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Spoorthy Raman

I love words. I admire science. I put them together to be a science writer. I evolved into a journalist. Now, I write about science, the environment and everything in between for readers big and small.

I also fact-check, edit and teach the craft of science writing.

Photo by Tobias Bjørkli on Pexels

My Latest Work

Mongabay Environmental News •

Culture and conservation thrive as Great Lakes tribes bring back native wild rice

In the late summer of 2023, thick stands of wild rice stood tall and shimmered gold in some of Lac du Flambeau’s lakes. The plant has been virtually absent in these lakes for decades, so for Joe Graveen, the sight of grain-filled stalks was a thing of joy, he says. As the wild rice program manager for the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, a tribal band in northern Wisconsin, Graveen was seeing the fruits (or grains, literally) of hard work he and his tribe’s members had put
Mongabay Environmental News •

What principles should define natural climate solutions? A new study has some answers

Following a litany of conferences and calls that stress the urgency to address climate change, there’s growing interest and investments in nature to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Protecting and restoring natural ecosystems, such as forests, grasslands, wetlands, farmlands and oceans, could remove at least 10 gigatons of CO per year by 2050, according to a 2021 report. Besides cooling our planet, these interventions can prevent floods and droughts, conserve biodiversity and, in some cases,
Mongabay Environmental News •

Logging, road construction continue to fuel forest loss in Papua New Guinea

Plonked between the formidable Owen Stanley mountains to its west and the Solomon Sea to the east lies Oro, a remote province in Papua New Guinea east of the capital Port Moresby. Lush, green tropical rainforests, with their famed canopies, blanket the land while rivers and streams glitter in hues of turquoise and emerald—a landscape found across much of Papua New Guinea (PNG), where 71.8% of land still harbored primary forest in 2022, according to data from monitoring platform Global Forest Wat
Architectural Review •

Outrage: Great Green Wall crumbling

At first glance, deserts seem featureless and inert. The never-ending vastness of parched earth, sprinkled with shrivelled life forms, comes across as a mysterious terrain that induces dread. Look a little closer and you can see how dynamic and ever-changing their fringes are. As rainfall varies, it redraws the borders. When there is good rain, the edges come alive with vegetation in all shades of green; when precipitation is sparse, they turn brown and dry.

But as human-induced activities such
Nature •

How to make the leap into industry after a PhD

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Spoorthy Raman is a freelance science and environment journalist in St. John’s, Canada.

Landing that first job in industry requires planning, homework and networking — and a bit of soul-searching.

Melanie Zeppel stepped off the academic path to become a data scientist in industry. Credit: Stephen Jackson

Plant physiologist Melanie Zeppel had heard that hard work, a good publication list and securing highly competitive postdoctoral
Mongabay Environmental News •

Progress is slow on Africa’s Great Green Wall, but some bright spots bloom

The southern fringes of the Sahara are dynamic. As rainfall varies, land patches on the edge chop and change between green and arid brown. Human activities, like overgrazing, deforestation or poor irrigation, further degrade some of the already arid parts of the Sahel, resulting in desertification. As the planet heats up, changes in rainfall patterns can cause longer dry spells on the southern boundaries of the Sahara, stretching the desert further down, and affecting nearly a million people and
Mongabay Environmental News •

Volunteers, First Nations work to bring back a disappearing oak prairie

On the eastern edge of Victoria, British Columbia, abutting the Salish Sea, sits Uplands Park, spanning about 30 hectares, or 74 acres, amid the bustling municipality of Oak Bay. Although an urban park, it lacks manicured lawns, ornamental flowers or asphalted walkways — quintessential elements of modern-day urban parks.

Instead, the landscape is sprinkled with stunted, gnarled and crooked oak trees. A few shrubs of snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus) and ocean spray (Holodiscus discolor), and som
Nature •

What it means to practise values-based research

Max Liboiron’s academic career criss-crossed science a few times before finding an interdisciplinary home in geography. Growing up in the rural hamlet of Lac la Biche in northeastern Alberta, Canada, where university education wasn’t common, Liboiron dreamt of being a scientist. But in 1998, when they began undergraduate science studies, they became disillusioned with their university’s push towards industrial applications of science and so gravitated towards fine arts instead. After earning a b
Mongabay Environmental News •

To keep track of salmon migrations in real time, First Nations turn to AI

Between spring and fall each year in coastal British Columbia, when salmon migrate upstream, the region’s First Nations manually count the number of fish passing through to get a sense of how healthy the population is. But it’s work that takes place in remote and hard-to-access streams of the province, making it laborious, time-consuming, and often error-prone.

So for a recent study, marine scientists, computer scientists and conservation practitioners partnered with Indigenous-led fisheries or
Hakai Magazine •

Shining the Light on Baby Crabs

It’s a gray summer evening on Galiano Island, a long strip of land about 1.5 kilometers across at its narrowest. Home to nearly 1,400 people, it is one of the 200-odd islands and islets in the Gulf Islands archipelago dotting the Salish Sea between Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and the mainland coast. The air here at the wooden pier in Whaler Bay on the island’s southeast end is heavy and moist, tinged with a whiff of boat fuel and old wood, and infused with sea salt. Amid a lineup of moto
BioScience •

Mining the sea floor: Implications for biodiversity

An air of urgency permeates the offices of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the international agency in Kingston, Jamaica, tasked with regulating mining-related activities on the ocean floor. Overlooking the Caribbean Sea through their windows, representatives from the 168 member states are scrambling to finalize the Mining Code, a rule book that will govern the commercial extraction of deep sea minerals.

For over a decade, different organs of the ISA have been working toward framing r
Nature •

TikTok’s dancing chemist catalyses joy in students

André Isaacs’ love of chemistry began at school in Kingston, Jamaica, inspired by his uncle — a teacher, who created fun ways to connect chemistry with life experiences. Isaacs earned his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 2011 and did a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, before returning to the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts — his undergraduate alma mater — as a group leader in organic chemistry in 2012. As an educator, he mixes his
Mongabay Environmental News •

Indigenous funding model is a win-win for ecosystems and local economies in Canada

Over the past 15 years, First Nations in Haida Gwaii and central and northern coastal British Columbia, Canada, have turned the tables around: once subjected to massive economic, social and cultural damages due to the extractive logging industry, they have now successfully built a sustainable economy that focuses on protecting sensitive ecosystems, while increasing communities’ well-being, a recent report shows.

The report was released by Coast Funds, an Indigenous-led conservation finance orga
Hakai Magazine •

In Graphic Detail: The Polar Silk Route

On November 15, 2022, Chinese sailor Zhai Mo and his two-person crew sailed back to Shanghai after almost a year and a half of travel that took them through Arctic waters. The expedition took about a year longer than anticipated—unpredictable weather, ice, and cold temperatures all made the trip through the Northwest Passage tricky for the 24-meter-long ketch, Zhai Mo 1. But the trip drew attention to China’s 2018 announcement of the latest addition to its ambitious revival of the ancient Mariti
Hakai Magazine •

Coastal Job: Underwater Cave Ecologist

Fernando Calderón-Gutiérrez is a Mexican underwater cave ecologist who dives in the coastal caves of Mexico, Belize, and the United States to document organisms and learn how they interact with their hostile environment.

Most aspiring marine biologists are drawn to charismatic animals like sea turtles and whales. For me, the pale, blind creatures of the world’s darkest caverns are more alluring. For a long time, scientists wondered how life in underwater caves was possible because there’s no su
Photo by Visit Greenland on Pexels

About Me

I'm an award-winning science and environment journalist based in St. John's, Canada. My words have been published in many national and international media outlets.  

More About Me

How I Work

Journalism is under attack today from many quarters. Conspiracy theories abound. To win my reader's trust, I believe being critical, transparent and accurate in my reporting is key. 
More About My Process

My Ethos

My ethos lie in treating people and their lived experiences with respect, bringing diverse perspectives in my stories, strengthening relationships with my sources and building communities.

More About My Ethos

Get in Touch

Liked my stories? Have a story tip? Want to tell me about a cool project you are working on (Scientists, looking at you!)? Interested to work with me? Want me to speak at an event? Let's talk!

Contact Me

My Articles

Mongabay Environmental News •

Conservationists welcome new PNG Protected Areas Act — but questions remain

With more than 70% of the country blanketed by tropical rainforests, Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a megadiverse country home to more than 5% of the world’s biodiversity, including charismatic tree kangaroos, egg-laying echidnas and flightless cassowaries. However, since 1972, nearly a third of the country’s rainforest has been lost or degraded due to logging, road construction, agricultural expansion and mining.

In a significant push to conservation, the country’s parliament passed the Protected A
Deccan Herald •

Finding a lost turtle by tapping into people’s wisdom

In the monsoon months of 2019, turtle researcher Ayushi Jain and her team visited a few villages on the banks of the Chandragiri River in Kasargod, Kerala, to check how the Cantor’s giant softshell turtle was doing. Between 1970 and then, scientists had recorded only 15 sightings of this elusive turtle, and recent surveys had spotted none. Jain and her team set out to confirm if the critically endangered turtle had gone extinct in the region.

Local ecological knowledge is the knowledge people h
Mongabay Environmental News •

No joking: Great apes can be silly and playfully tease each other, finds study

Being silly and indulging in humor may sound easy, but our brains need to do a lot of heavy lifting to pull it off. Landing a joke requires recognizing what’s socially acceptable, being spontaneous, predicting how others may react, and playfully violating some social expectations. Until now, research on the complex cognitive abilities that underpin humor has focused primarily on humans, while other species are understudied.

In a recent study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal So
Mongabay Environmental News •

Culture and conservation thrive as Great Lakes tribes bring back native wild rice

In the late summer of 2023, thick stands of wild rice stood tall and shimmered gold in some of Lac du Flambeau’s lakes. The plant has been virtually absent in these lakes for decades, so for Joe Graveen, the sight of grain-filled stalks was a thing of joy, he says. As the wild rice program manager for the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, a tribal band in northern Wisconsin, Graveen was seeing the fruits (or grains, literally) of hard work he and his tribe’s members had put
Mongabay Environmental News •

‘Shocking’ mortality of infant macaques points to dangers of oil palm plantations

For 12 years, primatologist Nadine Ruppert and her colleagues have had one recurring task on their calendar: tagging along with a group of southern pig-tailed macaques in Segari, Peninsular Malaysia, as these primates hop between native rainforests and the neighboring oil palm plantations. Over the years, the researchers successfully habituated the group: they named every individual, discerned their life histories, and watched their behavior to understand how these monkeys adapt to human-modifie
Mongabay Environmental News •

What principles should define natural climate solutions? A new study has some answers

Following a litany of conferences and calls that stress the urgency to address climate change, there’s growing interest and investments in nature to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Protecting and restoring natural ecosystems, such as forests, grasslands, wetlands, farmlands and oceans, could remove at least 10 gigatons of CO per year by 2050, according to a 2021 report. Besides cooling our planet, these interventions can prevent floods and droughts, conserve biodiversity and, in some cases,
Photo by Tina Nord on Pexels
Deccan Herald •

Birders find help in artificial intelligence

Human relationships with birds have metamorphosed with time. From seeing them as a source of food, gathering their feathers, eggs and skin and hunting them for sport, we have come a long way in appreciating birds for what they are: intriguing life forms that aesthetically please our eyes and make sounds that are music to our ears. Our fascination has morphed into a hobby called birdwatching or birding, a term coined in the early 1900s by British ornithologist Edmund Selous.

When birding began a
Mongabay Environmental News •

In PNG, researchers record 9 new species of predatory hermaphroditic land snails

In the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, where arboreal tree kangaroos, vibrant birds-of-paradise and ornate birdwings hog the limelight with their charismatic presence, teeny-tiny, leaf litter-eating land snails don’t always stand a chance to vie for scientific attention. Although land snail shells hold an essential place in PNG’s culture — as jewelry and adornments in ceremonial clothing — scientific understanding of these mollusks is, at best, patchy.

Worldwide, more 30,000 land snail species
Mongabay Environmental News •

Study: Singapore biodiversity loss is bad — but not as bad as previous estimate

With its iconic skylines and waterfront vistas, Singapore is today a bustling city-state with one of the highest population densities in the world. Two centuries ago, before the British chose to build the port city in 1819, Singapore was covered by rainforests, mangrove forests and swamp forests. In the two centuries that followed, these forests were cleared to make way for people, plantations and concrete structures, and iconic species like tigers and leopards vanished.

A new study estimates t
Deccan Herald •

India's grasslands in peril

From the lofty Himalayas to the montane Shola forests of the Western Ghats, from the arid Thar Desert to the fertile floodplains in the east, grasslands once covered nearly two-thirds of India. An understory of grass dominates these landscapes, while woody plants lie scattered in the mix.

The study found a steep decline in plant species growing in altered landscapes compared to old-growth savannas, with agricultural lands recording the least. Tillage agricultural land also had the fewest native
Mongabay Environmental News •

Logging, road construction continue to fuel forest loss in Papua New Guinea

Plonked between the formidable Owen Stanley mountains to its west and the Solomon Sea to the east lies Oro, a remote province in Papua New Guinea east of the capital Port Moresby. Lush, green tropical rainforests, with their famed canopies, blanket the land while rivers and streams glitter in hues of turquoise and emerald—a landscape found across much of Papua New Guinea (PNG), where 71.8% of land still harbored primary forest in 2022, according to data from monitoring platform Global Forest Wat
Deccan Herald •

Tracing turtle trafficking routes in India

Cuddling a palm-sized tortoise, which shyly withdraws its head into its patterned shell, seems so appealing that it has spurred a growing interest among people to own it as a pet. For some, its meat—especially the soft gelatinous tissue on the lower shell called calipee—is appetising. The result: Tortoises and turtles are now the most trafficked animals in the multi-billion-dollar international wildlife trade.

A recent study by researchers at the Wildlife Conservation Society - India (WCS-India
Mongabay Environmental News •

To keep track of salmon migrations in real time, First Nations turn to AI

Between spring and fall each year in coastal British Columbia, when salmon migrate upstream, the region’s First Nations manually count the number of fish passing through to get a sense of how healthy the population is. But it’s work that takes place in remote and hard-to-access streams of the province, making it laborious, time-consuming, and often error-prone.

So for a recent study, marine scientists, computer scientists and conservation practitioners partnered with Indigenous-led fisheries or
Architectural Review •

Outrage: Great Green Wall crumbling

At first glance, deserts seem featureless and inert. The never-ending vastness of parched earth, sprinkled with shrivelled life forms, comes across as a mysterious terrain that induces dread. Look a little closer and you can see how dynamic and ever-changing their fringes are. As rainfall varies, it redraws the borders. When there is good rain, the edges come alive with vegetation in all shades of green; when precipitation is sparse, they turn brown and dry.

But as human-induced activities such
Mongabay Environmental News •

Study: Despite armed conflicts, Indigenous lands have better environment quality

For nearly 2,000 years, the Indigenous Karen people of southeast Myanmar have led a relatively tranquil life in the hilly forests that are part of the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot. But in the last seven decades, Karen civilians have found themselves entangled in the world’s longest armed conflict, between the Karen National Union and the Myanmar military regime—a battle over self-determination that’s been a part of the wider Myanmar civil war.

For them, the forests their ancestors once stewa
Mongabay Environmental News •

Big promises to Indigenous groups from new global nature fund — but will it deliver?

VANCOUVER — The devastating wildfires in the interior of British Columbia, Canada, in mid-August, forced the province into a state of emergency and gloom. But just a few days later, as the smoky skies of Vancouver began to clear up, environmentalists found a reason to cheer.

About 1,500 delegates representing environmental ministries, youth, women, Indigenous Peoples, and civil society gathered in the coastal city to promise a slew of actions to save the planet’s biodiversity. One of them came
Mongabay Environmental News •

Expected ship traffic to LNG Canada port could see whale deaths also rise

In September 2022, researchers at BC Whales, a Canadian research nonprofit studying cetaceans in the north of British Columbia province, gasped when they saw a drone image of a humpback whale known as Moon. Each summer, she regularly visited the many meandering waterways in the region with her calves, along with hundreds of other humpbacks, feeding in the food-rich, tranquil waters. But this time, she looked different.

Moon’s spine was crooked and her back half was paralyzed, probably after bei
Nature •

How to make the leap into industry after a PhD

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Spoorthy Raman is a freelance science and environment journalist in St. John’s, Canada.

Landing that first job in industry requires planning, homework and networking — and a bit of soul-searching.

Melanie Zeppel stepped off the academic path to become a data scientist in industry. Credit: Stephen Jackson

Plant physiologist Melanie Zeppel had heard that hard work, a good publication list and securing highly competitive postdoctoral
Mongabay Environmental News •

Progress is slow on Africa’s Great Green Wall, but some bright spots bloom

The southern fringes of the Sahara are dynamic. As rainfall varies, land patches on the edge chop and change between green and arid brown. Human activities, like overgrazing, deforestation or poor irrigation, further degrade some of the already arid parts of the Sahel, resulting in desertification. As the planet heats up, changes in rainfall patterns can cause longer dry spells on the southern boundaries of the Sahara, stretching the desert further down, and affecting nearly a million people and
Deccan Herald •

Snakebite: India’s silent killer

Inherently shy, snakes can turn defensive when disturbed or threatened. The slithering reptiles then bite by injecting a cocktail of toxins at the intruder through their fangs. Based on the species of snake, the toxins can over time cause respiratory paralysis, bleeding, breakdown of muscle fibres, shocks, organ failures, and death. It only takes a few hours to sniff out human life with a snake bite.

Studies estimate that each year, about five million snake bites occur around the world, while 8
Mongabay Environmental News •

Volunteers, First Nations work to bring back a disappearing oak prairie

On the eastern edge of Victoria, British Columbia, abutting the Salish Sea, sits Uplands Park, spanning about 30 hectares, or 74 acres, amid the bustling municipality of Oak Bay. Although an urban park, it lacks manicured lawns, ornamental flowers or asphalted walkways — quintessential elements of modern-day urban parks.

Instead, the landscape is sprinkled with stunted, gnarled and crooked oak trees. A few shrubs of snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus) and ocean spray (Holodiscus discolor), and som
Mongabay Environmental News •

For urban poor in Global South, nature-based solutions have always been a way to get by

We live in a rapidly urbanizing world, with half of humanity now concentrated in cities.

Without adequate and affordable housing, more than a billion people live in informal settlements or urban slums, which lack essential infrastructure and services such as sanitation and secure land tenure.

As the climate changes, people living in these informal areas are increasingly at risk.

“Informal settlements are some of the areas that are disproportionately affected by disasters,” says urban research
Nature •

What it means to practise values-based research

Max Liboiron’s academic career criss-crossed science a few times before finding an interdisciplinary home in geography. Growing up in the rural hamlet of Lac la Biche in northeastern Alberta, Canada, where university education wasn’t common, Liboiron dreamt of being a scientist. But in 1998, when they began undergraduate science studies, they became disillusioned with their university’s push towards industrial applications of science and so gravitated towards fine arts instead. After earning a b
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