College, Ramkrishna Pandit of the Department of Zoology at Mahadevananda Mahavidyalaya, and Surajit Sur, also of the Post-Graduate Department of Zoology at Vidyasagar College, describe a new species of Eriophyoid Mite from West Bengal State, India.

The new species is named Mesoshieldophyes varecae, where 'Mesoshieldophyes' meaning 'medium-shield-wool-grower' and 'varecae' refers to the host, the Asamese Honey-plant, Casearia vareca, a fruiting shrub in the Willow Family, widely distributed in eastern India, Bangladeah, Bhutan, and Myanmar. The species is described from 12 female mites, 120–145 μm in length, with a flattened spindle shape and two pairs of legs. The mites are yellow in colour and were found on the underside of leaves, where they caused no visible damage. The specimens were collected from a plant in the Bengdubi Forest in the Darjeeling District of West Bengal.

Mesoshieldophyes varecae, dorsal view. Chakrabarti et al. (2019).

See also...

Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.

Police seize hundreds of Turtles from traffickers in West Bengal, India.

Four men have been arrested after officers from the West Bengal Criminal Investigation Department stopped a truck in Paschim Bardhaman District on Tuesday 15 January 2019, following a tip off from the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, and found 689 protected Indian Flapshelled Turtles, Lissemys punctata, in 22 jute sacks in the vehicle. The men had apparently travelled from Sultanpur District in Uttar Pradesh, where the Turtles had been trapped in streams and pools, and were taking them to Kolkata, where they were hoping to sell them, either for consumption locally or for export to Bangladesh of Southeast Asia, where they are also prised as a foodstuff. The Turtles are described as having been very week and distressed, and a number had died due to the conditions they were being kept in. The surviving turtles are being looked after by the Turtle Survival Alliance.

Police and rescue workers with Turtles confiscated from traffickers in West Bengal, India, on 15 January 2018. Turtle Survival Alliance.

Of the 24 species of Freshwater Turtles found in India over half are currently thought to be threatened globally due to Human activities, such as poaching or habitat destruction. The Indian Flapshell Turtle is widespread in South Asia, and not threatened across all of its range, but there is sufficient concern about the species that it has been placed in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) at the request of Bangladesh, and conservation bodies in India request that people do not post location data publicly when reporting sightings on websites such as the India Biodiversity Portal, for fear that poachers may use the information.

See also...

Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.