Like the proboscis of a malarial mosquito the Andaman Trunk Road pierces the Jarawa forest. The road carries a steady stream of vehicles, bunched into convoys with guards. By the road are heaps of stones and the claw marks of heavy machinery: the road will soon be wider.
A convoy of vehicles on the Andaman Trunk Road (ATR).
Just beyond, on either side, stretches the home of the Jarawa—lofty rainforests with tall dipterocarps and padauk, myriad trees and lianas, palms, cane, and bamboo. If the forest bears the human mark of the Jarawa, it is subtle and difficult to discern.
The forest of the Jarawa...
Up in the trees, a flock of birds is busy hunting prey. Dressed in smart black, the Andaman drongo forages in the canopy with long-tailed Andaman treepies. The forest resounds with the territorial drumming of the black woodpecker of the Andamans, even as a spectacular dark serpent eagle cries its shrill cry skimming the skies. Towering above the other trees, an emergent Tetrameles, smooth and leafless, holds a dollarbird on a high exposed branch. The endemic Andaman birds mark the uniqueness of the forest, but the dollarbird suggests an ancient commonality with lands across the ocean, for one can see it similarly perched atop great trees in the rainforests of the Western Ghats, in north-east India, and in south-east Asia.
Dollarbird on the lookout from a leafless Tetrameles branch.
Into logged forests
The road hurtles on, like an arrow of time, past the island of Baratang, into a more open forest.
The Andaman Trunk Road brooks no obstruction... and hurtles on...
Huge logs lie by the roadside. ‘Welcome to Middle Andamans‘, proclaims a signboard of the Forest Department. The signboard is only half green—the other half is red. This forest bears the mark of a different kind of man.
Huge rainforest trees cut for timber lying beside the Andaman Trunk Road.
Here, the tall trees are few and scattered. Amidst remnant evergreen trees are many that are deciduous. The undergrowth is dense with palms, shrubs, and saplings, in dense tangles with weeds and vines.
Through the canopy, shredded by logging, sunlight streams to feed the light-hungry weeds in the undergrowth. The alien weeds thrive: the Chromolaena in dense clusters, the Mikania woven into green shrouds over saplings. The forest is criss-crossed with logging coupe roads. Some are overgrown, some erode away, but some remain, like a tenacious scar marking an old, unforgotten wound.
In the forest itself, the ground is thrown up into little mounds. The mounds are covered with a fine sort of soil that termites conjure from earth and wood. Little seedlings germinate on the mounds. There is ficus, of course, but ferns and other plants, too. The mounds are rounded at sawing height off the ground. Theirs is a strangely haunting presence in the forest, like ghosts of trees past. On the forest floor all around are dotted seedlings and saplings of forest trees—pioneers, deciduous, and evergreen—a tenuous cohort presaging an uncertain forest of the future.
Ghosts of trees past: the mounds in logged forest...
Contested spaces
At either end of the road are altered landscapes of settlement, agriculture and forest remnants, seeming destinations—end points—not just in space, but in time as well. Here, alien mynas and native starlings share and contest space, in the continuing biological tussle of introduced and indigenous so unfortunately frequent on islands. Crows and bulbuls, spotted deer and elephants, many animals have been brought and released here, subsequently thriving as feral populations. By the roadside in Port Blair and Wandoor are rain trees, another alien, festooned with bird’s nest ferns and orchids, growing luxuriantly in the humid tropical climate and soil. As people and lifeforms have arrived, the land has accommodated them, providing resources and succour. How those arriving have accommodated to the land is another matter.
After a long spell of logging and a brief reprieve, the forests are on the cutting block again. The island forests rise behind a skirt of dense mangroves whose aerial roots claim purchase at the very edge of land, forming a shelterbelt from the surges of the sea. The mangroves now give way to desolate wastes and burgeoning resorts with the all-important sea-view. The sand beaches that hold the nests of turtles and the roots of manilkara trees are mined away for the homes of men and the foundations of buildings. The soils from slopes and crop fields erode into streams and into the sea to smother with silt the coral reefs—those not already bleached and crumbling from ocean warming or extraction. A tsunami came and went but the tsunami of a certain type of development continues—yet, it seems only a promise to squander in years what peoples such as the Jarawa have sustained over millenia.
A coastal mangrove with its aerial roots: holding on to land, only to be cleared for a resort's 'sea view'?
Will the spread of the alien plant and animal species into the sensitive landscape of the islands ever abate? Will the tussle over space and resource, over lifestyle and culture, among the indigenous and the settled peoples amicably resolve? And yet, isn’t alien and native a matter of perspective, too? Seen with immigrant eyes from the streets of Port Blair, the introduced myna and house crow appear more familiar than the Andaman teal or treepie. To the native Jarawa still embedded in the island ecosystem, whose name for themselves ‘eng’ means people—to them, we are the alien, people from another world barely known or understood. But to us, as people bereft of intimate connection with nature, it is the Jarawa—our name for them meaning ‘the other’, ‘the stranger’—who appears alien. And so it may remain. The Jarawa lives a world apart. A world he can scarcely construct for us without somehow losing it in the process.
Unbidden, a strange feeling then appears on the journey down the road. A feeling, as if we are destined to always be second-comers, carrying an atavistic insecurity originating in early human migrations from the African savanna into new lands. As aliens forever, we cope with insecurity by revelling in alienness, seeking shelter in superiority, making it an aspirational, a developmental goal. It is our proud red against the darkling green of the Jarawa, who are people like us but who arrived in ages past, taking a path towards a destination altogether different.
Our road could yet lead to a different sensitivity and perception. A sensitivity that allows us to make space for diversity—biological and cultural—on the land itself, in our hearts, our minds. A perception that we simultaneously inhabit different worlds and that a more powerful world should not trample a weaker one to the earth. By making space for survival and recovery of other peoples and other species in their natural homes, the forest of the future may be, not a forest of aliens, but a forest of the human and the humane.
This article appeared in The Hindu Sunday Magazine on 1 January 2012.
Published in the WII Newsletter in 1993 or early 1994 (Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun)
In Kedarnath, October 1993, from left to right: Sridhar, Madhu, Kavita, Advait, Rohan, Suhel, and Sara.
“We at W. I. I.” I curse, “are nothing but a bunch of overgrown children playing at Cowboys and Indians. I mean, is this any place to be? The temperatures are so low, I am sure any decent thermometer would freeze over, my cerebrospinal fluid has icebergs that would sink a Titanic floating about in it, and my teeth have started a healthy erosion process from all the chattering.”
“Shh…” says Advait, while I pause to take a breath, “Shh… You won’t get words like that past any subeditor.”
We are on our way up Rudranath towards the end of an enlightening, enriching, exhausting trip to the Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary as part of the M. Sc. high altitude techniques tour. The air is rare here, so my tirade is rendered much less effective by my constant need to stop for breath.
My lungs are full again. “When we first got here, it was fine.” I continue, “Mandal and its surroundings were breathtakingly beautiful, with landscapes that would need the brushstrokes of a Monet to describe them, sunsets that would require the lyrical abilities of a Naidu to capture, bird songs that would send Vaughn Williams into a musical compositional frenzy. The butterflies on the wing, the Strobilanthes in bloom, the mysterious fern at our feet and the pine cones on the trees, all these were stunning in their beauty, don’t you think?”
“Hmm”, says Advait in his typical loquacious manner.
And as we run down the steep slope of Rudranath, Advait asks Kavita: “Are there red and yellow spots on your jeans?”
“No.”
“Then I must be giddy”, says Advait.
High altitude sickness has struck, and while we watch the monal pheasant through the spotting scope, wonderfully majestic, a poem in colour, manoeuvering the rocks on the far slope, Advait is busy with his reverse peristaltic manoeuvres in the far corner of the hut.
“The food tastes better the second time around”, he quips between movements.
“Just shut up and throw up”, says Madhu, who is conducting the next movement.
“Quiet!” says Madhu in a loud whisper, his eyes blazing a rebuke. All around the sounds of night, in soft complacency, hum their serenades, and I shut up, swallowing the joyful hilarity that provoked my unfortunate outburst.
We are looking for flying squirrel, and we obediently follow with our eyes the dull beam of light from Madhu’s torch. Shapes leap out, not from the trees, but from our minds, but we feel safe; with Madhu in charge, the night could do its worst.
Madhu, the Protector.
Yet back in the hut, in the grainy glow of candlelight, we see him again, pulling Kavita‘s leg, ribbing her with mindless puns and childlike abandon.
Madhu, the Boychild.
Kavita’s knee is bad but she plods on with single-minded determination. “A stubborn mule she has to be” I think, “to keep her calm with us rowdies.” Nothing fazes her, no length of road and no amount of ribbing will get her down.
“You are just one of the guys” I tell her. She winces as I whack her squarely on the shoulders. “It’s difficult to treat you as the unequal that you are.”
But we try. By God, we certainly try.
“Come on, come on” says Sathyakumar who is goading us on our way down to Mandal, “we have to reach before sundown.”
“This is my kingdom” says Sathyakumar as he waves his hand with regal flourish across the postcard scenes that stretch before us. Trishul in the distance, with the red of the sunset on its peaks, the pine forests below us, the craggy rockslopes, the pika, the raspberries clinging to the rockface, the musk deer farm, the leopard on the street, the call of the Khaleej, the stone huts of Chopta, the windswept alpine meadows and the gritty little temples, all this he encompassed with the sweep of his hand and: “This… this is my kingdom. I call and it responds.”
“Damn the cold”, says Sara softly, for Sara very rarely says anything very loudly. He swears that he will never work in any area where the temperatures are not nicely tropical and sweaty. And though he loathes the cold with a silent vehemence, he does better than most of us in facing it, almost sneering it in the face as he does.
Sara has the poetic eye of an artist, for he sees hidden symmetry where others don’t, beauty in a certain play of light, music in a certain droop of the leaf. It is a magical, faery and exciting world, the world that is Sara’s lens.
“It was not very cold that night—just touching the –5 °C mark.” Dr Chundawat, sitting on the cold, stone quadrangle outside the Rudranath huts, is at his best today. The exceptional sunset, the rise of the stars in the moonless sky, the milky way, bright and dreamy as it lazes through the deep blue of the night, the smell of potatoes being cooked by Jabbar inside the hut and the soft drift of voices from within, all conspire to bring out the storyteller in him, and tales of Ladakh flow easily, in the curious anecdotal style that is his alone.
And in a style very much his own, Sridhar recounts the story of the Amazon researcher, and his experience with the rainforest flies. Satyakumar will spend the whole night wondering about it.
Sridhar is like that. He speaks, his nostrils flare, and he leaves you wondering.
The brook burbled and sang to us, inviting and cold. I resisted, the coward in me for once providing me with wise caution. Sridhar is more impetuous, but needs company to give it action.
“Let’s”, he pleads, “It won’t be all that cold.”
Suhel looks on with a little smile, refusing to be drawn into the pleading game. “Not me” he gestures.
Sridhar and I sit in cowardly camaraderie for an hour, with our feet in the flowing ice of the rivulet without further attempting to explore the limits of our bodies’ endurance.
Suhel stands alone against the railing at Mandal, staring out at the sky. We leave today, and I take my last looks, with the elated sadness that always grows within me at the end of a trip.
But Suhel has none of that sentimentality, none of those nonsense emotions that make man weak and frail. He is stoic, binoculars and notes in meticulous shorthand.
I watch him now as I dump my dirty socks into the rucksack, staring almost wistfully at the sky, drinking in the Mandal morning air. Later, in the bus, as we race back through the narrow mountain roads to Dehradun, he will play a jaunty, sad, “Oh Susanna” on his harmonica.
With the sardonic half-smile that is his trademark arranged on his face, he turns to me to make some soft, cynical comment.
“You’re fooling no one laddie” I say to myself, “You’re fooling no one.”
The fading light on the western horizon manifested the imminent arrival of the darkness of the night that would soon engulf the jagged mountains.The formidable mountains always stood stark and motionless, as if standing witness to the long chain of events shaping this remote landscape. Sometimes though, it seemed as if the mountains spoke, as if there was a soul hidden deep beneath the rock and shale faces that had jutted out some 70 million years ago when the Indo-Australian and the Eurasian plates collided to give birth to the Himalayas.
Twilight in the mountains. A Buddhist prayer flag and a mountain peak visible in the foreground.
When the spring knocks at the door of the mountains, the flowers bloom and a riot of colours commences.The furious wind turns into a warm-gentle breeze, while the butterflies hop from flower to flower in search of the elixir. The blue sheep graze leisurely in the lush green meadows and all life forms seem to enter some idyllic lull, enjoying the fleeting warm weather and a short period of bounty, in an otherwise harsh landscape.
The period of bounty and salubrious climate.
Come winter and the landscape is completely transformed. The greenery vanishes and the white snow covers the mountains and meadows as far as the eye can see. One thing however does not change; the mountains keep nurturing and nourishing a variety of life forms as they have done for millennia.
A lone Blue sheep looks over from the gradual-rolling meadows. The meadows support wild ungulates as well as the livestock of the people.
An hour had passed since the last rays of the fading sun had vanished from the face of the tallest peak; Mount-Kanamo, a beautiful and distinct mountain at approximately 6000 meters.
Mount Kanamo, a beautiful mountain peak located at approximately 6000 meters.
With sun going down, the temperature had plummeted down to 15 below zero. Amitayus (the snow leopard), was still resting in the cliffs inside the Badang nullah soaking up the comforting heat from the warm rock surface. The wind was gradually picking up and the exposed rock surface would soon be bereft of its latent heat and the comfort it provided. After a while, Amitayus felt the incessant, cold wind pounding on his battered, weather beaten face. Being the dominating giant that he was, he had lost his long-thick tail during a skirmish when a younger, somewhat arrogant male had dared to challenge his authority over his mountain kingdom. That furry tail would have provided some respite from the cold wind, but that was not an option now. Deciding that discretion was the better part of the valour, Amitayus moved a bit deeper inside the cave beneath the overhanging cliff.
“A Snow leopard’s tail is as long as the length of its body and provides balance while negotiating treacherous terrain. It is also often wrapped around the face while resting to protect against the wind and cold. Interestingly, local people believe that snow leopards carry their kills over their backs, wrapping it with the tail to keep it from falling”
Ten years had passed since Amitayus was born in these mountains. No one knew where exactly he was born, but Amitayus had faint memories of being chased away rudely and incessantly by the mother without any rhyme or reason. He had travelled miles, hiding from other dominant males, often going hungry for days and occasionally stealing a sheep or goat from an unwary herder. The tiring and dangerous journey had lasted several weeks till he finally settled down and started marking a small 80 square kilometer area as his home.
The snow leopard landscape. Meadows, cliffs, gorges and ridgelines along with the towering peaks form home to the most mysterious cat of the high mountains.
The night was cold and chilly but Amitayus had eaten well and half a carcass of a blue sheep still lay in the cave. There was nothing to be worried about at least for a couple of another days. The only thing that had troubled him today was a restless young chap with big snow boots, a bag slinging on his back and a pair of binoculars stuck perpetually on his face. The fellow had been too close today and kept scanning the mountain slopes with unceasing zeal. To the surprise and relief of Amitayus he appeared to have not a clue that he was lying there, right under his nose. Finally with the onset of the night, the fellow had decided to give up and retreat, but not before building a cairn on the narrow trail that Amitayus would have to use, to walk out of the cliffs and over to the rich meadows of Gete, where blue sheep grazed in plenty.
Having spent the entire day lazing around, the fall of the darkness seemed to nudge Amitayus to take a small stroll on the cliffs. He was also curious to see what business this fellow who did not look like a Buddhist monk had constructing cairns. The cairns and colourful prayer flags were the hallmark of this Buddhist landscape and there was nothing to worry about them.
Buddhist prayer flags with prayers inscribed on them are thought to spread goodwill and well-being in seven cardinal directions.
To the utter surprise of Amitayus, the cairn emitted a gentle red glow the moment he approached it and the glow became more intense, the closer he approached. He had never seen a cairn like this before, but it did not seem to do any harm either. Satisfied with the exploration, Amitayus returned to the relative safety and comfort of the cave, where to his great displeasure, a red fox was making good of his precious food. Chasing it away, he stretched himself, yawned and then sprawled over, gazing at the star studded bright sky. He drifted into the memories of his childhood when he did not have to worry about either food or shelter as there was a mother to provide for all of it. He could hardly remember the face of the mother or that of the other siblings, but one thing he still remembered clearly; the stars were the same then as they were today. Lingering in the sweet thoughts of whatever he remembered of his childhood, he drifted away to sleep.
Night in the Himalayas. Twin mountain peaks, a village nestled within and the starlit sky provide a magical quality to the night.
Meanwhile Thinley despite scanning the mountains all day had not succeeded in even getting a glimpse of a snow leopard. He had returned to the base camp cold, tired and hungry. Next morning he decided to intensify his search for snow leopard signs and scats as he planned to deploy more of those cairn disguised camera traps for better monitoring of snow leopards.
He also hoped that this wandering around might one day bring him close to a snow leopard! With the help of other knowledgeable villagers and livestock herders, who had intimate knowledge of snow leopard movements, Thinley had managed to identify several places where the snow leopard would pass and a covert camera would record its presence. On a similar reconnaissance trip one day, he had spotted a horse in a meadow, lying about 200 meters from an overhanging cliff. He quickly pulled out his binocular from his sling bag and was thrilled to see a snow leopard lying next to the dead horse. Though he had seen snow leopards a couple of times before, this was the first time that the cat with the uncanny reputation of melting away in the mountains, lay right in front of his eyes. Thinley just could not take his eyes off the beautiful cat with the smoky grey coat adorned with dark-grey rosettes. He could no longer resist taking a few more steps to see the cat up and close. Taking one cautious step a time he gradually moved forth. At one point, the snow leopard raised its head and stared at Thinley, but he was undeterred. A few more steps and the cat crouched besides the dead horse, baring its long-sharp canines. This aggression shook Thinley and he decided to retreat his steps, but not before he have had a good look at the snow leopard. The small stump in place of a long thick tail struck him and would remain etched in his memory forever.
Amitayus photographed by an automatic motion sensor camera in the winter of the year 2008.
Throughout their range in Central Asia, which is spread across thirteen countries, there is not even a single instance of a snow leopard killing or injuring a human being. It is astonishing that a cat that can bring down a full grown horse would not harm human beings.
The waning of flowers was signaling a retreating spring and the onset of a short autumn, which would then soon give way to a long-harsh winter. People in the villages were busy harvesting their precious crops of commercial green pea and the traditional barley.
A village in the Trans-Himalayas with its crop of barley. Besides being a nutritious food, barley has high religious-cultural value and is the primary ingredient of the traditional brew.
Thinley and his team were running around in the mountains, deploying camera traps at the strategic locations they had marked out earlier. Thinley was particularly excited as he hoped that these cameras would be a window to the world of that stump tailed cat that had one day left him stunned with its beauty and courage. He and his team would set out early in the morning, maintaining their delicate balance on the ridgelines, while the furious wind threated to uproot them and fling them down into the yawning gorges. Memory cards brought back from cameras far and wide revealed several beautiful cats that had posed in front of the cameras. The team was particularly thrilled to see a female with two playful, cuddly young ones.
Amitayus was ubiquitous and was found to cover a large area which included the area covered by the female with cubs. Probably he had sired those cubs, but one could not be sure. The effort was rewarding enough for the team to continue with for years, and year after year, Amitayus kept gracing the cameras.
While surfing through some of the recent photographs that the team had brought back, Thinley’s keen eye noticed the battered and tired face of Amitayus. Also the camera traps revealed that numbers of places that he often visited and had formed a part of his large kingdom were now reduced to a handful. The entire team was now a worried lot. Thinley’s natural cheeriness seemed to have evaporated into the thin mountain air and the once mischievous eyes now gave out a dull, sad look. Without anyone noticing, he was making four trips a month to each of the cameras instead of the usual one. He found it difficult to express himself and make anyone understand why he would be so worried about one particular snow leopard when there were many others around. The two cubs had again appeared in front of one of the cameras and a faint smile donned his face when he saw that they were growing bigger and more mischievous, this time running after a bewildered adult blue sheep male.
Two of the snow leopard cubs, growing older and bolder. NCF-SLT camera traps have been monitoring these two cubs and their mother since the year 2009.
The report of livestock killings which had surged in the past four months had trickled down substantially. Thinley had made sure that all such killings were swiftly compensated as deep down he worried that it was the now old and weak Amitayus, who was killing livestock. Belonging to the same community, he knew that pushed to the brink, the herders sometimes would not hesitate to take extreme steps to protect their valuable livestock. On such occasions he often tried hard to ascertain the identity of the snow leopard and in his conversations with herders, he would often invoke the great teaching of Lord Buddha and the right of every life form to exist. Deep down, he silently prayed for the well-being of Amitayus and other snow leopards.
Buddhist prayer motifs. Often used in the rituals of the dead, these beautiful mud idols are created in thousands and are left in the natural caves or poured into the streams.
On a bitterly cold winter morning, some monks on their way to a meditation cave found a snow leopard buried deep in the snow. Thinley’s heart missed a beat before he rushed to the spot, running and falling in the knee deep snow. After a while, his limbs refused to move even an inch and the cold mountain air choked his lungs. Never before had he felt so weak and helpless in these mountains. Somehow he managed to drag himself to the last 200 meters before he crashed on his knees just where the beautiful, but now motionless snow leopard lay. The monks’ lips were rolling out silent prayers for what is regarded as the most mysterious creature of the high mountains.
Amitayus graces a camera again in the winter of 2010. This was the last we saw of him before the mountains embraced him in their lap.
In Buddhist culture, such as in the Dolpo region of Nepal, the snow leopards are considered as mountain deities, extending protection to the sacred mountains and the people. Old scriptures believed to be a 1000 years old, mention a great yogi named Drutob Senge Yeshe who arrived on a flying snow leopard to convert a dreaded mountain God to Buddhism. The mountain God resisted and a battle ensued. The snow leopard on seeing the mountain God assisted by snakes, reproduced itself one hundred and eight times and finally helped the yogi overcome the fearsome mountain God. Similarly the great yogi Milarepa to confound his enemies resorted to his black Nyingma-pa Tantra, transforming himself to a snow leopard at Lachi-Kang (Mount Everest).
…..The Snow Leopard (Peter Matthiessen)
A tear trickled down Thinley’s eyes as he recognized Amitayus, the snow leopard that had once sent him back on his feet, challenged his courage and enthralled him with its grandeur. He looked at the towering mountains around him, as if seeking an answer. But there were no answers; the mountains were silent as they always have been for millennia. With heavy hearts, everyone finally returned to the nearest monastery. Just then a deep rumble rented the frigid mountain air…as a huge avalanche came crashing down and buried Amitayus deeper, much deeper in the snow…
The mountains had moved.
The main highway cutting across the Tost and Tosunbumba mountains
I had lost the sunlight over an hour ago. Well, the sunlight barely made it into these narrow canyons during this time of the year. I was in the South Gobi region of Mongolia and this was the month of November. With no sun reaching the dept of these canyons, the temperature was well below freezing. The one thing I dreaded the most in this region was a bike crash. And just as the thought crossed my mind, the rear wheel of my bike wobbled in the loose gravel and I came down crashing. Lying on the ground I smelled petrol and so I immediately rushed to the bike and put it on the main stand. Only a little petrol had leaked. I had a minor bruise on my left thigh but otherwise I seemed alright.
I pulled out the map of the region and my GPS unit and pondered for a while. After a few minutes I admitted to myself that I was lost! With the sun going down my situation was worsening. My best bet was to head dead north, get out of the mountain and into the open steppe, and I should be able to see the road; simple! Find the highway in the steppe and get back to camp. If I could make it to the highway before total dark I should be fine.
An ibex in the late evening. Usually they prefer the rugged rocky cliffs
I was here in the Gobi desert to try and assess the conservation status and distribution of wild ungulates in the newly proposed Local Protected area around the Tost-Tosunbumba mountains. Alongside, I also hoped to estimate the availability of wild-ungulate-prey for the snow leopard which would complement my work in India. This is also the site of the Long Term Ecological Study, a joint venture of the Snow Leopard Trust and PANTHERA. The only place in the world where you can study the snow leopard using, almost exclusively, a motorbike to get around. Orjan, a colleague from Sweden, is also doing his PhD here. He is incredible when it comes to collaring snow leopards. He has already collared 15 snow leopards and 6 of them currently carry their collars. The study is aimed at understanding the home range, movement and predation pattern of snow leopards. I felt that our work complimented each other very well.
"Nartai", Sunlight, as we called him, was the last snow leopard that Orjan had collared before leaving for Sweden
The most abundant ungulate in this region was the Siberian ibex Capra sibirica and the argali Ovis amon. Though the latter is comparatively much rarer. Outside the mountains and into the steppe there is also the Black-tailed gazelle, khulan and the occasional wild Bactrian camel that stray from the neighboring Great Gobi Strictly Protected area.
Argali, the biggest wild-sheep in the world. They mainly preffer the rolling hills on the periphery of the Tost Mountains.
From my assessments so far, there is a healthy population of ibex. Large enough to support a viable population of the snow leopards. But the status of the other four ungulates is bleak. Interviews with the local herders suggested that the Khulan may even have gone locally extinct; sometime over the last decade. Nadia, an alumni of the M.Sc. Course at the Wildlife Institute of India, but a local Mongolian, helped with the interview surveys. She also found out that it was only a few male bactrian camels that made forays to this region , that too only during winters, probably in search of mates among the domestic free-ranging camel population. Over the last decade the Black-tailed gazelle has retreated further west and exists as a small population of less than 30 individuals. Even though the argali is distributed over a much larger area, their population seems small, as sighting an argali is a difficult task.
The gloden glow of the Gobi is deceptive. It masks the bitter cold!
Even if this area was declared a Local Protected Area, it was threatened by the mining companies that had already procured licenses to explore for minerals in this region. I had already seen some of the mining activity within the borders of the PA. Then there was also the illegal, open-cast mining for gold; aptly called Ninja mining. You hardly ever saw people doing it, just the scares left on the land! The border with China, the sink for all the minerals of Mongolia, is barely 40 km away from here. The nightmare of straying into china that haunted me at my field site in Spiti, Himachal Pradesh, India, still haunts me here!
The Golden Gobi!
As these thoughts were running in my head, I rode over a gentle rolling hill and the vast steppe opened in front of me. The warm glow of the setting sun reflected from the dry grass covering the landscape in shades of gold! I wondered why anyone would want to dig up a place as beautiful as this.
I guess, the glitter of gold outshines the Gobi!
A new dimension has been added to the tiger versus tribal debate – tourism. The past weeks have seen fierce arguments within the wildlife fraternity in response to a petition filed by Bhopal-based NGO Prayatna in the Supreme Court which seeks a ban on tourism in the core areas of tiger reserves. The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), on the other hand, has proposed a complete ban on tourism in the core and buffer areas of these reserves. While some conservationists believe tourism to be a major impediment for tiger conservation, many are of the opinion that it provides sustenance to the ‘poor tribals’ living around PAs. There is also a fraction of people advocating the proverbial ‘middle path’ of sustainable tourism and some who are weary of the double standards involved in designation of inviolate protected areas where tribals are evicted and tourists welcomed.
Below are three major arguments revolving around the issue…
Pro-tourism, pro-tribals – ‘masked capitalists’
The press conference organised by TOFT and other ‘vested interests’ as a rejoinder to NTCA’s stand received much flak from the media (such as the Baiga example). The supporters have been accused of influencing public opinion (including the media) in favour of tourism by playing the tribal card. While neither being in favour of tribals living inside park boundary nor greatly inclined to share tourism profits equitably, their emphasis on inclusiveness is criticised for being superficial and even paradoxical. Poaching, they say, is a bigger threat than tourism and hence tribals cannot be encouraged to live inside the forest. This may be a point to concede. But on the other hand, the mayhem caused by haphazard tiger-centric tourism currently in practice is clearly unacceptable.
Pro-tribal, anti-tourism – ‘socialists’
There are some who deem it unethical to allow middle-class tourists to soak up the luxury of being in the wild at the expense of eviction of local communities traditionally dependent on the forest. They have thus whole-heartedly opposed the presence of tourism which, in their opinion, doesn’t benefit tribals at all and is a morally incorrect thing to do. While this seems reasonable, it is not clear as to how many actually suggest involving the local communities (including the tribals) in taking the final decision regarding the tourism issue. Even though the concerns mirrored in these arguments are not baseless, it is worth considering that nature tourism provides crucial (if not the sole) experience to the middle classes much alienated from nature in their urban settlements. If harnessed in an appropriate manner, this so-called vice of tourism can be converted into the biggest ally of conservation. Furthermore, tourism provides free patrolling services for atleast certain zones where vehicles ply twice a day – a potential respite for otherwise strained forest guards.
Anti-tribal, anti-tourism – ‘oligarchs’
“No, the tiger cannot deal with people but surely we can” – a mindset reflected by many who believe in demarcation of inviolate protected areas (ie. areas that are free from human and livestock disturbance). This 19th century North American conservation model has found a stronghold in the Indian set-up and appears to have benefitted certain species that require a large area and healthy wild prey base to survive. It has also resulted in serious social unrest in a country that has high human densities many of whom are economically backward and equally dependent on the shrinking forests for sustenance.
Since tribals and tourism both present management challenges that divert the energy of the forest officials from other more important conservation measures, some prefer to restrict human entry altogether. However, the underlying message seems to be that forest conservators and researchers should be allowed (“How else are we going to monitor wild populations?”). So, what makes wildlife managers/researchers – the self-proclaimed stewards of the so-called ‘common heritage’ – stand apart from and above the vagaries of human nature?
The question to consider is: what does it mean to conserve nature and for whom are we conserving? And what happens when an ‘ignorant’ tiger enters the clearly demarcated human space looking for an occasional easy prey – after a history of repression people can hardly be expected to tolerate such incidents. If the goal is conservation of nature for humankind then perhaps it’s time we shifted from exclusionary politics to participatory dissent.
Synthesizing the babel…
A recent study by Karanth and DeFries (2011) might prove to be useful in the context of tiger tourism. It highlights some of the key features of nature tourism in 10 tiger reserves in India. On the one hand, it points out the economic ramifications for locals living close to popular PAs who don’t receive their fair share of profit. On the other, it illustrates the challenge of managing tourist pressure and the urgent need for regulations. Inspite of the clear pitfalls in the current model of tourism, what is recommended is not a total ban on tourism but strengthening of regulations. The study can potentially act as baseline information for the highly fragmented nature of tourism in tiger reserves.
It is essential that we consider and deliberate upon all the aspects of the debate and develop a model or guidelines for initiating socially and environmentally responsible tourism which not only takes into account the opinion of the tribals and other stakeholders and but also actively involves them in decision-making[1]. Needless to say, models would vary depending on the demographics and some trade-offs are inevitable. In order to benefit locals and the tigers through tourism (and by extension, other wildlife) it is important to consider needs of both the sides.
Things that responsible tourism can facilitate:
- A Robust framework for channelling tourism money into park management.
- Strict regulations for lodge owners as far as waste disposal is concerned. Cap on the number of hotels around PAs with guidelines on location and distance from the park.
- Devising ways for the community to obtain larger shares of lodge-owner profits (depending on their capacity) or option to carry out equivalent welfare activities. (These activities can be identified in consultation with the communities but could include provisions for rain water harvesting, health check up, education, capacity building etc. Mandatory quota for local employment can be encouraged).
- Creating an association of wildlife photographers for building better nature interpretation models.
- Formulating a strategy for systematically diverting tourist vehicles in the tourism zone such that pressure from the tourists is not concentrated in one location. Also devising stringent rules, route systems and precise timings (this is already in place in some of the high-profile parks) with efficient enforcement of the laws.
- Enabling a system for tourists to make monetary contributions (either compulsory or voluntary) towards park management.
This might mean that an ‘average’ middle class person will not be able to afford the luxury of safaris because of the spiralling costs. It may, however, be imperative to generating revenue for managing the park, preserving its wildlife and ensuring an equitable distribution of accrued benefits to local communities. These are just some of the changes that can be brought about by using tourism in a positive manner.
This article has benefitted from discussions with Aparajita Dutta, Yash Veer Bhatnagar and Sachin Rai.
[1] Following an order by NTCA and tiger conservationists, a sub-committee was setup to develop guidelines to regulate tourist pressure in Tiger Reserves (Dutta, pers.comm)
“How many of you listen to music?” All twenty hands in the room went up. “How many of you share music with your friends?” Again, the twenty hands in the room went up. “And how many of you know that sharing music is a violation of the copyright law?” All hands stayed up. “Then, why do you still do it?” Many reasons followed, topped by this one: “Music is like nature. It is universal. It belongs to everybody. So, I think it is not morally wrong to share music with others even if it is technically illegal.” Nineteen heads nodded in affirmation. Then, the clincher. “If the law were invoked and one of you was arrested for pirating music, how many of you would support such an action?” Not a single hand went up.
The previous afternoon, the same group, comprising mostly young and sincere foresters, had listened closely as a Forest Ranger recounted how he had dealt with local villagers entering the National Park—in violation of the wildlife law—everyday to gather firewood. The group was training to manage reserves under our wildlife, forest and environmental laws. “The villagers know it is illegal to collect firewood from the park, but they still come in,” the Ranger thundered. “So, with help from our local watchers, we identified every villager who came in and booked trespass cases against them. They received a reprimand from the magistrate, and a warning that they would be jailed for repeat offences. From that day, all firewood collection in the park stopped.” The group looked suitably impressed. Then, the group’s instructor asked, “What did the villagers do for firewood then? Did they have alternative sources?” The Ranger replied, “No, these forests are their only source of firewood, but you see, it is not our job to find them alternatives. Our job is simply to implement the law.” The trainee foresters nodded in agreement.
Seen separately, these two anecdotes are unremarkable. But taken together, they raise important questions about the very nature of law and its enforcement, especially in the context of wildlife conservation. Why would a group of people with abiding faith in the tenets of one law, reject entirely, those of another? And, if the enforcers of our wildlife laws could thumb their noses at the copyright law, would it be fundamentally wrong if villagers outside the National Park did likewise to the wildlife law?
Given that over 250 million Indians depend on forests for their daily needs, there is no doubt that even modest acts such as firewood gathering can have a huge impact on our forests. But it is also amply clear that just enacting and enforcing laws to keep forest-dependent people out has simply not worked. Take the example of Bandipur National Park. Although it is illegal to gather firewood from its forests, most of the 40,000 households residing outside Bandipur, including families of forest staff, have done so for decades. What the law expressly forbids—firewood collection, in this instance—has always seemed a totally reasonable thing to do, not just to local villagers but also to the forest guards who implement the law. And the consequences for Bandipur’s forests have been severe. So, how can such a law actually be made enforceable?
The solution is beautifully demonstrated in the story of Namma Sangha, an organisation that has quietly set up a cooking gas distribution service now covering 35,000 households that earlier depended on Bandipur for firewood. Today, with most households having cooking gas, they are less reliant on the forests. But there’s a subtler, more significant change Namma Sangha’s work has brought about. By widening access to cooking gas as the alternative to firewood in these villages, Namma Sangha made the decades-old legal restrictions on firewood collection seem more reasonable, and hence, more enforceable. To be enforceable, a law thus needs, not just the weight of legality behind it, but also the force of legitimacy.
Any law has a greater chance of being effective if it is also reasonable. Is it any surprise then that there is less of a moral dilemma in condemning an ivory poacher than a villager gathering a head-load of firewood to cook a meal for her family? Adherence to the law will remain a distant dream if we continue to thoughtlessly enact and enforce legislations, even well-meaning ones, that criminalise reasonableness. Some of the biggest threats to our wildlife still come from the reasonable acts of ordinary people. And to fight these threats, we sure must employ the law, but not before we have employed reasonableness.
M. D. Madhusudan and Pavithra Sankaran
This article appeared in Down To Earth issued dated 15 November 2011 http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/staying-legal-staying-reasonable
How should we as humans value and relate to other animals? When we use animals in research, in zoos and aquaria, as food items or body parts, as specimens or experimental models, as pets, as machismo-inflating trophies to be bagged, or just as objects for entertainment, do we fully understand their needs, their welfare, their interests? Do we also comprehend our own underlying values, overt or covert, that are revealed in the way we deal with other animals? Is it right to speak of animal interests, pain, and suffering? The implications of the knowledge we have gained in recent times from scientific research on animal societies, behaviour, and cognition on the way we view animals is profound. This year, I was fortunate to read two very different and remarkable books, both compelling and thought-provoking, which bring these issues to the fore. Taken together with the leading primatologist Frans de Waal’s book The Age of Empathy, that I have referred to in an earlier post, these books are a valuable read for wildlife scientists and all those who have the interests of animals at heart.
My first reaction to these two astounding books, as a practicing wildlife scientist with a claim to be involved in animal research and conservation over the last two decades was: “Why were these profoundly important issues never a formal and thorough part of my academic training or practice?”. Is it because issues of human values, morals and ethics are considered outside the pale of training to be a wildlife scientist or ecologist? Is it because they are considered wishy-washy or vague, or, devil-take-you, too subjective? Or is it simply because most present-day wildlife scientists actually do not have a deep understanding or appreciation of the central issues, or if they do, they prefer to keep it to themselves? But why not? We use animals in research. We make claim to efforts to understand them. We make conservation appeals, ostensibly, on their behalf. We probe, we peer, we collect, we tag, we trap, we handle, we follow, we even sometimes kill animals for scientific study. Do we really do all this on the basis of a comprehensive ethical and moral foundation? Or do we shy away from these issues because of being tagged an animal-rights activist even if we are not really speaking of rights? In the context of conservation, can we achieve our goals if we lack a foundational conservation ethic? These books give plenty of food for thought.
The Lives of Animals by J.M. Coetzee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A brilliant work by a Nobel laureate in literature and a wonderful book to start the year with. A superb form of academic novel (a novel genre, I could say, if the pun may be forgiven), this is top-notch writing on a theme of profound and enduring significance for anyone concerned with human values and connections with other animals.
J. M. Coetzee, invited to Princeton to deliver the prestigious Tanner Lectures on Human Values, presents the lectures as a fictional story with debate and dialogue crafted into the form of this book. Within it is the story of Elizabeth Costello, herself an academic, invited to deliver lectures at a University, and the lectures she delivers and the ensuing responses. Reading it as a sort of literary dialectic, one is swept by Coetzee’s tight and engaging prose into central moral, philosophical and ethical issues related to the lives of animals. The four commentaries that accompany the central work by Coetzee are excellent, too. The book’s introduction by political philosopher Amy Gutmann, and accompanying essay commentaries by Wendy Doniger (religion scholar), Barbara Smuts (primatologist), Marjorie Garber (literary theorist ), and Peter Singer (moral philosopher and author of Animal Liberation reviewed below) are worth reading and add great value to this book.
Coetzee touches on vital issues that relate to whether we perceive other animals as beings with interests or as objects for our manipulation. Cruelty, sentience, sympathy, empathy, and the morality of our actions towards other sentient beings is the undercurrent of Coetzee’s words, of Costello’s debate. Vegetarianism, animal intelligence and how we perceive it even as trained scientists, pain and suffering, animal slaughter or ‘sacrifice’, these are all themes seamlessly woven into a gripping narrative thread. Coetzee brings sudden and scathing clarity and depth to the work of a litany of earlier writers, scientists, and philosophers: of Thomas Aquinas and Jeremy Bentham, Franz Kafka and Tom Regan, Wolfgang Köhler and Mary Midgely, and many others.
And yet, the implications are not thrust on you as absolutes, as dogma. It comes in measured words, prompting a dawning awareness. To do this Coetzee draws brilliantly on Kafka’s Red Peter, the ape presenting A Report to An Academy, and Costello’s words only seem to echo his own hidden voice:
I want to find a way of speaking to fellow human beings that will be cool rather than heated, philosophical rather than polemical, that will bring enlightenment rather than seeking to divide us into the righteous and the sinners, the saved and the damned, the sheep and the goats.
A phenomenal work, worth reading and re-reading, even if only to be touched by Coetzee’s prose, or perhaps for introspective and outwardly illumination.
Animal Liberation: The Definitive Classic of the Animal Movement by Peter Singer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Compelling and well-written, Peter Singer’s book is a classic that should be required reading for anyone concerned with the interests of animals. Without taking recourse to the issue of the rights of animals, Singer explains how moral and ethical positions we can take and understand become inadequate if restricted only to humans. Trying to separate humans as a species as somehow distinct and above beings of all other species (speciesism), if pursued logically and through all its implications, only leads to moral, ethical, and philosophical positions that are untenable.
A considerable portion of the book is devoted to detailed and balanced consideration of two major issues affecting the interests and welfare of animals: (a) the millions upon millions of animals used in research and vivisection, and (b) the billions and billions of animals ‘reared’ (=imprisoned) in factory farms and other facilities in cruel conditions and inefficiently (from social and ecological perspectives) only to be ultimately slaughtered, often painfully, for use as food for humans. This is not to overlook the (ab)use of animals for other reasons, such as for fur or other animal products such as leather, but just that the number of animals cruelly treated for vivisectional research/animal testing and for food is enormous. According to Singer, the greatest impact on the largest number of animals will result from immediate changes in these two areas: by avoiding and finding alternatives to animal testing and vivisection, and by going vegetarian, vegan, or being far more circumspect and choosy about where the animal flesh or produce you eat comes from and how the animals were raised and treated.
Besides bringing these issues forward and in-your-face for serious consideration, Singer’s major contributions in this book are a lucid articulation of some central issues. First, the issue of what equality involves (not assuming that everyone is equal as there is undeniable variation, but the ethical imperative of equal treatment). Second, bringing consideration of the interests of animals to the forefront (without need to draw on or call for animal ‘rights’). Separating issues related to preventing pain and suffering, from issues related to the actual killing of animals is another distinction that leads to nuances in treatment of animals and animal welfare in various contexts.
The book is perhaps titled Animal Liberation to raise analogies with other liberation movements, for instance against slavery, racism, and sexism. In fact, many ethical and moral issues raised are consistent across these various movements. The way these are highlighted by the author and the analogies that he draws are very useful both to understand issues and to strengthen reasoned debate. One can ponder on the ideas Singer presents. One can grasp practical suggestions he gives for more ethical personal choices. And one can act.
Worth reading, absolutely.
In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Márquez pens an interesting story that unfolds in a mythical place known as Macondo, somewhere between the mountains and the Caribbean Sea. It is the saga of a family trapped in solitude, both in time and space, and a wonderful account of their adventures and misadventures.
Much before this classic took the world by awe, several seas away in a remote corner of another continent, a similar tale had been composed. The writers of that multi-authored epic came from the Far West to change the fate of a terra incognita, where wilderness abounded and where a thriving civilization had long collapsed, unceremoniously and tragically. It was the story of an unbroken swathe of jungle nestled in the flood-plain of the Brahmaputra river in Assam and its transformation into parcels of land, surrounded by a brewing landscape. And it was the story of a family of several souls, whose fate was sealed forever in one such sliced piece: Hollongapar and its primates who continuing solitude of over one hundred years may last to perpetuity.
However, unlike the fate of Macondo’s founding Buendia family—one that eventually perishes after six tumultuous generations—Hollongapar’s family has successfully fought for and earned their lives against all odds. And in contrast to Úrsula’s (the matriarch of the Buendia family) fear of the potential birth of a pig-tailed child in her family—one that eventually comes true at the end of the story—the pigtails of Hollongapar are struggling to further their lineage, ironically for the same reason—an incestuous legacy. Both are the products of extreme transgressions—one against culture and the other against nature.
However, if one peeled the layers of the history of Hollongapar’s forests, one would find the seed of this story formed long ago, the year 1687 to be precise. An Ahom king, Gadadhar Singha, mobilised several thousands of dhods (lazy persons) of his kingdom—who pretended to be sluggish in order to skip compulsory royal service—to construct a 212-km road through this forest that connects Kamargaon in Golaghat to Joypur in Dibrugarh. Aptly named the Dhodar Ali (the sluggard’s road), the road came to delineate the southern periphery of Hollongapar. Perhaps a narrow brown strip of mud and dirt at the time, but a wide, rolling black belt of asphalt years later; today it separates two worlds—one that supports nature’s and other nourish and nurture state’s economy.
The Bhogdoi stream on the eastern flank of the forest, which was deepened to channelise the surplus water of the Disoi River and prevent flooding; also separates the forest from the small dusty and bustling town of Mariani today.
These forests once were an important resource for the Ahom kings, who could fall back on them whenever they needed timbers to build boats, an indispensible component of their naval fleet. Riding on their strength, the naval infantry of the Ahom kingdom had been able to defeat invaders as formidable as the Mughals. Just as the sal and teak forests of North and South India won the British Crown many a battle, so did these forests for the Ahoms.
Arriving in the Upper Brahmaputra valley at the behest of the Ahom king to aid the kingdom in defeating Burmese invaders, the British had no intention of staying back in a land full of “inferior” jungles, wild beasts and a sparse human population; it was not tempting enough to seduce their colonial lust. Then, someone struck ‘green gold’ in the valley.
And a war against these forests began. Forgotten were their glorious contribution to Assam’s past and the promise they held for its future. Use of these vast forests now took the form of desecration rather than veneration. The coming of the colonial British changed the historical trajectory of Hollongapar forever.
****
One fine morning in the late nineteenth century in Hollongapar, a pair of gibbons wakes up from deep slumber. The sun had just emerged from the horizon and the cool breeze of the morning had a nostalgic feel. The pair couldn’t help themselves but sing. A song of freedom, of contentment, and of a carefree future. A song of the deep rainforest! Swinging from one branch to another, they looked ethereal. They traversed through the canopy, merging with the dappled sunlight and leaves as they went further.
Suddenly everything turned quiet! The breeze carried an unfamiliar whiff, the sun seemed to blaze harder; they had reached the end of a seemingly eternal freedom.
They found the forest before them had gone. The umbilical strip of trees that kept it connected with the swathe of forests on the other side had been snapped, replaced by numerous saplings of a shrub the world would later know and cherished as Assam tea.
Since that eventful day when they had discovered a new world beyond the tree line, the gibbons watched tea saplings coming into their jungle from every direction. By the time the pair reached a ripe old age, the saplings which now became bushes, had enveloped the entire forest within it. Their hearts knew there was no escape from this isolation.
The forest kept shrinking further until one day, it suddenly stopped. Several khaki-clad white men were seen in the forest, clearing edges, erecting pillars and measuring its periphery. The gibbons watched, uncomprehendingly. Their home even got a new name—the Hollongapar Reserve Forest. That was the summer of 1881.
Only last winter their son had left the family and was seen courting a female in the vicinity of the group. Soon, one more pair of songs added to the forest orchestra, a sign that their son had successful wooed his lover. They might now have a second generation roaming in the remaining forest. But unbeknownst to them, somebody had already decided their fate.
Nobody knew who saw it first–some say it was the stump-tailed macaques during their foraging tour—a clearing as straight as the trunk of the hollong through the middle of the forest. Looking at the unfamiliar bare strip, the oldest female, who was leading the troop, decided to abort the tour and adjusted her troop’s route for the rest of the day, never realising it was the start of a new routine that would last forever. Months later, she saw two long ‘poles’ lying parallel to each other on a raised platform all along the clearing as far as her eyes could see. Their forest was neatly sliced into two unequal parts.
She would never forget the day when a moving beast whizzed passed her with a deafening sound, leaving a trail of black smoke hovering over the forest. The smoke infiltrated the fragrant forest air with its soot and an obnoxious smell that overpowered all senses.
She wondered about the gibbon pair on the other side of the clearing, who would perhaps never been able to free themselves from the clutches of solitude. And she wondered about the rest of the valley, its forests, its creatures, many of them her kin and cousins, and about her own future.
****
With time, the moving beasts called trains made their brief but unpleasant appearances more frequently, carrying away coal, tea and oil from the valley and bringing in dark-skinned people from far away lands. These terrified and fragile looking, near skeletal people arrived in huge numbers and many settled down along the edges of the forest.
Initially, after their arrival, they were seen working in the middle of the bushes, plucking the leaves with their feeble but deft hands. Their dark-skinned bodies and gaunt faces distinct against the light green of the bushes. Men and women, boys and girls, young and old, none rested. Only the toddlers, who slept on the cloth hammocks tied to the unfamiliar Albizzia trees amidst the bushes, were free from everything.
Source: http://siris-archives.si.edu as mentioned in http://tinyurl.com/3szadnc
Much later, the new people began to come into the forest to collect outenga, dhekia, bamboo, honey and many other things. First only a few, but slowly hordes of them. Abject poverty, frequent hunger and an uncertain future pushed them deeper into the forest.
The journey these wretched people had made to this ‘Promised Land’ had been marred by unthinkable miseries. During the sojourn many lost their lives to epidemics that broke out on the ships that sailed the Brahmaputra. Those who discovered the betrayal of the contractors who had lured them with promises of a better future and dared raise their voice, were rested forever at the bottom of the river. Only those who defied everything reached the valley. Shaken and terrified to the core; each one’s dream had long died in the arduous journey, each one had already resigned to his fate. Exactly the kind of labourers their white masters were looking for.
Source: http://siris-archives.si.edu mentioned in http://tinyurl.com/3mbm4ve
Like Paul Robson’s Mississippi, Bhupen Hazarika’s Burah Luit kept ferrying these destitutes into the valley, neither affected by the miseries nor moved by their cries. It flowed relentlessly; at once providing hope by enriching the land with its deposits and eroding the same land as if venting its anger. The poor peasants on its banks were always in a conundrum whether to venerate the whimsical river or be terrified by its might.
****
India was winding up the third anniversary celebrations of its newly-acquired freedom when the young Soneswar prepared to retire to bed. He had been preoccupied with a single thought the whole day. The river was rapidly approaching his land; if it got washed away Soneswar would have no other livelihood. He knew that his fight against the might of the Brahmaputra was an unequal one and sooner or later, he would have to accept the inevitable. But it hardly occurred to him that it would come so early. That evening, the entire valley shuddered in a tremor that shattered everything including Soneswar’s hopes. It was the worst earthquake the valley had witnessed in a century.
The next day, he sensed something strange about the Brahmaputra. The ‘Old’ river had surprisingly gathered much strength overnight and was looking mightier than ever before. Within a fortnight, Soneswar had lost his land. He was now one of the many ecological refugees that Brahmaputra creates year after year.
Months later, after the quake, several miles away, the seeming tranquility of the Hollongapar was about to vanish forever. Soneswar was among the first to clear a patch of forest for a new beginning; away from the unpredictable vagaries of nature and in hope for a better future. Many joined him; almost everyone had similar stories to tell. Within a decade or so, Hollongapar was virtually sieged by Madhupur, Lakhipur, Rampur, Fesual, Velleuguri, Afolamukh and Kaliagaon leaving human footprints everywhere in the rapidly shrinking forest, which retreated to a mere shadow of its past.
As for the gibbons, the stumptails and others, the solitude was nearing eternal.
The final blow came in 1965 when a huge chunk of Hollongapar was taken away to establish several hutments for the Army under the pretext that the nation’s safety was paramount. Within that chunk, everything was cleared. The tall hollong trees, the thickets of bamboo; the undergrowth of palms, the carpet of aathubhanga. Nothing survived the mayhem. The slow loris too could not outpace the human’s axe. And the pigtails and the langurs? These fortunate ones were able to pack themselves into the remaining parcel of forest, competing with each other over depleting space and food.
****
For the last three years, I have watched closely the remaining populations of primates in Hollongapar. The forest has received a promotion for successfully protecting its primates for so many decades: it is now the Hollongapar Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary—the tall tree and the ape are synonymous with this forest island.
The Dhodar Ali and the railway track have prevailed. The moving beasts still make regular appearances and carry on their tails tea, coal and oil. But it has stopped bringing the dark-skinned souls − known to us today as the “tea tribes”. Old Soneswar is still there, still hoping for a better future and struggling to eke out a living on his meager piece of land. The Army camp and the tea gardens are bustling with their usual activities. Only the bushes and the white masters have been replaced but their legacy endures.
The old female stump-tailed macaque, one who first saw the railway track, is no more, but her descendants have survived this solitude. But, only a few hundred are left. They still come up to the railway track and still never dare cross it. Unlike their predecessors though, they have to comb the entire forest looking for food and shelter. Even for this, they have competition—with other primates as well as the dark-skinned people who still come inside the forest in huge numbers, pushed by the same century-old forces.
The pair of gibbons on the other side of the railway track have long gone but three other families are still around. They often come to the edge of the forest, sometimes catching a glimpse of their own kind on the other side of the track, instinctively burst into song. Today, their voices carry more aggression, and perhaps a note of desperation too. But, maybe both of them understand the futility: neither of them will be able to cross this gap to claim other’s territory or even to console each other. Although the gap is only a few strides, their separation looks eternal.
In Hollongapar, everything has survived these tumultuous centuries: the animals, the trees, the people, the solitude, the poverty, the hunger, the hope. Except the Assamese macaque, for none have been sighted since 2005. Is it the beginning of the end?
Or are one hundred years of solitude too soon to write a requiem for Hollongapar and its primates?
It is not often that one finds a person who is equally comfortable with his place at the head of a corporate boardroom of a leading company or being in a line of people trekking up a leech-infested rainforest or even diving into the ocean to admire the beauty of coral reefs. Someone who can meld vision with wit, lace seriousness with humour, and soar with lofty thoughts while remaining firmly rooted on the ground. A person who can step outside comfortable boundaries to engage with other worlds and world views, bringing refreshing insights while being refreshed by the experience himself. NCF is fortunate to know and have a friend in such a person in Venky Muthiah.
Venky Muthiah at the NCF Annual Academic Meeting, July 2011, Valparai
For more than two decades, Venky Muthiah (more formally, Mr. M. M. Venkatachalam) has held senior positions in the Murugappa Group of Companies, one of India’s reputed business houses. After his graduation from the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, he went on to obtain a Masters’ Degree in Business Administration from George Washington University, USA. He is presently the Chairman of Parry Enterprises Limited and Parry Agro Industries Limited, and serves on the boards of Laser Words Limited and other companies.
Venky has been a supporter of NCF’s research and conservation work in the Anamalai hills in his avatar as Chairman of Parry Agro Industries Ltd, a company partnering with us on rainforest restoration and conservation education programme. Still, most others in NCF had never had an opportunity to meet and interact with him. This year an ideal opportunity came up. For the first time since its inception in 1996, NCF’s annual academic meeting was being held, not in Mysore, but in a field location, in Valparai in the Anamalai hills. The venue was the stunning and elegant Sinna Dorai’s Bungalow perched atop the Iyerpadi hill, surrounded by organic tea fields of Parry Agro and commanding a breathtaking view of the Valparai landscape, and the rainforests of Vellamalai and Akkamalai in the Anamalai Tiger Reserve. Here, from 29 to 31 July, NCF students, staff, and scientists gathered for the annual meeting, while enjoying (or, in the case of some, braving) the monsoon mists and rains.
One of the monsoon visitors at the meeting hall...an atlas moth
The schedule was tight (full programme of the meeting here). There were nearly 30 presentations, a field visit to rainforest nursery and restoration sites, a stunning visual presentation by our own world famous, felicitations for field and office staff, and a special interlude to honour and thank our close associates. And with a delightful extempore extra presentation by young Violetta and not-so-young Nachiket on the nearly 60 species of moths they catalogued and photographed over the 3 days at the venue, plus the Great Hornbills flying overhead and the friendly neighbourhood gaur around everyday, it was a heady mix of serious presentations peppered with fun and laughs, watching wildlife and monsoon mist and rain, and time to reconnect with chatter and music and dance in the evenings. Venky, brave soul that he is, sat through or stood it all, even called it ‘amazing’ and a ‘refreshing NCF weekend’.
Sitting through it all... a packed programme in a packed hall...
And, ask anyone, and they will all agree that Venky’s presence was equally refreshing, and his “special address” equally fabulous. He had the audience in splits while at the same time reining them along with thoughtful words to ponder over. Bowing to popular demand, Venky was kind enough to jot down his speech for us and here it is for you to read, ponder, enjoy!
A mutated version of the special address
NCF Annual Academic Meeting 2011, Sinna Dorai’s Bungalow, Valparai
Good Evening,
I have been badly inflicted by a rare disease caused by Raghunath tanujaensis. The manifestation of which is the loss of sleep when a presentation is due to be made in the near future. Hence, I have lost a lot of sleep over the past two days, thinking of what I am to say to you. I finally decided on a ramble, so here it is:
"...so here it is!"
I have been greatly disillusioned over this time that I have spent listening to all of you. At first it was Rohan who went on about some Wilfred Voynich and his document and I was certain that he had lost it and I was sitting in the wrong place. Then there came Narayan, who for some strange reason spoke about carpets and cutting it up into pieces. He even showed us a photograph of the knife that was used. This was followed by Johnsingh who couldn’t tell a four-horned antelope from a barking deer. This shook my confidence in the ability of you researchers.
Furthermore there was the diminutive Rucha—whom I sincerely believed was playing hookey from high school—she goes on to make an impressive presentation on coral reef structure and groupers and later deflates my almost 100-dive ego with a casual comment that she is a certified rescue diver.
Koustubh with his fancy camera that could make me look like Dan, fooled all of us about the snow leopard in his photographs. Continuing with these elusive cats, the learned Vaibhav Chaturvedi proposes to leave his place in front of the havan and move from giving discourses on the four vedas that all Chaturvedis commit to memory, to collect scat over a 4000 square kilometre area in the Pin Valley. And this after having first swept the area clean. Which is good for Rishi’s PhD because he will not have to step on any snow leopard doo when he traverses the same 4000 square kilometre range setting up camera traps to take photographs of the snow leopard. This he could have easily bought from Kalyan Varma for a fee or from Koustubh for nothing.
Finally Rohit came along with an understandable presentation on hornbills. This heartened me, which was until I saw him and the usually serene Shankar defile my conference room floor with their dancing. Mr. Kalyan Varma—another accomplished dancer who takes better photographs than I do—was the final straw.
But there were bright moments—(A) There is this engineer in our midst, who on graduating, did not go into the financial service business and drive the world deeper into debt, but instead went into conservation. (B) Karthik’s interesting work on alternate weed control, although it will spell doom to my weed control business and Amritendu’s work on pollinators, the number of variables that he is dealing with—phew—but then he is from West Bengal where nothing is simple and everything requires discussion. (C) The fact that I now have exciting places to visit during my next seven years of vacation. On the cards are travel to Central Asia, the Pin Valley, Spiti in Himachal, all of the Western Ghats, the Andamans, Lakshwadeep, Mongolia, Arunachal, and sunny Brighton. So don’t be surprised if one day I knock on your door or tent or hut.
So coming to my ‘special address’, here it is in the form of a calling card, it has all my details and please let me have yours as well and I promise you that unlike Anand, I will not send you obscene text messages in the middle of the night.
A 'disillusioned' Venky planning his next seven years' vacations
Moving on to a more serious platform—We at Parry Agro, and I personally, are committed to support your effort in any way that we can. Be it the use of our land and facilities, infrastructure, labs, housing, conference facilities, and some cash. Not anywhere near Dan’s 4.1 million GBP! But I would like to start with a modest Rs. 1 million, and being a good Chettiar I will not tell you when you will get it. Suhel keep guessing.
I understand that Koustubh requires another $200 million to fool us completely about the existence of snow leopards in Mongolia; unfortunately I am in an agri-business and I lose vast sums of money due to the animal raids on my crop. So if Atul can help me with that and Madhu can get me the compensation, all that cash is yours. I, however, will lose my job and will have to necessarily go back to my alternate job of driving for the NCF. A responsibility that I will take up with great seriousness and care so that Jegan will not have any opportunity to report on my roadkills.
Back to business—what I see around this room is an extraordinary diversity of ideas, skills, academic training, and research interests. I see a great amount of commitment to the cause, of passion, of humility, and of fun. I see a lot of mutual respect and concern for each other. Traits hard to find all bundled up in one person, when you look around the country.
I also see a growing organization and feel that managing your growth while still being integral with your philosophy, is the tough one to address—so we have this classic dilemma before us–grow and perpetuate or … Well, I believe that small is beautiful. Applying that to the growth paradigm, the solution is to grow slowly and consistently. NCF is its people—when newbies come in, let them experience and imbibe the essence of NCF. This can only happen over time, and time spent with the elder citizens of the organization. Once they integrate, then look at the next infusion or installment for growth. Please guard against whizzing around attending numerous conferences, presenting numerous papers, and churning out proposals with little consequence. Keep the visits to the state and national capital to a minimum and snare the policy makers to your turf.
It is obvious that there is a diverse portfolio of research interests within the NCF. There is research rigor and there are standards. All very well, but being in conservation, you need to balance it with development and the reality of the pressure of population on the land. Ask yourself why do we do all this? What are the consequences of what I do?
It is important to go beyond and take your work forward :- (a) to inform and educate the people at large and the next generation in particular, (b) to solicit more funding for your efforts, and (c) to influence the formulation of public policy directly and indirectly through better informed people at large and local communities in particular.
So, in addition to your scientific papers, please write popular articles on what you do or inundate Pavithra and Anush with a lot of information and pressure them to publish it in no less than National Geographic! Your presence in the field for long years has endeared you to the local communities. The likes of Manish while celebrating with the islanders and our gaon budi with the red coat can influence equivalents of the Ghora Aabhe Council and pressure change for the positive.
Take conservation to the people and take me with you!
Cheers, thank you and all the very best.
Venky
P.S. If any of you share my keen sense of observation(!), you will notice that I have not made mention of a few people, dogs, dugongs, and turtles. It is just because my battery is running low!
In front of the Sinna Dorai's Bungalow...
Photos by: Rishi Sharma, Kalyan Varma, and Divya Mudappa
Like a deep gash from shoulder to chest, the Great Rift Valley plunges into the heart of Africa. In the landscape to the west, below a clouded sky, a Marabou soars above everything—vast plateaux with weaving rivers, steep-sided valleys spotted with shimmering soda lakes, and a landscape peppered with cities and settlements, farms and savanna. Standing on a little promontory, we do not feel disadvantaged by the Marabou; from horizon to horizon the sweeping view is nearly as much as the soaring stork may see.
There is the endless tawny gold of dry grass, flecked with emerging green, and studded with Balanites trees like dark poster-pins on a golden velvet. Extending to the grey-blue of distant hills is the grey-brown fuzz of thorny acacia and candelabra trees alternating with stream-side ribbons of deep green forest.
There is the ringed boma, from where clusters of cattle radiate, bells ringing, watched by red-cloaked Masai. By the muddied river is the tinsel tourist town with large-wheeled vehicles and workshops, decrepit streets and shanty houses, signboards of luxurious resorts pointing beguilingly away from the squalor where blank-eyed youth stare impassively at wide-eyed visitors who have traveled far to be here. And there, in the distance, is the long, dark line of several thousand wildebeest.
Great migration
The wildebeest are hunkered down on the long walk. The rough grass is knee-high to the front-runner. As thousands of hoofs pass, press, push apart and down, tear and crush, the grass is flattened, shredded, crushed into the earth or dusted aside, until, at the end of the line, one can see hoof marks on the thin strip of naked earth winding through the grassland. The trail of the wildebeest will stay for a few days or weeks until the grass covers it again—a soft mark on the landscape, unlike the road-scars made for vehicles and the traveling people.
By all accounts, this is an old, old human landscape. Humans evolved, as a species, from other primate forebears, not far from here. In the last two million years, and in the geological blink of the last ten thousand, the species spawned by this land has spread out, transforming themselves and the Earth. Today, the new peoples return to the land where others of their ilk like the Masai still live. They arrive as spectators of the great migration of wildebeest.
Across over 30,000 square kilometres of the Serengeti – Mara ecosystem in Tanzania and Kenya, over a million wildebeest join over half a million zebra, gazelle, and other ungulates on the annual migration. Early in the year, the journey of hundreds of thousands of wildebeest begins, too, with their birth near the ‘cradle of humanity’ in the grasslands near Olduvai Gorge in the Serengeti and in Ngorongoro. Then, as the dry season arrives and grasses begin to dry, the herds move, past feeding and mating grounds, to the north and north-east, to arrive, by June and July, in Kenya’s Masai Mara.
And there they find both profusion in the grass and peril at the jaws of lions.
Drama of renewal
At the Mara River in Kenya, the wildebeest throng at the water’s edge, bleating and pulsing with purpose at the perilous crossing, eyes alert for the wraith-like crocodiles in the swift current.
In their great journey, the perils of the crossing appear momentary, but many do not make it across. Those that do, spend the next four months in the Mara landscape, feeding in long grass woodland and savanna.
Still, the real drama is not merely in the pulse and throng of the Mara crossing. The flecks of green in humble grass, energised by sun and rain, are the markers of a greater drama played out across vast space and time.
Low clouds streaking grey shafts of rain are visible from many kilometres away in the open savanna, but the migration is provoked by changes across even longer distances. The wildebeest, incredibly, seem to track that vast sweep of rainfall and grass production. For, as rains bring lush growth to the short grass plains to the south, the ensuing pulse of nutritional profusion propels the wildebeest to loop back to the Serengeti plains.
And so, the wildebeest move. And with their bodies, their feeding, and their dung, they transform the grasslands in their passing. Scripted by evolution and directed by ecology, and spanning hundreds of kilometres every year, the annual migration of these hoofed engineers of a great landscape is one of nature’s most remarkable phenomena.
Spectator or spawn?
And so the people watch, at the Mara River, crowded in four-wheel drive safari vehicles, vans, and trucks. Here, nature is placed on display for the tourist. Vehicles rev and vie for the best spot for their customer to take that perfect photograph.
Later, they will discuss their ‘take’ at the river’s edge, over tables set with white sheets, served French-press coffee and fresh croissants by white-gloved waiters from the resort. The hippos and crocodiles pursue ancient custom in the river, as the riverside tourist, a human whose journey originated in the great landscape of Africa, is back to ogle or ignore at will, and return to the power-fenced resorts beautified with manicured lawns and ornamental plants from faraway lands.
This is the human domain, it all proclaims, and nature is out there.
And when the people depart, taking photographs and memories, nature is left behind, as are the leavings of their visit. As just another species born of this landscape, the human does not seem out of place here, but his new presence and manner betrays a different sensibility.
Recreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
The journey of the human, set against the journey of the wildebeest in the land of Marabou and Masai, then evokes another sense. A sense, paraphrasing the poet Gary Snyder, that nature is not a place to visit—it is home. And of this land, we are the spawn not the spectator. That what is needed to replace people within nature is not the bringing of more people and vehicles into trackless wilderness, but a realisation, espoused by thinkers such as Aldo Leopold, that nature is the land and community to which we belong. In the absence of such a sense of place, the great rift then appears not just a gash in the earth in Africa, but a rift that threatens to sunder human from nature in our hearts and minds.
(Photographs by Divya Mudappa and T. R. Shankar Raman)
