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.

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.

Splashes of red dot the evergreen canopy, like blood on green canvas. The canarium, stately white and tall, holds a red flush of new leaves above verdant, multi-hued forest.

Skimming spectacularly over the trees, a great hornbill brushes grandeur onto the canvas. In the company of hornbills, a new year dawns on an unsuspecting rainforest.

The red flush is the flag of an ancient rhythm: a rhythm of renewal, carrying the cadence of nature’s annual cycles. In the rainforest, the tree has endured months of sharp dry weather followed by lashing rains. It has stoically retained its space amidst a thousand species, its leaves buffeted by many winds, aloft in sun and in rain, for another year of its decades’ long existence. It has provided fruits for the hornbill, leaving seeds for hungry rodents or to germinate in a secure nook, and oozed resinous dammar from a cut. Drawing in the air with the breath of humanity, richer now in carbon dioxide, the tree has returned oxygen and thousands of litres of water to enrich the air and seed the clouds. As the second monsoon withdraws, leaving clear skies, spent clouds, and a winter chill, nature’s seamless cycle enters another human year. There is now a renewed challenge of life in the environment, with other lifeforms of the forest, and with people in the wider landscape.

From the perspective afforded by the forests where the canarium tree stands, here in the Anamalai hills, one can take a sidelong look at events of the recent past and prospects for the year ahead. Local, national, and global change all have their imprint in this microcosm within a planet impacted by human action like never before.

Bolstered by a legal framework centred on conserving tigers, the state governments of Kerala and Tamil Nadu firmed-up existing wildlife sanctuaries, declaring the Parambikulam and Anamalai Tiger Reserves. Stretches of remarkable forest with threatened and endemic wildlife gain renewed recognition and, hopefully, better protection and improved management. In addition, valuable Reserved Forests, languishing in deliberate or benign neglect, are in the forefront as thousands of hectares are included within buffer zones. At the larger landscape level, these areas greatly add to the conservation potential of existing reserves and help reduce the threat of forest fragmentation. Stung by past failures that aimed to exclude local people from conservation, efforts are being made to involve communities in the plantations and agricultural lands in the buffer zone. Overcoming suspicion and doubts to constructively engage these communities is essential to gain support for conservation and address pressing issues such as human-wildlife conflicts. This is no easy task, but efforts are underway, here, as elsewhere.

The people who share these forests of the canarium, the tribal communities of the Anamalais, are also at a crucial juncture. Respected for their forest skills, the kadar, in particular, have been partners in conservation of species such as hornbills and provided crucial support for wildlife research and forest protection. The Forest Rights Act (FRA) and the tiger conservation plan, both yet to be implemented, bring them promise and peril. Over the year, detractors of the FRA have learned how it has been invaluable in fighting conservation battles against mining and forest diversion, where other environmental laws have failed. Can government, civil society, and tribal communities work together to deliver on the promise, while averting the perils of relocation, forest conversion and degradation?

The hills here are named for the Asian elephant, a species that better represents present conservation challenges. Elephant conservation implies thinking about swathes of land larger than our fragmented reserves, of corridors and agriculture, of people and property. The year gone by saw a laudable initiative, the Elephant Task Force, of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), culminating in a thoughtful report that promises to gently but firmly transform our view of the elephant and ultimately its conservation. The elephant has become, deservedly, our National Heritage Animal. A wider cross-section of society, good scientific understanding, and more transparent management shall be involved in elephant conservation. Movement routes and habitat fragments, including on private lands, shall gain additional attention, bringing benefits to myriad other species in the landscape including threatened hornbills and macaques, endemic amphibians, reptiles, and native plants. We shall no more be owners of captive elephants, only responsible guardians. Awareness of the need to phase out the demeaning existence and abuse of elephants in captivity is dawning. Now the elephant obtains a renewed place in our culture and consciousness. A position that recognises and respects elephants as social, sentient, intelligent, and sensitive individuals and families, with whom we are privileged to share spaces.

Growing environmental consciousness is also driving changes in tea and coffee plantations in the landscape. Informed consumers are creating market demand for produce from farms that adopt responsible social and land-use practices. Consequently, certification programmes, such as Rainforest Alliance, require farms to protect natural ecosystems, revive native shade tree species, avoid toxic agrochemicals, and safeguard waterways. These promise to bring benefits both to the industry and environment.

Further downstream from where the canarium stands, the ill-advised Athirapilly project, opposed for years on many good environmental and social grounds, finally comes close to being scrapped. Partly, this stems from a welcome turn of events, with the Indian government finally appointing an environment minister, Mr Jairam Ramesh, who seems keen to uphold the environmental laws of the land. In a short span, Mr Ramesh has transformed the rubber-stamp position of his Ministry to one that his detractors, even in more powerful ministries, are forced to take notice of. From aspects such as making the MoEF website one of the best government repositories of information, to taking clear executive decisions on dams, roads, airports, ports, forest diversion and exploitative industries, Mr Ramesh’s efforts have revitalised India’s conservation movement and the dignity of his ministry. His approach, mostly well-informed by ecology, is balanced by political pragmatism. The stance and strictures on preventing the proliferation of dams on the Ganga, on Bt Brinjal, Vedanta, POSCO, and coal mining, are battles that, if not won outright, are at least well fought. Like the stoic canarium tree, he has many troubles to weather yet, to hold his present position.

Forces even further afield also impinge on the canarium. Climate change is a decisive factor already affecting species, landscapes, and people’s lives. The year 2010, poised to be the hottest year on record, was also marked by more heat than light in the aftermath of international climate conferences at Copenhagen and Cancún. Responses such as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries), and voluntary, national, and international carbon markets are developing. Efforts are being made to recognise economic and other values of our natural capital and ecosystem services to move from an exploitative development trajectory riding on flawed and uni-dimensional measures such as GDP to sustainable development valuing social and environmental goals. One can argue that these are too little too late or that forests are better REDD than dead, but time will tell if these are adequate responses to humanity’s greatest global challenge.

Out in the Anamalai hills, as the flag of the canarium flutters red over the hill slopes, there is a sense of timelessness to the upheavals of life. And there are both storms and sunshine ahead.

An edited version of this article, titled Rhythms of Renewal, which appeared today in The Hindu Magazine is available here.

An endangered lion-tailed macaque lies dead on the road in a rain forest fragment in the Western Ghats. (Photo: Kalyan Varma)

Crunch! Splat! Thud! A daily massacre is occurring under the wheels of our vehicles. Thousands of lives are snuffed out tragically, instantaneously, and yet, we hardly notice.

Around India, as in other parts of the world, millions of animals risk daily encounter with increasingly fast vehicles plying on an expanding meshwork of roads and highways. Roads through our countryside and forests and the people who drive vehicles on these routes cause the highest toll. This is a toll of actual lives—a headcount of animals crushed to death or else greviously injured and mutilated. Even leaving aside domestic dogs and cats, an indiscriminate diversity of wild species from butterflies, squirrels, lizards, and partridges to more threatened species such as leopard cats to tigers and lions, mouse deer to sambar and elephant, lorises to langurs and lion-tailed macaques, and sheildtail snakes to king cobras come to a sticky end.

The scale of the problem is imposing. India boasts of having the second largest road network in the world, second only to the United States. According to India’s National Economic Survey of 2007 ― 08, this is no less than 3.34 million kilometres [1]. Although only around half of this is surfaced and less than 2 percent of this comprises National Highways, the latter alone account for 40% of our total traffic. Like many things in India, the ‘total’ in that expression is a very large number indeed. In 2006, India already had around 86 million registered motor vehicles. A study [2] from IIM, Lucknow, records that the distance travelled in a year by a person in India (averaged across the entire population) soared from 285 km in 1950 — 51 to 3,470 km in 2000 — 01. At the time of writing, even this has nearly doubled. The study also estimates a staggering total motorized traffic volume of around 5,600 billion passenger-kilometres per year, currently. With an annual rate of increase hovering around 7 – 8%, this is poised to skyrocket to nearly 13,000 billion passenger kilometres by 2020.

With such traffic, it would be scarcely surprising if animal kill rates were high, too. Roads passing through forest and other natural areas such as grasslands and wetlands are of greater concern from a conservation point of view. The few studies that are available from Indian forests indicate a grave situation already. Studies have documented kills ranging from dragonflies and butterflies, to many larger mammals and birds including carnivores [3]. Around noon in Nagarahole – Bandipur in southern India, as 50 – 100 vehicles zip past every hour, a study patiently documented around 40 kills of insects such as butterflies and dragonflies for every 10 km every day, doubling over the weekends with increased traffic. A rough calculation indicates that vehicles here kill around 15,000 animals every year in just that 10 km of road [4]. In the Anamalai hills of southern India, a study of road kills of reptiles and amphibians found that around 6 were killed per 10 km of road every day during the monsoon [5]. Conservative extrapolation would suggest that a 100 km stretch of road through forests here witnesses an annual slaughter of around 10,000 amphibians and reptiles. Even this estimation is based on a study carried out 10 years ago when traffic volumes were much lower. Widening of roads and unregulated, ill-planned tourist influx has, if anything, made things worse.

Reptiles, such as this vine snake, and amphibians are among the worst hit in road kills. Photo: Kalyan Varma

Species struggle to survive

Such patterns of death on the highways are a common feature wherever roads traverse our forests, grasslands, and wetlands. Along the Western Ghats alone—a hill range much touted as a centre of amphibian and reptilian diversity with so many new species even now being discovered and described—hundreds of thousands are probably killed every year. These numbers should not make us proud that we have so many animals to subject to such wanton slaughter—that would merely be a dangerous assumption, a form of denial, or sheer ignorant optimism. Neither can we take heart from areas where few deaths are now seen along roads, until we can be certain that this is not due to populations having already been pushed over the brink.

Planners and managers neglect to take the problem seriously. Even when they are aware of the issue, they feel nothing needs to be done because they believe that while many are killed on roads, many others escape and the species can survive. What they fail to understand is that the additional mortality on roads can tilt the demographic scale against a population that already grapples with various natural factors and human-caused disturbances for survival. Studies from elsewhere have revealed that the negative effects of high traffic density can be as serious as direct loss of forest cover for amphibians and traffic needs to be avoided or maintained at low density for up to 2 km around breeding ponds if frog diversity is to be conserved in the landscape [6]. Another study estimates that even if 10% or more of the adults annually risk being killed by vehicles along roads near breeding areas, the population will eventually perish [7].

In most cases, all that the animal is trying to do is, like the proverbial chicken, to get to the other side. The road surface and corridor itself is of little use to most animals. Perhaps a dove or myna would find some fallen scraps of food worth eating, a lizard or snake may be attracted to bask on the hot surface, as to a rock on a sunny day. Dragonflies and mayflies may be attracted to the polarized light emanating from the asphalt, a form of light pollution that fools them into believing that they are over the surface of a water body [8]. As they fly around to feed or defend territories or even try to lay eggs on the water-road, they imperil their own survival. And then the road becomes an ecological death-trap [9], where the very adaptations evolved over millenia to enable these species to locate their food and thrive in their environment now nudge them to their death.

Even quick-footed species, such as this leopard cat, get killed with the increasingly faster traffic. Photo: Kalyan Varma

Deadly break in tree cover

The roadkill threat is not something only ground-dwelling face. The threat of roadkills is particularly acute for many tree-dwelling species that do not normally cross on the ground. With roads mercilessly slicing through our forests and government departments and road contractors recklessly widening roads and slashing all vegetation, including regenerating trees and saplings on either side, the tree cover breaks over the road. Besides loss of natural vegetation and native species typical to each area, this causes increased soil erosion and landslides. This leads to further expenditure in road maintenance—providing further opportunity for ecological damage. All of this adds to wastage of public money, while also wrecking the tree cover that would have allowed many species to safely cross the road overhead.

Unable to cross overhead using the overlapping branches of intact forest canopies, the animals now face a permanent problem—a serious, life-threatening challenge—of a gap caused by the break in tree cover over the road. That crossing, even if takes only a few seconds or minutes, can be an agonisingly long and threatening one for an animal trying to cross even a moderately busy road. In the absence of tree cover, arboreal animals are sometimes forced to use electric wires of powerlines to cross, leading to the double jeopardy of electrocution deaths for species such as lorises and lion-tailed macaques [10]. The roads and powerlines through our forests are increasingly turning into graveyards of tree-dwelling species such as monkeys, lorises, civets, squirrels, and tree shrews.

Animals may also be seriously stressed or change their behaviour in the vicinity of roads. Studies from Africa on elephants and chimpanzees, have shown how they tend to avoid roads and change their behaviour, due to the associated risks as one would expect from such highly intelligent species [11].

An elephant mother uses her body to shield her calf from an approaching vehicle as they cross the road. Photo: Kalyan Varma

Other factors may compound the road problem. The building of culverts, fencerails, barricades, chain-link and barbed-wire fences, and other concrete and metal structures along roads makes the crossing even more difficult. Parapet-like walls running without a break for hundreds of metres or kilometres along roads, especially on hill roads, become insurmountable obstacles for species such as porcupines, pangolins, turtles, young birds and mammals, to name just a few. On hill slopes disfigured by such roads, even large animals such as sambar and elephants have to negotiate the upper slope, cross the road, and try to somehow step or jump over roadside walls and culverts to step or land safely on the steep lower slope. Another compounding factor is the attraction of animals to road-killed carcasses, which may lead to further deaths from speeding vehicles until the carcass is safely disposed away from the road.

As roads become wider and busier, the number of animals crossing and the rate of roadkill usually increases, but beyond a point it may actually begin to decrease [12]. This usually happens when roads become four-laned highways or expressways catering to tens of thousands of vehicles every day. The reduction may be due to the decimation of wildlife populations along the road as well as a ‘barrier’ effect, where many animals actively avoid the road and avoid crossing it [13]. A road like this passing through a forest or key natural habitat essentially cleaves it into two pieces. For many species, this is an added fragmentation of an already fragmented habitat [14].

Impact of ecological changes

In addition, roads are now well known to cause various ecological changes, leading to a wide range of impacts including many, often unnoticed, detrimental effects on wildlife [15]. The disturbance associated with roads and the opening created by the road corridor does favour some species; unfortunately, these are mostly undesirable ones. Alien weeds spread along roads using them as highways to invade into ecosystems [16]. The exposure along the road dessicates and dries vegetation, making it more prone to fires. Trees are more exposed, too, and may fall due to high wind speeds along the road or suffer from stress related to altered ecology. All of these contribute to permanent and chronic changes in the environment and habitat, thereby affecting wildlife and ecosystem health.

Yet, this is only a small part of the story. No study has yet comprehensively addressed all animal taxa from invertebrates such as snails and ants to large creatures such as peafowl and elephants. Even the studies carried out so far may underestimate the true damage. Many animals are struck and badly wounded by vehicles along roads but manage to flee or drag themselves away from the road corridor to die unseen and unrecorded by researchers some distance away. It is not unusual for road-killed animals to be removed off the road or consumed by scavengers, including people, and thereby the kills go unrecorded. Even when dead animals on the road are noticed, other pervasive problems related to the road within forest areas are overlooked. This includes animals killed during road construction, earthwork and annual maintenance operations, particularly slow-moving and burrowing species such as turtles, snakes, and soil fauna.

Poor data on forest roads

No study has yet even catalogued the extent of roads through natural areas, especially forests, across India or the loss of forest cover due to roads. A notable exception, from Garo Hills in Meghalaya, showed that just in this region the 456 ha of biodiversity-rich forest was lost to roads between 1971 and 1991 [17]. Another long-term aspect is the issue of increased access: people moving in and settling or polluting otherwise remote areas.

While more studies on road ecology are required in India, there is also urgent need to use existing information and experiences from other countries to begin to reduce and avoid this carnage [18]. This requires the immediate attention and close coordination of ministries and departments related to roads and forests (or other natural ecosystems). Most important, it requires the attention of the citizen, the casual driver, the tourist—particularly the vehicle-based ‘eco-tourist’—whose individual initiative, sensitivity, and care could save thousands of animal lives.

A range of measures could help remedy the situation. Some are merely engineered quick-fixes that can help in certain locations or in the short-term, such as artificial ‘canopy bridges’ for movement of arboreal mammals [19]. Other measures include proper deployment of speed breakers in roads through forests, creation of underpasses and overpasses that are well-designed keeping in mind the ecology and behaviour of the species whose mortality rate is sought to be mitigated. Signboards informing people to look out for and allow wildlife to cross and measures to check overspeeding may also be implemented. Such short-term measures, if implemented based on research that has identified roadkill ‘hotspots’ can have very positive effects. For example, the installation of just four speed-bumps along 1.5 km of highway passing through a forest in Zanzibar, helped reduced the mortality of threatened red colobus monkeys by 85% in first nine months itself. Prior to this, every year, vehicles used to kill 15% of the colobus monkey population living near the road [20]. Slowing down vehicles at key locations is a very crucial aspect that reduces likelihood of road kill while providing greater reaction time for drivers and animals to evade a collision.

Longer-term and more sustained measures require a deeper understanding of the landscape through which roads pass and a greater sensitivity to the species we share this world with. The number, extent, and width of roads passing through forests and wetlands should be strictly regulated. Improvements to the quality of the road surface and adequate signages should be the emphasis for driver comfort and safety, not increasing the number of lanes or width of the road or the speed with which vehicles can traverse these crucial stretches. As there is virtually no understanding of these issues among planners, land managers, and the wider public, despairing conservationists today regard narrow, bad roads as a great boon, one that is surpassed only by the complete absence of roads.

Encourage vegetation growth

A key long-term measure is to encourage natural vegetation on either side of the road. Currently, vast amounts of public money is wasted in slashing all vegetation on either side of thousands of kilometres of road, with the spurious claim that this improves visibility or makes the road safer. In fact, dense weed growth rapidly chokes up the opened spaces on roadsides, replacing more pleasing and open, natural, native vegetation. In forest areas where tree cover would have naturally shaded out weed growth—performing a public service at no cost and with considerable aesthetic benefits—the opened spaces with obnoxious weed growth now represent a wasteful annual cost of repeated slashing in the guise of road maintenance. The lack of any understanding that good, stable, and safe roads really need consideration of ecological aspects as well, is one of the glaring failings of the government and road construction companies.

An example of a good forest road, used even by trucks and buses, with unbroken canopy over the road. Photo: NCF

The design and adoption of regulations is urgently needed. Forest roads should mandatorily retain and maintain tree canopy connectivity over the road. Where such connectivity has been lost, at a minimum, for every 200 metres of road, a 50-m-wide stretch needs to be marked off with signs and speed breakers and the tree canopy with overlapping branches re-established overhead. Efforts to establish and maintain such stretches should begin as a top priority along all roads through our wildlife sanctuaries, national parks, tiger reserves, reserved forests, and their buffer zones.

Guidelines need to be involved keeping specific species and landscape considerations in mind. For instance, in tropical forests of equatorial Africa, the home of the highly endangered great apes (gorillas and chimpanzees), the IUCN has prepared best-practice guidelines on a range of issues, including road planning [21]. This includes recommendations to plan roads at least 5 km away from protected area boundaries, reduce road width of primary roads to less than 7.5 m (less than 12.5 m including graded portion and shoulders) and width of secondary roads to less than 4.5 m (8.5 m including shoulders), avoiding road construction in closed-canopy forests, minimising the number of secondary roads, and re-using old roads rather than build new roads. There has been some effort to develop such guidelines in India [22], but there is much more to be done.

Forest areas around the world, including in India, are transected by a large number of old, unused, and unnecessary roads (e.g., old logging coupe roads, roads built during dam construction, or as ‘game’ roads for hunting). It is time to undo the damage wrought by these roads by actively removing these roads and ecologically restoring natural vegetation. Although the methods available for road removal may cause some short-term disturbance, research has clearly established the conservation benefits in the medium- and long-term [23].

An overarching need, although perhaps the most difficult one, is the sensitisation and involvement of individual drivers. A vast majority of drivers probably have no deliberate will to kill animals. They presumably have no wish to cause lasting harm to the environment or to the public exchequer by insisting on roads made and managed by ecologically illiterate and insensitive agencies. When individuals become aware and begin to care it can have two useful effects. As drivers, they can adopt more responsible driving practices, watch out for and respect animal crossings, and avoid other unsavoury practices such as feeding animals by roadsides. This, as a direct contribution, can help save hundreds to thousands of animal lives over an average driver’s lifetime. Second, by example, by persuasion, or ultimately by their vote in a ballot box, they can indirectly influence others to save thousands of lives, minimise ecological damage, help to improve roads, and make the driving experience along roads through natural areas infinitely more pleasant. When the paths of people and animals cross, each can then go their own way, leaving behind not a flattened carcass but the memory of a pleasant encounter.

Footnotes

[1] Economic Survey 2007-2008, Ministry of Finance, Government of India. Link accessed 17 April 2009.

[2] Singh, S. K. (2008) CO2 emissions from passenger transport in India: 1950-51 to 2020-21. Proceedings of the Better Air Quality 2008 Workshop, Bangkok, Thailand. Link accessed 17 April 2009.

[3] Chhangani, A. K. (2004) Frequency of avian road-kills in Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary, Rajasthan, India. Forktail 20: 110-111.

Kumara, H. N., Sharma, A. K., Kumar, M. A., and Singh, M. (2000) Roadkills of wild fauna in Indira Gandhi wildlife sanctuary, Western Ghats, India: implications for management. Biosphere Conservation 3: 41-47.

Sundar, K. S. G. (2004). Mortality of herpetofauna, birds and mammals due to vehicular traffic in Etawah district, Uttar Pradesh, India. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 101: 392-398.

Radhakrishna,S. Goswami, A. B. and Sinha , A. (2006) Distribution and Conservation of Nycticebus bengalensis in Northeastern India. International Journal of Primatology 27: 971-982.

Areendran, G. and Pasha, M. K. S. (2000) Gaur Ecology Project, Report, Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun.

Johnsingh, A. J. T., Sankar, K. and Mukherjee, S. (1997) Saving prime tiger habitat in Sariska Tiger Reserve. Cat News 27: 3-4.

[4] Rao, R. S. P. and Girish, M. K. S. (2007) Road kills: Assessing insect casualties using flagship taxon. Current Science 92: 830-837.

[5] Vijayakumar, S. P., Vasudevan, K. and Ishwar, N. M. (2001) Herpetofaunal mortality on roads in the Anamalai Hills, southern Western Ghats. Hamadryad 26: 265–272.

[6] Eigenbroda, F. Hecnarb, S. J., Fahrig , L. (2008) The relative effects of road traffic and forest cover on anuran populations. Biological Conservation 141: 35–46.

[7] Gibbs, J. P. and Shriver, W. G. (2005) Can road mortality limit populations of pool-breeding amphibians? Wetlands Ecology and Management 13: 281–289 .

[8] Horváth, G., Kriska, G., Malik, P. and Robertson , B. (2009) Polarized light pollution: a new kind of ecological photopollution. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 7; doi:10.1890/080129.

[9] Robertson, B. A. and Hutto, R. L. (2006) A framework for understanding ecological traps and an evaluation of existing evidence. Ecology 87: 1075-1085.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_traps

[10] Radhakrishnan, S. and Singh, M. (2002) Conserving the Slender Loris (Loris lydekkerianus lydekkerianus). Pages 227-231, National Seminar on Conservation of Eastern Ghats, March 24- 26, 2002, held at Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh; personal observations.

[11] Hockings, K. J., Anderson, J. R., Matsuzawa, T. (2006). Road crossing in chimpanzees: A risky business. Current Biology 16: R668-670. Watch movie here.

Blake, S., Deem, S. L., Strindberg, S., Maisels, F., Momont, L. Isia, I., Douglas-Hamilton, I.,Karesh, W. B., Kock, M. D. (2008) Roadless wilderness area determines forest elephant movements in the Congo Basin. PLoS ONE 3(10): e3546. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003546

[12] Seiler, A. (2003) The toll of the automobile: wildlife and roads in Sweden. PhD thesis. Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala. Link accessed 11 Feb 2009.

[13] Laurance, S. G. and Gomez, M. S. (2005) Clearing width and movements of understory rainforest birds. Biotropica 37: 149–152.

Laurance, S. G., Stouffer, P. C. and Laurance, W. F. (2004) Effects of road clearings on movement patterns of understory rainforest birds in Central Amazonia. Conservation Biology 18: 1099–1109.

Goosem, M. (2001) Effects of tropical rainforest roads on small mammals: inhibition of crossing movements. Wildlife Research 28: 351–364.

[14] Goosem, M. (2007) Fragmentation impacts caused by roads through rainforests. Current Science 93: 1587-1595.

See also this article by Rhett Butler on roads as enablers of rainforest destruction.

[15] Noss, R. The ecological effects of roads. Link accessed 17 April 2009;

Spellerberg , I. F. (1998) Ecological effects of roads and traffic: a literature review. Global Ecology and Biogeography Letters 7: 317-333;

Forman, R. T. T. and Alexander, L. E. (1998) Roads and their major ecological effects. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 29:207-231;

Trombulak, S. C. and Frissell, C. A. (2000) Review of ecological effects of roads on terrestrial and aquatic communities. Conservation Biology 14: 18-30;

Donaldson A. and Bennett A. (2004) Ecological effects of roads: implications for the internal fragmentation of Australian parks and reserves. Parks Victoria Technical Series No. 12. Parks Victoria, Melbourne.

Fahrig, L., and Rytwinski, T. (2009) Effects of roads on animal abundance: an empirical review and synthesis. Ecology and Society 14(1): 21.

[16] Gelbard, J. L. and Belnap, J. (2003) Roads as conduits for exotic plant invasions in a semiarid landscape. Conservation Biology 17: 420–432.

[17] Bera, S. K., Basumatary, S. K., Agarwal, A. and Ahmed, M. (2006) Conversion of forest land in Garo Hills, Meghalaya for construction of roads: a threat to the environment and biodiversity. Current Science 91: 281–284.

[18] Forman, R. T. T., Sperling, D., Bissonette, J., Clevenger, A., Cutshall, C., Dale, V., Fahrig, L., France, R., Goldman, C., Heanue, K., Jones, J., Swanson, F., Turrentine, T., Winter, T. (2002) Road Ecology: Science and Solutions. Island Press, Washington, D. C. Read review here.

http://www.wildlifeandroads.org

http://www.peopleandwildlife.org.uk/biblio.shtml#road

[19] Weston, N. (2002) Why did the ringtail cross the road? Using Rainforest Research, Cooperative ResearchCentre for Tropical Rainforest Ecology and Management, Australia.

Goosem, M., Izumi, Y. and Turton, S. (2001) Will underpasses below roads restore habitat connectivity for tropical rainforest fauna? Ecological Management and Restoration 2: 196–202. See also this article about faunal underpasses.

Laurance, W. F., Goosem, M. and Laurance, S. G. W. (in press) Impacts of roads and linear clearings on tropical forests. Trends in Ecology and Evolution in press.

[20] The Zanzibar Red Colobus Monkey: behavior, ecology, and conservation. DVD documentary, T. T. Struhsaker, Department of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy, Duke University, USA.

[21] Morgan, D. and Sanz, C. (2007) Best practice guidelines for reducing the impact of commercial logging on great apes in Western Equatorial Africa. IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group (PSG), Gland, Switzerland. 32 pp.

[22] Rajvanshi, A., Mathur, V. B., Teleki, G. C., Mukherjee, S. K. (2001) Roads, sensitive habitats and wildlife: environmental guidelines for India and South Asia. Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun.

[23] Switalski, T. A., Bissonette, J. A., DeLuca, T. H., Luce, C. H. and Madej, M. A. (2004) Benefits and impacts of road removal. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 2: 21-28.

The Anamalai landscape showing Vazhachal Forest Division and the adjoining Protected Areas (dark green)

Rainforests extend as far as the eye can see. The twin peaks of Karimala Gopuram (in Parambikulam Wildlife Sanctuary) are visible in the distance while the Lower Sholayar reservoir is seen in the foreground

I first visited Vazhachal in February 2008 with some of our Western Ghats research team comprising Raghunath and Drs. A.J.T. Johnsingh and M.D. Madhusudan. We approached from Chalakudy and reached the Forest Rest House near the Athirapally falls by late afternoon. The Chalakudy river negotiates big rocks at Athirapally and cascades down in three big plumes. This water then rushes down in a torrent just outside the rest house before continuing its journey through the Vazhachal forests. Even inside the rest house, the muffled roar of the water is always audible. We were surveying the Parambikulam – Vazhachal region to assess the status of the habitat for large mammals. The next day we intended to drive to Valparai but in the interim, we decided that it would be worth taking a short night drive to see if we could spot some wildlife. Soon after we left the falls, we ran into a herd of four elephants with a small calf. Startled by the sudden appearance of our headlights, the pachyderms were decidedly nervous, pondering whether to cross the road or bide their time, their jerky movements and staccato trumpeting reflecting their mood. Vinod, the Forest Guard who had been assigned to accompany us, muttered nervously as we crawled forward. Without warning, a lone motorcyclist came around a bend from the opposite direction and, unaware of the danger lurking a few feet away, passed within arm’s length of the herd. The elephants appeared taken aback which is probably why they did not react. As one of us used a flashgun, the elephants started in alarm, making Vinod mumble frenziedly, convinced of an imminent fatal charge. The matriarch moved towards us truculently while the others closed protectively around the calf. We were forced to reverse the vehicle around 300 m, where we switched off the headlights and watched in silence for a quarter of an hour as the herd crossed in the moonlight.

The Chalakudy river cascading past the Forest Rest House

Along this road to Vazhachal, there is hardly a spot where elephant signs are not visible. They are everywhere in the form of fresh and old dung, strips of bark ripped off tree trunks, broken and twisted reed culms and occasionally, the strong unmistakable smell of elephants close at hand albeit out of sight. On several occasions, I have been stopped by nervous bikers, inquiring about the presence of elephants on the road I had just passed through. Nilgiri langurs are also ubiquitous along this stretch of forest, the silence being frequently punctuated by their joyous whoomps. At any point along the route, if one waits a while in silence, there is a fair chance that one will spot a troop feeding or cavorting in the canopy. The Vazhachal forests are also rich in hornbills, with all four species of peninsular India, the Malabar grey, Indian grey, Malabar pied and great hornbills reportedly occurring. Other than the Indian grey hornbill, I have had quite a few sightings of each of the other three species in these forests. The resonating calls and booming wing beats of great hornbills are also frequently audible here. I remember one evening drive being particularly fruitful, when we saw seven Nilgiri langur troops and a solitary great hornbill before dusk and 13 sambar, a porcupine, two sloth bears and two leopards by the time we reached the rest house at around 8:00 PM. I have also seen the southern birdwing, India’s largest butterfly species, here.

Once when going to a tribal settlement located near this road, I came across a group of Kadar tribals accompanied by around 20 dogs of all sizes, colours and ages. This was obviously a hunting party. The tribesmen initially denied that they were out on a hunt but under friendly questioning aided by copious quantities of biscuits and peanut candy, finally admitted that they would catch small animals such as monitor lizards, hares and mouse deer if they chanced upon them. Without a doubt, such a large pack of dogs would have had no problem in bringing down even large-bodied species such as the sambar. Hunting is a major threat for wildlife in Kerala and has resulted in the “empty forest” syndrome in many parts of the state where habitat exists but wildlife populations have largely been decimated. Although the tribal population may be hunting in a more sustainable manner by meeting only their immediate consumption needs, it is a moot point as to whether the same can be said of the local settlers who have immigrated from other parts of Kerala and from neighbouring Tamil Nadu to take up residence in and around these forests.

Regrettably, the continued existence of this road in its present state has been jeopardized by a proposal for its widening and upgradation into a National Highway connecting Pollachi in Tamil Nadu with Chalakudy. It does not need much imagination to think of the disastrous consequences of increased traffic volumes and associated human activities on this pristine habitat and its fauna. However, the most serious threat to the existence of the Vazhachal forests is the Athirapally Hydroelectric Project, a 163 megawatt project that was proposed by the Kerala State Electricity Board in 1994. The Government of Kerala is proceeding with this proposal to build a dam five kilometres upstream of the Athirapally falls and 400 m upstream of the Vazhachal rapids at a cost of Rs. 675 crore. However, environmental groups have opposed the project on grounds that the dam will require the diversion of forest land, elephant corridors will be cut off, the picturesque Athirapally waterfalls may eventually fade into insignificance, people downstream of the dam may not get enough drinking water and the composition of the fish fauna of the Chalakudy river will be altered. The Athirapally area recently came into prominence with the discovery of Lagenandra nairii, a new species of fish. Besides, Gymnema khandalense, a rare medicinal plant earlier thought to be restricted to the Sahayadri region of the northern Western Ghats, reportedly occurs here. The Athirapally River Forum, supported by other NGOs, has filed a petition against the construction of this dam in the Kerala High Court. Over harvesting of reeds (Ochlandra sp.) to the tune of 200 metric tonnes annually, human encroachments of forest land, penstock pipelines disrupting connectivity for terrestrial mammals and high-tension powerlines disrupting canopy contiguity for arboreal mammals are some of the other threats to the forests of Vazhachal.

The magnificent Athirapally falls are in danger of drying up

Penstock pipelines deter the movements of terrestrial mammals

Much of the Vazhachal forests are due to be added as a buffer to the proposed Parambikulam Tiger Reserve. This is certainly a blessing since only its inclusion as a Critical Tiger Habitat will prevent the exploitation of these forests, a very important stretch for the movement of elephants and also among the best established breeding habitats for Malabar pied and great hornbills in the Western Ghats. However, much time has passed and the final notification of Parambikulam Tiger Reserve is still pending owing to ongoing boundary disputes and negotiations. In the interest of conservation, it is imperative that a decision be reached soon.

On a humorous note, I was once unable to procure a room in one of the rest houses in Vazhachal due to tourist bookings and was forced to spend a night in a Forest Department dormitory. Although the rest houses are well maintained, the same cannot be said of the dormitories which have fallen into a state of disrepair and resemble haunted buildings. Fortunately, I was accompanied by Sasi, my trusty field assistant, that night. We retired early after a simple dinner at a local stall. The rooms were stuffy, there was no electricity and the musty mattresses were riddled with gaping holes and crawling with bedbugs. We dragged a couple of the relatively better-looking mattresses onto the verandah, closed the collapsible gate in case an elephant or a leopard decided to pay a visit and dozed off. Sometime later, I was woken by a sensation of something nibbling at my toes. A flash of my torch revealed a large black rat. My yell of disgust awoke Sasi, who started shouting frantically from the other end of the verandah, certain that something was attacking me. We did not sleep thereafter, and spent the rest of the night swatting bedbugs and watching out for rats. At daybreak we hit the road again with alacrity, the invigorating air refreshing us within a few minutes.

Will these forests remain this way? For the future of the tiger and elephant in the southern Western Ghats, it is imperative that they do