Comments on: Keeping a culture of co-existence

By: Anush

Anush — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 15:19:27 +0000

Well put !

By: Manish

Manish — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 07:25:04 +0000

So true and very sensitively put together. I have often scratched my head for long when i had the oportunity to be confronted by such issues when in valparai. The tolerance that so many rural folk have is in such contrast to our more modernist ways of handling and coping with such situations of conflict. On the other hand, with shrinking habitats, one wonders if large animals like elephants will have enough space to move around as they are wont to. But you have a point, unless “we do nothing to reduce the burdens conservation places on them, or at least to share in their costs, we will only ensure that the cultural space they make for wildlife is lost. And that loss is bound to leave us immeasurably poorer, both ecologically and culturally”.

By: hiraman

hiraman — Mon, 31 May 2010 08:18:27 +0000

I came across an interesting conservation effort in the book “The Adventure Capitalist” which could be an eye opener for conservationists, and if the same can be duplicated in India help our embattled farmers.
Farmers in Africa closer to Zambezi River have found a way to this problem which is beneficial to both farmers and elephants—growing chillies. Faced with crops being destroyed by marauding elephants farmers did not know what to do until a researcher came up with the idea of growing chillies, now known as Elephant Pepper. Elephants have particularly sensitive mucous membranes and when they encounter a chilli bush they tend to simply turn tail and head off in the other direction. Realising elephant’s sensitiveness to chillies researchers encouraged farmers either to ring their farm plot with chilli bush or grow it as a crop. This unique idea of conservation has been turned into business of “green dollar” as chillies are made into sauce and exported, even to countries like India. Hope farmers in Assam and Karnataka could follow this example.

By: Vena

Vena — Fri, 28 May 2010 11:59:47 +0000

This article gave me the goose-bumps…how much we take for granted and how easy it is for us ‘elite’ city and town folks to always put the blame on our farmers and our forest dwellers when we lose some of our plant or animal life.
We demand for boundaries to protect our wildlife, but so long as they are not boundaries in our backyard. Our everyday requirements and lifestyles must be destroying forests and life forms which we never experience directly.
How often the uninitiated have commented that India should take lessons from America and Europe’s approach to wildlife protection – and while it is easy to get livid at their observations and half-baked knowledge – we have to (as people who work towards a reasoned reconciliation between humans and wild nature) put out the facts in a way which can be easily understood and this article does that beautifully.
While we have every right to be proud of the fact that in spite of our huge population and economic situation we still have some of the best forests and wildlife living alongside us, we have to get out of our high chairs and stupor and stop expecting our marginally poor to always bear the costs and consequences of keeping our forests alive.
We have to empathise and show our support to the people who inevitably and directly share their resources with wild nature and be aware that while most often these farmers and forest dwellers “share their resources” we city and town folk invariably “extract these resources”.
Thanks Madhu and Pavithra for reminding us that empathy and support for our farmers and forest communities are ingredients we often forget to include in our enthusiasm to save and protect our wildlife and habitats.