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.”

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

(posted on behalf of Amruta who is right now still bravely roaming the forests of Arunachal, counting her beloved Toko plants along the way...)

Kumar, Khem (my field assistants) and I were in Khari, which is an anti-poaching camp along the southern boundary of Pakke Wildlife Sanctuary & Tiger reserve in Arunachal Pradesh.

Forest at Khari

Our work plan was to explore forest patches here and locate as many populations as possible of our study species, Livistona jenkinsiana (commonly known as the Toko tree). The Toko is an ecologically and economically important Arecaceae member found in the tropical forests of Arunachal Pradesh. Several animals such as hornbills, squirrels, porcupines and wild boars are observed to feed upon its fruits. Several tribal communities across North-east India are known to extract their large leaf fronds to use as roof thatching material and the seeds are used for consumption as a substitute for betelnut. The interesting thing is that unlike symbolic tropical plant species, the Toko exhibits clumped and patchy distribution, restricted to specific microhabitat conditions.

An adult Toko tree loaded with fruits

In Pakke there are quite a few areas with substantial populations of Toko. However local communities continuously harvest the species and often the entire tree is cut down. Due to its increasing rarity in many areas in the wild, we thought it would be vital to study its reproductive ecology in this undisturbed but fragile rainforest ecosystem. Thus the first step was to explore the forest and get acquainted with the pattern of its patchy distribution.

Toko leaf: Its big size and waterproofing texture makes it a perfect roof-thatching material.

It was the month of August and so it wasn’t surprising that our day had begun with heavy showers.  We had our usual early meal and then sat around waiting for the rain to stop. In a couple of hours it stopped but the sky was still very dark. However our low ration levels kind of forced us to be optimistic about the weather and go ahead with the planned work for the day. So, Kumar, Khem and I pulled on our leech socks, packed some biscuits and cucumber (our usual lunch) made sure our equipments and observation sheets had enough water-proofing and set out to see what the day had to offer us.

The river was wide and high and the current really strong. So instead of walking along the river, which would have been easier, we decided to try and find the way through the forest. After a lot of bush bashing and getting ourselves stuck in knee-deep mud a few times, we reached the area we wanted to explore. Three of us were proving to be a great team. Kumar was doing a grand job of finding the way through the forest and Khem was  extremely happy to  use the GPS. It was with some difficulty that I managed to fill in the data sheets without getting them too wet. The leeches however were proving to be a real nuisance and we were struggling to work and get rid of them at the same time.  They would get lodged in your armpits, on your hair, stomach, back, face and even on your tongue. Kumar couldn’t stop laughing when he saw me trying to take a leech out of my mouth. He was probably wondering how I managed to let it in.

We had a few hours of productive work. The most exciting part for me was the sight of the first patch of Toko population that we came across. There were one-year seedlings, successive stages of saplings, sub-adults and adults all growing together. What it looked like to me was that in the forest this huge joint family of Toko for some reason had chosen to live on this hill for generations. I thought to myself, this is going to be very interesting, to try and find out what results in this patchy and clumped distribution of Toko. Is it (i) resistance to density dependent mortality below the parent tree in specific micro-climatic conditions, or is it ii) dispersal by specialized animal species that defecate the seeds in clumps in specific micro-climatic conditions required, for germination and recruitment? Or there is something more complex going on?

One-year old seedling of Toko. This one leaf after many years will grow up to provide hundreds of fruits essential for survival of various animals in the forest

One year old Toko seedling

Toko saplings of different ages

The sky slowly started getting dark again and my GPS started losing signal. The leeches also decided to be more affectionate towards us. It finally started drizzling, and this soon turned to a heavy shower. Leeches and the heavy rain didn’t stop me though and I continued on my Toko search. I think subconsciously I was enjoying the happiness of overcoming the initial nervousness I had, about my decision of working in these interior rainforests of India. This was my very first endeavor of learning about these mysterious forests. Although extremely excited about starting work in a completely new place with new people, I remember how anxious I was about being able to deal with leeches all over me, walking long distances in these dense unknown forests, the possibility of contracting malaria and independently applying myself to collect meaningful scientific data. The happiness was probably about attaining this feeling of comfort and the increased level of confidence about working and living in this new place.

Kumar and Khem however had completely given up on looking out for Toko and were busy removing leeches from different parts of their body with irritated and annoyed faces. I decided it was time we started walking back. Kumar was relieved to hear this and I guess as a return favor said, ‘Abhi hum log naya aur chota rasta se jayega, jungle ke aur ander ander se’ (We will go back through a new and shorter path which goes from further inside the forest). I was happy about this, since it meant being able to explore a new portion of the forest. It was a beautiful patch of forest with small meandering streams with crystal clear water running over pebbles and liana’s hanging over it. The rich soil, the trees, the sound of water and leaves, everything appeared magical and stunning. Kumar and Khem were walking in front and I was drifting behind, thinking how blessed I am, to be able to wander in these remaining patches of pristine rainforests.
My thoughts were broken by some sudden noise coming from my right and when I looked up, I saw a ‘Gaur’ running in my direction and it was not more than 10 meters away from me.  My first reaction was to run but then I saw its huge horns coming towards me and all I could remember are two thoughts running through my head. First, the Gaur is a little distance ahead of me and is running perpendicular to the path I am on, so if I keep running I am definitely going to get hit’. The second thought was ‘what’s going to happen next?’ I still don’t know if it was a natural instinct, but at that very precise moment I fell down just at the right time. When I sat on the ground I thought, ‘well, Amruta, you have probably escaped the horns but what about the feet? If they touch you even by mistake you are going to be in trouble!’ I closed my eyes and experienced what sounded like the the heaviest leap ever, over me. But that was it. When I got up I saw Kumar and Khem were making loud noises with their ‘daov’ (a local design of a machete) and the gaur was turning back. I ran and stood with Kumar and Khem and added to the noise. The Gaur turned back, but ran in the opposite direction to where we were standing. Once the Gaur had gone out of sight, the three of us looked at each other and spontaneously smiled at each other. Maybe we were happy I was unharmed or maybe we wanted to ask each other if we had imagined whatever just happened.

Kumar examined me and couldn’t believe that I had managed to escape without even a scratch on my body. We went to see the place where I had fallen and to find out from where and why the Gaur had come running the way it did. What was surprising was none of us had noticed the animal until it came so close.  None of us got a chance to tell each other to get prepared to run or defend ourselves. We think it was unlikely that it was standing there and just charged me. What was more probable was that it was already running away from something like a tiger or wild dogs and that I just happened to come in its way while it was running to save its own life. I guess only the Gaur knows why it was running at that speed.

Footprint of Mithun that landed over me

We saw the tree that the animal had banged his huge horns on, and had I not sat down, my condition would probably have been worse than that tree. What made me feel good about myself was that I did not panic at any point during those 10secs. I guess in such situations no one does since there is no time to panic! It is difficult to describe the exact feeling but I believe I felt lucky, happy, special and thrilled about those 10 seconds.

Wounded tree

On the way back we were discussing about the incident. I had been in the park for nearly three months and not seen a wild Gaur and I kept saying to Kumar and Khem, “etna din jungle mein gur raha hai, phir bhi Gaur nahi dekha ab tak.” (I have been roaming in the forest for so many days but still haven’t seen a wild Guar). Khem now said, “apko Gaur dekhna tha na! dekho! aur nazdik se dekho! (You wanted to see a Gaur right? Do you want to see a Gaur any closer now?)?” We all laughed.
What a day it had been. I thanked nature for taking care of me and making one more day of my life so beautiful and special.

The solution being proposed is a new scheme with an annual worth of 800 billion US dollars that has been given the moniker, Payment for Evolutionary Services and Technology fund (the PEST fund). Explaining the principle behind the PEST fund, Dr. Gonsalves said, ecstatically, “Species are the cornerstone of evolution. The extinction of a species signals the end of a long evolutionary process and deprives us of vital evolutionary resources that we could otherwise exploit for the benefit of mankind. In order to prevent the extinction of species, we have evolved a novel market-linked fund that will incentivise governments, private players, even individuals, to conserve evolutionary processes that make species what they are.”

Initiatives launched with the fund include a 10 million dollar grant to a field research centre in Ecuador to keep Darwin’s Finches evolving in the Galapagos Islands, a 2 million dollar community-based project that will enable villagers in Mexico to keep the mutualism between yucca and yucca moths going, and a seed-grant to an industrial consortium in Birmingham that will experiment with different kinds of air pollution to promote the evolution of different races of peppered moths in the region.

Laboratory-based evolutionary scientists around the world are also overjoyed at the initiative as it earmarks a full 50% or 400 billion US dollars for direct payments to labs breeding populations of the ultimate evolutionary milch-cow that never seems to run out of milk: the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. An additional 5% allocated just for experimentation related to tinkering of Drosophila salivary glands has left competing scientists working on other aspects, such as growing legs on fruit fly heads, virtually salivating.

Financing the fund is the world’s behemoth financial institution, the Bank of the Earth, which is providing the fund on easy terms. For implementing institutions in developed nations, it is provided as a low interest loan, while emerging economies may obtain these funds as interest-free loans or straight grants. This would be decided by economists at the well-staffed Bank of the Earth Coordination Centres currently being established within the offices of Prime Ministers and Presidents in the latter countries.

As in the case of many such large and popular schemes, the PEST fund has led to controversies in academic circles. Trenchant criticism has emerged from rival players who have tried to establish payments for ecosystem services (such as clean air, water, and carbon capture). Besides the loss of a pithy acronym to a larger project, proponents of payments for ecosystem services are worried that PEST funds will actually work against their own limited achievements thus far. The rival group is led by a group think-tank called the Coalition Against Vitiating Evolution for Monetary or Economic Net profits (CAVEMEN). CAVEMEN spokesperson, Dr. Clubb Hunter, in a press statement said, “Many evolutionary processes unleashed by humans work against nature and ecology, such as the evolution of more virulent diseases resistant to our best drugs, the varieties of invasive alien species spreading on every continent, and the evolution of couch-potato genes among certain human groups. Should we really be paying for all this, and that too in hard cash?”

Climate change nay-sayers also receive a fresh shot in the arm as aspects of human endeavour leading to further climate change that is likely to drive adaptation and evolution in plant and animal species are now eligible for PEST funds. The beneficiaries may range from airlines spewing greenhouses gases and engine fumes into the upper atmosphere over polar regions, nuclear and thermal power plants emptying warmed-up coolant water in cold rivers with endemic aquatic fauna, to those raising high-yielding, high-belching methanogenic cattle on Amazonian pastures adjoining biodiversity-rich conservation areas, observers of the PEST fund have noted.

The PEST fund has, however, won support from an unlikely quarter: social scientists and anthropologists. “This scheme is founded on well-established theory in social and human psychology”, said Dr. Eliza Doomuch, a retired social scientist and farmer in Kentucky and an architect of social revolution in the American South. “People will value things only if they are paid to do so”, she said. Taking a leaf from this successful scheme, she has founded a novel movement that promises to rid the world of racism, torture, and genocide, among other things such as parent-offspring conflict and sibling rivalry. This initiative, tentatively labeled Payments for Decency, will provide direct economic incentive to any human who shows basic decency, as defined by the International Consortium of Decent Human Beings, to other humans. Knowledgeable sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, indicated that keeping the future potential of this seminal idea to alleviate human suffering in mind, Dr Doomuch is already in the reckoning for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Yet, not everyone is happy. Among the first to raise questions about this trend to pay even for basic decency to other humans or to our planet is the Dixie Endeavor for Ecology and Population Solutions for Humanity In Transition, the only such NGO on the planet that does not use any acronym. When contacted for their opinion, this writer was told tersely, “We are refuse to accept this.”

None of these misgivings deterred the gala press conference in Washington, D. C., however. As Dr. Gonsalves said, in an euphoric tone, “We need to save species for human benefit. When humankind stands to gain so directly, it does not really matter how we do it, does it?”

* * * * *

Disclaimer: All future events even remotely resembling the above fiction are entirely coincidental and unintentional.