An ear-piercing shrill! We stop dead in our tracks and listen. ‘Just a bird’, I mutter and walk on. Silence. Thud! Some commotion in the nearby bamboo patch. ‘Could it be an elephant?’ we wonder. More silence. Another thud follows a shriller cry! We look at each other. We can’t be wrong this time. It must be them. Quickly positioning ourselves on the ground we wait with bated breath. After a few restless minutes, a head with its red mottled face finally emerges out from the thick undergrowth. It looks suspiciously on both sides of the clearing, fixes its eyes on us for a moment and quickly disappears. Soon the entire group marches in front of us and vanish on the other side. Ending a desperate seven day-long search, we finally have our sights on an elusive primate species in this isolated and fragmented forest patch.
A stump-tailed macaque crossing a forest road
I have been studying the behavioural ecology of the stump-tailed macaque Macaca arctoides in the Hollongapar Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary in Assam for the last three years. The sanctuary is a 21-square kilometre tropical lowland, semi-evergreen rainforest patch close to the foothills of Nagaland, surrounded by tea gardens, agricultural fields and human settlements. This particular study is a sub-set of broader research objectives including the behavioural ecology of other primate species of the sanctuary. I am trying to understand how a community of primates, particularly the three species of macaques — the stump-tailed , pig-tailed macaque Macaca leonina, and rhesus macaque Macaca mulatta — co-exist together in a fragment with diminishing resources.
Hollongapar Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary
In the mist-wrapped quilt of darkness, my motorbike feels intrusive at 0400 hrs on the road that leads to the entrance of the park. Setting off from Bheleuguri village, my temporary home, my field assistants and I often negotiate our way between herds of wild elephants to reach the macaques’ sleeping tree before they descend from their roosting site and vanish into the thick undergrowth. It was a frantic seven-day search before we finally sighted them, and we simply couldn’t afford to lose them. On arrival, the sight of cuddling lumps of black bodies on the distant branches of the Ficus tree brings a great sense of relief. I prepare to follow the group from dawn to dusk for next five days unless we lose them, and then switch to observing the other primates of the sanctuary for the rest of the month.
The sleeping tree wrapped in an early morning mist
Gigantic Ficus trees, with their sprawling canopies, are the most preferred sleeping trees although they equally prefer trees such as Dipterocarpus macrocarpus, Artocarpus chama and Castonopsis indica. These sleeping sites are distributed throughout their home ranges, including areas where they overlap with a neighbouring troop. The tall trees ensure safety from leopards Panthera pardus and pythons Python molurus—the primary predators of macaques in the sanctuary. Unlike other primates of the sanctuary and those individuals of their group that prefer to sleep on different trees, the entire group of stump-tailed macaques shares a single roosting tree. The majority of sleeping sites and trees are selected repeatedly by the group.
As the first rays of sunlight kiss the canopy high above, the group stirs slowly and is ready to start a new day. They go about their morning rituals with fresh showers of urine and faeces adding pungency to the air, already thickened by the odour of their droppings. With us intruding into their ablutions, it’s no big deal if an unwelcome lump of droppings occasionally land on our heads!
Sleeping tree of stump-tailed macaque
Their interaction in the morning is dominated by allogrooming activities, while the group is still on their sleeping tree. Grooming helps in maintaining social bonds besides facilitating the removal of ectoparasites from one another’s bodies. Being a terrestrial primate, they accumulate heavy loads of ectoparasites while foraging in the undergrowth, especially bamboo thickets. Although occasionally displayed while foraging, much of their allogrooming is almost exclusively confined to mornings and evenings on their sleeping trees.
Grooming is the major activities in the morning and evening
All of a sudden, a fierce fight breaks out amongst the adults and the group starts moving down the sleeping tree. The fragment of rainforest wakes up once again with shrills shrieks of aggression among the adults. Generally, adult males descend using trunks of trees, while juveniles use numerous lianas for their descent. But today, all of them descend using a single thick liana. A perfect time to enumerate the group! Knowing exactly what to do under these conditions and remembering their field-training, Dilip and Noren, my local assistants, start counting each individual descending the tree and I begin to assign age and sex to each of them. Finally, when all the individuals are on the ground, we match our data. It stands to 133!
This group, to the best of my knowledge, is the largest reported group of stump-tailed macaque anywhere in the world. Looking at their sex ratio, it becomes evident that the recruitment rate of the group is extremely high. The number of juveniles and infants is twice the number of adult females. This means that the females are breeding every year! Moreover, the size of the two troops that the sanctuary harbours has doubled since 1998. This is quite incredible! How do we explain the existence of such a large group? A larger group size perhaps improves their access to resources. Given the finding that higher population densities are found within the sanctuary, the species has probably benefited from the protection it receives in the sanctuary. The lack of space to form a new group could also be a plausible reason why a single group has grown so large.
The group foraging on the root cortex of Forrestia mollissima, their favourite food plant
I plough through rain-fed streams as I follow the group, as they hurriedly cross overhead through the dense canopy. Today’s destination is an area with huge trees of Artocarpus chama. The party splits into three recognisable sub-groups, and each of them position themselves separately in three different trees; a few of them start feeding on fruits fallen to the ground.
An adult male feeding on the fruit of Willughbeia edulis
Artocarpus chama is an important food resource for the primate species in the sanctuary. Besides them, squirrels, deer and elephants have also been seen to feed on them. Elephants, in fact, help dispersing this species, as one can see numerous saplings emerging out from their dung, away from the parent trees. The convergence of species to resources when found in plenty and switching to a different set of resources during lean periods is one of the many mechanisms by which different species live together even under conditions of limited resources and reduce inter-species competition. A greater overlap in food resources indicates that two species would compete for the same resources when it is in shortage and during this tussle, the out-competed species could eventually disappear. This might be one of the several explanations for the disappearance of many primate species from the fragmented forests of upper Assam, where primates compete with each other for resources that are diminishing rapidly.
After a bounteous early lunch, with cheek pouches stuffed with these juicy offerings of a fruiting tree, the group moves ahead but abruptly turns back, immediately moving in the opposite direction. A few minutes later, a train pierces the quiet woods with an extended shriek. The group has finally hit the dead end of the park, both literally and metaphorically!
The sanctuary is divided into two unequal chunks of forests by a railway track and this is one of its most serious conservation concerns. During my study period, I have seen three capped langurs, two pythons, and several other animals that met their ends on this track. The rate at which these animals are being mowed down is alarming as this will not only impact the dwindling numbers of several solitary species but also have its impact on changing the group composition in social species like primates. The idea of connecting these patches through canopy bridges has been mooted, but not materialised yet. Besides, it is unlikely that it can help terrestrial species like stump-tailed macaques and have, in fact, never been seen doing so in the entire study period.
Fuelwood collection and the railway track are the major threat to the unique biodiversity of the Sanctuary
The group has already moved a considerable distance from its sleeping tree and found a log, laden with mushrooms – an unexpected delicacy. Within moments, the log is disrobed of its fungal ornamentation. A pig-tailed macaque, feeding quietly high above on a Dillenia tree, watches this marauding army for a while, displays its typical puckered face and resumes its feeding bout as if nothing has ever happened!
A pig-tailed macaque feeding on the ripe fruit of Dillenia
Stump-tailed macaques generally avoid interactions with other primate species but whenever they do, they seldom indulge in aggressive interactions. Unlike their South American cousins, primates in this part of the world do not form poly-species association — a temporary association between two or more species that usually form to enhance foraging efficiency and predator avoidance, however, such associations never seem to develop in the tropical forests of northeastern India. Although Hollongapar is reported to harbour seven species of primates, the existence of at least one species—the Assamese macaque, and its single population—is, today, doubtful. I have not seen this population since 2005. Has this species become locally extinct in this threatened fragment? If yes, could we attribute its disappearance to inter-specific competition with the other sympatric primate species of the sanctuary?
The group trudges through the opening of a bamboo thicket and we find that a female is actually leading the party today. We wait till all individuals follow her and soon we too join the caravan.
Do stump-tailed macaques have spatial memory of the forest? Researchers are still unable to understand how primates process spatial information mentally to navigate in their natural environment. Nevertheless, if the ranging behaviour of stump-tailed macaques is any indication, they definitely seem to possess some kind of map of the forest in their mind. I am intrigued by the way they find their select sleeping trees and trees laden with ripe fruits in these dense forests where visibility is extremely poor.
It is time to climb up the roost once again before the darkness thickens in the forest. The entire group ascends to the topmost branches and position themselves – grooming, huddling, displacing one from a favourite spot and activities ‘social’ to macaques beyond foraging and feeding unfold. The group unrecognisable beyond the individual silhouettes becomes inaccessible to me. I look at the last individual who still struggles to find a suitable place to rest. Tomorrow, I will come back before they wake up and see how they unfold their secret of life in front of me. For now, I have to make a long winding tour back to my own sleeping site!
The macaques seem to be doing fairly well in Hollongapar, at least for the time being, given their healthy breeding population. But how long this population will survive in the long run is anybody’s guess, as sooner or later the sanctuary will reach its maximum carrying capacity.
In other northeastern states the status of the stump-tailed macaque is still unknown but all over the hills, they are hunted for their meat. In the Garo and Khasi Hills of Meghalaya as well as in the Ngenpui Wildlife Sanctuary and Dampa Tiger Reserve of Mizoram, they often raid jhum fields. In fact, in Nagaland, they were considered a serious pest, as reflected in the writings of McCann in 1933. He observed that these monkeys were troublesome to Naga cultivators and did considerable damage to their crops as did the rhesus macaques in the plains. He further added that the Nagas were somewhat apprehensive of them on account of their aggressive display and ability to attack a lone man or woman. Today, however, the species must be threatened in this state as most Naga tribes are known for their hunting skills.
In the upper Brahmaputra valley, the most endangered primate species are found in reserve forests that are outside the Protected Area (PA) network. Although legally protected to some extent, they have for long been ignored and so have their unique species assemblages. An integrated landscape-level approach leading to conservation planning is urgently needed. But, ultimately, the involvement of local people in this endeavour will determine the success of any possible conservation intervention.
I am heading back to the camp, after a five-day schedule with the stump-tailed macaques. It is getting dark and I am not able to see anything beyond us. Beside me I can see the happy faces of Noren and Dilip da, exhausted but excited, their passion and enthusiasm unmatched, their spirit unparalleled. Much later they reveal that they don’t like anything in life as much as working in these forests, and given a chance, they are ready to leave the luxury and comfort of their homes as well. ‘Bhal lage’, (‘feel good’) – this is their invariable, gentle answer when asked why they want to do this work. Even I feel happy, as those two words seem to echo the passion for conservation that we must evoke to ensure the future of the sanctuary as well as of the last stump-tailed macaques huddling in their roost as evening darkens around them.
The true custodians of the stump-tailed macaque
An edited version of the article was published in the Sanctuary Asia, www.sanctuaryasia.com in October, 2011
The Lion's share...doubt or trust!
The forest is enveloped in an eerie silence…deep within this void lurks suspense, one that keeps you aware and alert. A thick, luxuriant carpet of dry teak leaves adorns the forest floor – a challenge for those who wish to walk quietly, it is a treat for the eyes of the admirers of beauty – in the form of patterns and textures.
The maze...and the noisy carpet
It is February – the forest is witnessing a transition from winter to spring. Celebrating this change with full indulgence are the blooming trees of Palash (flame of the forest) and Semal (silk cotton).
River Shingavda, meanders through it like a playful teenager.Originating from this forest, carving her way through age-old, volcanic rocks and flanked by lush gallery forests, she is a synonym of beauty. We are in the heart of the forest that is the last home of the Asiatic lion – the Gir.
Shingavda, the meandering beauty of Gir
Accompanied by ‘Abba’, as he is fondly called by the young forest guards, we literally are walking down the memory lane in the Gir forest. Taj Mohammed Daus Mohammed (his real name) belongs to the Makrani community known for being excellent lion trackers, but also maligned for their unlawful activities in the forest. His grandfather worked for the erstwhile Nawab of Junagadh about whom the man had many memories including the eight-and-a-half rupee salary that he drew in those ‘good-old’ days. Abba has been serving at Dabhala post in the Jamwala range of Gir forest for nearly thirty years and said with a wink and grin “I generally say I’m 50 when asked about my age!”
Abba_attached to show detachment
As we walk the wilderness of Gir with him, he recounts many tales of the bygone era. “A particular Diwan saheb of the Nawab of Junagadh advised him to keep our community – the makranis out of the important jobs and gave us only police or forest jobs and that too lower ranks only. My grandfather and father wore joker-like shorts in those days!” Even this is more like a neutral observation that he shares; nothing inside him showing any negative attitude for the person that bestowed this favour upon his community! While taking us along the river for a good four kilometers, he shows various animal signs including antler rubbings of sambar and chital; diggings of pangolin – the strange, ant-eating denizen that’s seldom seen; lion pugmarks and leopard scrapes – all with the curiosity and interest of a young child. We stop for rest and find ourselves chatting again. Perched atop a rock ledge that overlooks a vast stretch of the Shingavda river, Abba softly murmurs “can’t believe this…it was all so different some thirty years back. Now it’s such a good forest…” Nibbling on the biscuits that we have taken out during this short rest, he talks with humility and simplicity seldom encountered today. Ears busy, I let my eyes roam…gazing at the river once haunted by hundreds of buffaloes of the maldhari herdsmen belonging to the Rabari, Charan, Ahir and Bharwad communities. It was a time when Gir teemed with their nesses – hutments surrounded by thick and broad hedges consisting of thorny branches of Zizyphus and Acacia.
Site of an evalcuated Ness in central Gir
We resume our walk, leaving the tangled vegetation behind, and continue further arriving at a place called pithdi-belan – the confluence of the Shingavda and Ardak rivers. Water is crystal clear with various shades of blue and green. Abba drinks several handfuls of water and in the process, finds a lion pugmark on a sand bar. A big male has walked past here early in the morning. He is known to them, claims the other, young guard. He shows little trace of water that remained in the tracks hinting at the lion having walked not long ago.
Indeed, the king walked this way
We are soon following the steps of the king! Here, the banks are overgrown with reeds of Phragmites karka and Typha angustata. There are occasional stands of Tamarix and young jamun (Syzygium cumini) trees too. One needs to be careful to avoid stepping on a hungry crocodile! We cross the river several times as water is still high and the dam downstream is ‘full’. A pair of red-wattled lapwings warns every creature of our arrival. We fail to trace the lion after intensive efforts in treacherously dense vegetation and tricky terrain. The search is finally abandoned, though reluctantly. The sparkling sand bars along the river and the small islands in its pools are a tell-tale sign of the protection and peace that prevail in this part of Gir. No tourists or other human activity except occasional patrolling by the forest staff and the routine operations of fire prevention and wildlife census. The birds are confiding and so are the beasts, including the magnificent sambar.
Hope, wait and trust - all in the eyes!
We spot a hind and a fawn – looking directly at us, but not with disdain, or so I think. I relax on a roundish sand bar at the confluence and recollect visiting this place during my study of the Indian peafowl in 1992-93. It is a nostalgic moment and I spontaneously think of the good times and able field assistants who taught me many a things about the flora and fauna of Gir during the short period that I spent. Leaving pithdi-belan, I reminisce further on the days spent in Gir, which had carved a permanent niche for this lion-forest in my heart. That’s what has probably brought me back here, this time with a different purpose – to assess the conservation status of the Asiatic Lion. We’ve walked at a leisurely pace along the river for about an hour and a half, now reaching a place called pola paana (hollow rocks). This is our destination for lunch. Settling atop a sandy mound protected by the dense shade of a karamda (Carissa carandus) bush, I stretch out.
Flow and shine
The river is quieter and wider here. Signs of Marsh Crocodile or Mugger are to be seen all around. A woolly-necked stork literally hangs in air for a while before landing as if it is well aware of the danger lurking beneath the calm waters. A pied kingfisher displays its fishing skills, first hovering and then swooping like a falling stone…splosh…to emerge with a fish in its sharp, long beak. Having secured food and content, it flies off. Our food also arrives in the meanwhile from the nearby Dabhala chowki. While food is being served in our plates, the alarm calls of langur and chital from the opposite bank draw our attention. Seems like the efforts of a hungry leopard to secure some food. In Gir, leopards are surprisingly active during the day, possibly a strategy to temporally avoid lions which are invariably stretched out under shade by this time of the day. A siesta is welcome for us too after lunch. As I stretch out again, my eyes naturally take to sky. Three Black Storks are mulling over a descent on the river, but continue circling high up over our heads. These migrants from far off Russian wetlands also have an immature individual among them, possibly last year’s chick accompanying the parents for the first time to this vast forest of the lion. On the other bank, the alarm calls continue. We scan with our binoculars, lazy to get up, but optimistic and excited; nothing surfaces in our view. I don’t remember when I doze off, leaving aside the general alertness of a vulnerable human being in a forest with large predators and completely ignoring the persistent alarm calls of chital on the opposite bank.
One of the rocks could come alive as a sleeping croc!
Abba is up before us and ready to go. His smile is a bigger greeting than any words can convey. We start walking towards the Shingavda reservoir – our final destination for the day. This is the fourth day of our walk across Gir forest. So far, everything seems in perfect order. The afternoon walk is a bit tough as temperature soars a little above 35 degrees and the sound of walking over teak leaves makes sure we are deprived of any decent wildlife sighting. Passing by the old, abandoned ness sites, I kind of feel strange. It is as if the contrasting emotions of loss and gain are still lingering. I say ‘loss’ because a thriving culture of pastoralists who lived and died among the prides of lions was permanently lost from the area as the National Park was freed of ‘all’ its human elements. ‘Gain’ because this change marked the beginning of a new era in the history of Gir. Recovery of the habitat was promptly followed by an increase in the number of wild ungulate prey. Many believe that this change has had a negative effect on the use of this area by the lions. We do not see that. In most areas of what is now the Gir National Park (or Core Zone), including the route that we have taken today, we encounter scats, pugmarks and other signs of lions. The high number of sightings and signs of prey betray the cause of this.
Rich habitat - the other pride of Gir
Round-the-year availability of water in Shingavda, Dhatardi, Bhuvatirth and Ardak rivers ensures good habitat quality. It seems that what was provided by the buffaloes and cattle of the maldharis decades ago is now available in the form of wild prey such as nilgai and sambar. There’s also a mention of the increasing denseness of the habitat making it difficult for the lions to hunt, but scientific evidence and observations show that neither the whole of National Park is such forest, nor is hunting made difficult for this large cat that stalks and surprises its quarry at close quarters. A thorough study of lion hunts/kills made by Ravi Chellam has thrown more light on this, and for now, the dominating presence of lions in this region is evidence enough of his observations. The forest everywhere is showing signs of activity and animal presence. There is a fair regeneration of food plants. Though walking yields fewer sightings compared to a drive, we are rewarded with many animal signs. These include bark chewing, antler rubbing, shed antlers, and even kills. We reach Dabhala check-post and rest for a few minutes before tea arrives. Sipping tea from steel saucers; the occupants of the forest staff quarters make typical, loud sounds, as people in this part often do. The walk is still on, but we relieve Abba from here. He greets us and bids goodbye, touching his heart.
As we continue further, new stories unfold as it is the young guard accompanying us – Dilipbhai’s turn now. Our jeep arrives in a short while and takes us to the Shingavda dam. The drive seems very fast and a rather shallow experience compared to the walk. The calm waters of Shigavda river spread far and wide guarded by the lengthening shadows of the Acacia trees.
The Shingavda Dam refflecting a quiet, evening mood
Here is a near-perfect union of nature’s gift – water and man’s technology – a dam. Or, is it? Much of the water that is received through the forested hills of Gir National Park ends up in the sugarcane fields of Kodinar taluka through several dams located within and on the periphery of the Gir Lion Sanctuary and National Park. People living in this part around Gir are surely not oblivious of this fact, but they possibly aren’t aware that they are in essence consuming the lion’s share! Much to my amazement this ecological foot-print also continues towards my own home, where each cup of morning tea probably has a bit of Gir in it!!
A forest engulfed by the advancing shadows
As I marvel at this connection that I share with the Asiatic lion, the sun is on its way to enlighten the other side of the globe.
A lion roars in the distance reminding me that the forest now belongs to its rightful owner…
There is a dark sea above and a dark sea below. With one I am transfixed, with the other forever moving. Above, the arched firmament is smeared with galactic grey and sprinkled with silver brilliance of stars uncounted. Below, a fathomless depth hides under a smooth lustre, crested with white ribbons of surf and the luminescent wake of our passage.
And there is, with the wind, the gentle wind, tugging at my t-shirt, sifting through my hair, my eyes, eyelashes, over my hands and my legs, sighing in my ears, a light swell on which the boat rises, and a moment poised on a vertex of consciousness, filled with being.
In boundless seas, I am transfixed, I am moving, I am.
The moon is yet to rise. Behind me stretches the boat, its throbbing engine now silenced with a switch. The mizzen sail billows with mainsail and foresail and the boat leans into the darkness. There is a lull and a surge of air as if the ocean has held its breath briefly and the sails slacken and then fill with a pop, like a slap on the rump of a horse that gets it going again.
There is no other boat or ship around. Except for the faded glow of an instrument panel astern, there is no other light not of the seas. There is just us, in a boat pointed towards an unseen island. People of a purpose sailing on the undefined and relentless purpose of the seas.
Dawn flenses the cowling of night off the waters, revealing clear blue unmarked by cloud. The world opens before us and the bow parts the brightened waters. Flying fish break forth, like a fountain of grasshoppers flushed in a meadow. They arch through the air gleaming and flashing in sunlight. They skitter the surface, rise briefly, and plunge. The water is glassy smooth and secretive again.
Suddenly the sea is alive with spinner dolphins. Their sleek and shining shapes course through the waters in a sibilant rush. In energetic waves they rise and breathe and curve and dip, in a sinuous symphony that scarcely mars the waters.
In the distance others breach the waters into the air in exuberant bursts, spinning and twisting and falling in founts of spray.
The water is cobalt and clear and I watch a dolphin near me swimming its sea as he watches me sail through mine. His curved fin and flippers and flukes, the snout and streamlined body are all crafted to perfection in the waters.
The dolphin effortlessly keeps pace, now scouting ahead, now falling back. And then with a surge he is gone and the rest of them are gone. Barely ten minutes of being with dolphins and yet there is a pang of loss at their passing.
The boat cruises on and the sun rises into brilliant day. Did we come upon the dolphins or they come to us? The dolphins have the answer. And I wish I could ask them. I feel a strange kinship: is it because I know that they know?
The biologists have figured this much. Dolphins and their kin, porpoises and whales, are counted among the most intelligent mammals. Their large, intricate brains, in relation to their body mass, place them somewhere between humans and the great apes. Faced with a mirror, a bottlenose dolphin can recognise himself, a self-recognition that bespeaks a self-awareness and earns a membership in a small but growing club of animal species, which includes the human being. Dolphins are social and empathic, intelligent and emotive. They can be affectionate, enchanting, aggressive, playful, endearing. Their life is in the open sea. The life of the sea is in the dolphins.
The sun sears its way west. As dusk settles, a pod of pilot whale makes its way through the darkening waters. A brown haze hangs over the water, like an airy smog, the breath of a sea monster. Through the haze, the sun drops quickly from blood-red sky to bloodied sea. Our journey is not over.
The intelligence and sentience of dolphin and whale carries consequences, as does ours. Dolphins and whales such as orcas can be driven from delight and vitality to depression and debilitation when held captive in artificial sea ‘worlds’ that are more like tanks and puddles. They can become extremely distressed when people drive them for slaughter or separate a mother and her calf for capture and trade. Then the dolphin or whale must buy its life, its existence of sorts, by succumbing to perform and amuse other people to the chimes of artificial music and the ringing of the cash registers. We know now for sure, the biologists say. They can feel pain. They can suffer. They are sentient beings, too.
Darkness returns and we are enveloped by the seas, with dolphins on our minds. What does it mean to be a human being in a world with other sentient beings? And what the moral imperative of our ability to bring far greater harm and pain to a dolphin than he or she can ever bring to us? Will our search for new worlds and other intelligent life bring us great discovery from the starry sea above, or from the yielding sea below? Or will it come instead from the sea within us, in surprise and joy and revelation? “When it is dark enough”, wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “you can see the stars”.
It is early yet in our quest into the lives and languages, the cultures and personalities, of dolphins and whales. The interpreters are still busy: marine scientists and other philosophers, the writers and the poets. Every day they probe the seas, to fish out a nugget of knowledge or ravel out the skein of connections. It is an expansive, artful, expanding world.
Meanwhile, I am on the bow of the boat again, cruising the dark seas. I sense an impending arrival at a place ordained but of my own choosing, too. And a sense of place impels me through waves of thought into a consciousness of what it means to be.
This article appeared titled Dancing with Dolphins in The Hindu Sunday Magazine, 18 Mar 2012. Photographs and latter video courtesy Kalyan Varma.
It is not often that our national newspapers carry informed and thoughtful articles about ecology and conservation, especially concerning our islands and coasts. The Hindu, taking a lead on this, has published a series of six articles in the Sunday Magazine spanning concerns in ecology and society in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The articles appeared between 22 January and 26 February 2012. The articles listed and linked below address a range of issues such as tribal reserves, wildlife conservation, invasive alien species, endangered species, and new developments that threaten these unique islands, the marine ecosystems, and indigenous people. Most are accompanied by lovely photographs as well.
Conservation caveats
T. R. SHANKAR RAMAN & DIVYA MUDAPPA | February 26, 2012
An endemic hornbill threatened by proposed developments on Narcondam Island and a swiftlet whose nests are a commodity in wildlife trade provide lessons for conservation.
Develop and perish?
MEERA ANNA OOMMEN, KARTIK SHANKER | February 19, 2012
How long can Great Nicobar Island, home to spectacular bio-diversity, resist development and security pressures?
Fading of an invisible map
VARDHAN PATANKAR & ROHAN ARTHUR | February 12, 2012
A reef management plan that’s an intricate system of prohibitions and permits, clothed in superstition, has worked for centuries. Now it is beginning to fall apart.
An intricate web
PANKAJ SEKHSARIA | February 5, 2012
Unlike the rest of India, tribal rights and conservation are not at the opposite ends of the spectrum in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Yet, there are challenges.
Imported Threat
RAUF ALI | January 29, 2012
They’re beautiful but within themselves they carry the seeds of destruction.
Targeting Tillanchong
MANISH CHANDI | January 22, 2012
Invaluable for the Nicobarese people and endemic wildlife, Tillanchong island in the Nicobars is threatened by a proposal to make it a missile-testing site.
See also the article on the Andaman Trunk Road posted here, which appeared on 1 January 2012.
By Jordi Pagès
Jordi Pagès, a PhD student from the University of Barcelona who is working with Teresa, came over for a brief visit to the Lakshadweep. These are his memories of the trip.
The day started very early. At 5.35 am Rohan and I left the apartment towards Bangalore. We had been waiting for the permits to come for several weeks, and at last our field trip to the Lakshadweep Islands was about to come true. We got onto the 2-helix plane to Agatti via Kochi, where we would meet the rest of the expedition: Nachiket, Rucha and Vardhan. The view above the Western Ghats was spectacular, and after stopping at Kochi and picking up the rest, we arrived in Agatti. But Agatti Island was not our final destination for that day. In less than an hour we were leaving again to Kadmat in a fishing boat. The sea was calm. Some flying fish welcomed us as we left the lagoon into the open sea. A group of dolphins showed us the great atoll of Bangaram after which the big bright moon lit the beginning of the night. The feeling of sailing into a new unknown ocean was amazing: the air was clear, bright, pleasant, not hot, not cold. Add a hot cup of ‘chai’ to the experience (I could swear it was only chai!), and the dream was complete. After a while, the first lights of Amini, only 7 km from Kadmat, warned us that the journey was coming to an end. ‘Sometimes the trip for its own sake is as fulfilling as the destination’, Rohan had said some days earlier. This was now truer than ever. Finally, after some four hours we crossed the reef and entered the lagoon of Kadmat. The trip on that tuna fishing boat had been one of the greatest experiences of the whole trip. At the jetty there was the man who would guide me to the place where I would stay, on the southern tip of paradise. That day I woke up in Mysore, and, after having crossed some of the most crowded cities of the world (Bangalore) was now sleeping in one of the quietest places I have ever been.
The tip of Kadmat at night – the end of a world
Coconuts and moonlight
That night I slept better than ever. The hot sun of the 10th degree parallel woke me up at 6.30am and, excited, I grabbed my camera and headed for the tip of the tip of the island to get a perspective of where we were. The southern tip of Kadmat Island was a magic, magnetic place. You have the feeling of being at the end of the world. Thinking about it now, in some senses it really is the end of a world – each of those islands is like a different tiny world in its own. Nachi told me that he once met a 94-year-old islander who had never ventured anywhere outside this 11km x 500m strip of sand and coconuts. Can you imagine the perspective of the world he would have? Going for a walk around the island I took a look at the rich fauna and flora of the emerged part of the islands: goats and coconuts, respectively. A rather simple nutrient-limited system, especially for the poor goats, which survive grazing the visually not so appealing coconut leaves. This simplicity contrasts with the spectacle of the coral reefs that thrive on the edges of the lagoon – and of course the spectacle of the seagrass meadows.
A seagrass meadow (Cymodocea rotundata) completely grazed by green turtles and a coral head
Indeed, the first days of our ‘expedition’ focused on assessing the seagrass. We conducted transects to assess canopy height, density, etc, to analyse the impacts of green turtle herbivory to the seagrasses themselves, but also to the rest of the system and even to local fisheries. My first impression was astonishing. The canopy height of those meadows was around 10 cm or even less, because of turtle grazing. The comparison to our Mediterranean seagrass (Posidonia oceanica), whose canopy can reach up to 1.2 m, was disproportionate. Despite this, Lakshadweep meadows have a lot more species than Mediterranean meadows – even after the effects of a hungry band of turtles. As we continued our fieldwork, I kept thinking of how similar and different things are between my study system in the Mediterranean and the islands. As you may know, in Lakshadweep islands, green turtle herbivory has transformed previously high canopy, dense meadows with high species richness and high fish counts into very sparse low canopy meadows with a lot less fish species and biomass. The process behind this is the loss of habitat structure for the fish to shelter. This type of interaction is very similar to what we find in the Mediterranean. There, the ecosystem engineer, the species which presses so hard that completely changes habitat conditions, is the fish Sarpa salpa, one of two herbivores of our system (yes it really is a complex assemblage). As I mentioned earlier, our meadows generally are around 70-100 cm high, but when herbivorous fish densities peak, canopy heights can plunge to 10-20 cm. What we have found is that this has cascading implications especially for benthic invertebrates such as sea urchins, which have disappeared from these highly grazed meadows. It is interesting how two systems such these, so far one another, can be so similar and so different at the same time.
At the Potato Patch: A coral reef full of life
A butterfly fish of the species Chaetodon meyeri
After finishing some work on seagrasses, it was time for my first encounter with a coral reef. It was a spectacle. From the moment I put my head underwater my eyes opened as wide as oranges! I think I did not blink for the whole dive not to miss any fish, any coral or any turtle. This was amazing! The water was very clear, and very very hot (30ºC), at least for me, used to water maximum temperatures around 23ºC (and 12ºC now in winter). In that single dive, I saw more fish species than ever before in my whole life. This is not an exaggeration – it is the absolute truth. In Medes Islands Marine Protected Area, one of the best sites to dive in the northwestern Mediterranean, the maximum fish species richness recorded is around 70 species. That day, in Kadmat, we counted some 80 species of fish in a single transect! Moreover, it was not just the number of species that I found striking, but the biomass. The most extreme comparison is for the maximum size in Labridae from the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. The biggest labrids in the Mediterranean are Symphodus tinca, or Labrus merula, which can attain 50 cm at the most; in contrast in the Indian Ocean your Cheilinus undulatus can easily go beyond 200 cm. Another interesting comparison: we only have one species of damselfish, Chromis chromis; you have dozens and dozens of species of damsels. The sad thing was that more than the 90% of corals were dead because of a bleaching event caused by the increase in temperature in 2010. They told me that with all corals alive the number of species per dive would have been around 200! It’s good that I came in a bad year, because if not my eyeballs could have left my orbits. The day had been amazing, and it finished amazingly. While returning to the resort I found the sky unusually dark. These days it had been very bright at night because of the full moon, but tonight was completely black and the stars were out. It was incredible. The reason for this was a nearly total moon eclipse! As soon as I figured this out I rushed to my room to grab my camera and tripod and without having dinner I headed to the southern tip of to get away from the lights of the resort and take some photos. What a spectacular night for a spectacular day in the paradise.
A shy stonefish of the species Sebastapistes cyanostigma. It only lives among the branches of the coral Pocillopora
The moon eclipse some minutes after its maximum
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)
