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.

After our trip to Bandhavgarh, in the middle of May, we traveled on into another special landscape. A landscape of stately sal forests spreading to the horizon, amidst sprawling meadows and plateaued hills. Here, everyday, a stage is set for a grand play of life and death. This is the land of the deer and the tiger, the quintessential prey and predator—a land that holds an essence of wild India. Kanha.

Kanha lies within a vast amphitheater marked by the sweep of the Satpura mountains to the west and the Maikal range to the east. The soils and rocks are ancient, seeming as old as the Earth herself—a piece of primeval Gondwana, the great land that sailed the primordial ocean. This is a land that gathers the waters for the Narmada river, flowing to the west, and the great Mahanadi, to the east. And here have lived the old peoples—the Gond, after whom the great land was named, and the Baiga, living off the ancient forests and the deep soils.

It is special, too, for both of us, being the landscape where George Schaller carried out his landmark study described in The Deer and the Tiger, a touchstone for wildlife researchers in India.

Kanha simmered in the summer heat and the monsoon was still some weeks away. Like green arms, the forests seemed to hug the browned meadows that awaited the rain to spur another renewal of life. Herds of gaur, heading for water and forage, added grandeur to the landscape.

In the grasslands, were herds of swamp deer, the so-called hard-ground barasingha, whose cousins of wetter turf one can see in the Terai grasslands of north and northeast India. The males, with handsome antlers and the relative calm that comes after the rutting season…

… and the females, prim and perfect, weaving their way through the meadows…

There are other deer, too, in Kanha: the diminutive and shy chevrotain, the cautious and excitable muntjac, the lithe and graceful chital, and that great deer of the forest, the sambar. The forests and grasslands resounded with the bellows of chital stags, for this was the peak season of their rut. We watched, as Schaller must have more than four decades ago, males displaying and sparring, pawing and preaching, fighting and mating.

Late one evening, we went up to the Bamhnidadar plateau, looking for another elusive ungulate, the four-horned antelope or chousingha. Although unlucky in this quest, we were treated to a panoramic view of the forests and meadows of Kanha. Along with the panorama of forests on view, the grand assemblages of ungulates on the meadows of Kanha must rank among the best wildlife spectacles on offer in India.

With the prey come the predators, engaged in the perpetual tussle of survival, the life-blood of ecology and evolution. There are tigers, of course, and in their shadow, so to speak, are leopards, wild dog, sloth bear, jackal, jungle cats, and other smaller and interesting carnivores. With the help of the langur and a little luck, we got to see some of them. On a drive through the forest, we stopped when we heard the alarm calls of langurs. We closely, and quietly, watched them as they closely, and noisily, watched something else moving through the forest.

Our patience was soon rewarded; as we watched, a leopard appeared at the edge of road and crossed over.

And later, a sloth bear with a grown cub…

and then, a delightful sighting of a jungle cat resting in the shade of a little rock overhang to escape the heat of the afternoon.

Jungle cat resting (Photo: Harsha J)

* * * * *

The sal forests swathe the landscape, and the Bauhinia climbers, bedecked with flowers, garland the sal.

Yet, the really large, tall trees are few. Here, perhaps, is a sad story of past logging slowly transforming into a future progression of hopeful regrowth. The tree trunks are studded with the gems of orchid blooms and shoulder the burdens of strangler figs. On the boughs, perch Racket-tailed Drongos, making their metallic calls. Their glistening black plumage and tail extend down thin streamers tipped  by black spatulae—the drongos, perched erect, attest the trees like exclamation marks.

And at the edge of the meadows, tall sal trees laden with fruit toss their branches to the wind that has come to carry their seed.

The drama of the deer and the tiger and the other wildlife will play on, on the evolutionary stage, and shall forever mark this landscape, here, in Central India. Yet, it is sobering to recall that the present assemblage of wildlife is but a truncated one, for the blackbuck, the buffalo, and the elephant, which roamed here not too long ago, not to mention the cheetah, are all seen no more.

We can despair at what we have lost, exult at what we can experience, and hope for what may be ahead—as we should, here, in the heart of India. And if you still do not believe that the heart of India is here, right here, in the great landscape of forests and meadows in and around Kanha, what can we say? See, for yourself!

The heart of India (Courtesy: Google Earth)

We thank Harsha J, Sarath C R, and Payal Mehta for their company and hospitality during our stay at the Banjaar Tola lodge.

The roads from Mysore, leading west into Kodagu, and south towards the Biligirirangan Hills, are old roads. We know they are old, not from the road itself, or the people, certainly not from the speeding vehicles. We know it from the great trees growing by the side of the road for mile upon mile. These are grand Ficus trees, the fig trees we know as banyans, metres in girth and sprawling in canopy, planted and nurtured to life by some blessed soul centuries past. Today, they add the only uplifting aesthetics and rejuvenating shade to the otherwise bare and dour tar road. And yet, all along the roads, these huge, ancient, centuries-old banyan trees are now being hacked.

Winding through a picturesque countryside, taking little dips and turns and the contours of the Deccan plateau, towards the Western Ghats and other hill ranges, these roads seemed to sit gently on the landscape. There has always been ample space for vehicles, even large ones, between the trees on either side. And even as the vehicles plied back and forth, the trees were full of life. Indian Grey Hornbills and barbets and mynas come to feast on the luscious red fruits of the banyans, as do monkeys and squirrels. Myriad creatures feed, roost, mate, sing, rest, hunt, play, and sleep in the trees.

Yet, it is not just the animals that benefit. These are trees planted by people, primarily for people. From the scorching sun of the Indian summer, these trees offer dense, cool shade, the only respite from the heat in the open landscape. Many are the travelers—yes, there are many who even now travel on foot, bicycle, cart, and without air-conditioning—who rest in the shade and move on refreshed. And who cannot envy, or at least appreciate, in the heat of noon, the good fortune of this man, here, who has discovered the joy of a nap under the shade of a ficus tree.

Even as the man sleeps, a little distance away, village boys are busy, lopping a few branches of the banyan as fodder for their livestock.

Scaling the branches like little monkeys, they diligently lop a few choice branches, stack and tie their bundle for taking to their farm for their livestock.

When the trees are many, the lopping seems a minor matter, and the trees have perhaps borne the children and provided for livestock for centuries. But now, the trees are few, and as you read, they are becoming fewer. A massacre of the great trees has been underway along these roads for some time, and continues even now.

Here is a grand banyan being dismembered along the Mysore – Madikeri road.

This great tree is now gone. In the background, one can see a few sorry Australian Acacia auriculiformis and Eucalyptus trees—obnoxious alien species that can never muster even a fraction of the ecological importance or aesthetic grandeur of the banyan.

This is the scene from a few days ago on the Chamarajnagar – Asanur road, near Mysore.

Dwarfed by the massive stumps of the destroyed giants, the vehicles and people pass—apparently untouched and unrepentant.

And all along the roads the logs pile up but will not stay here for long—even when dead, the trees are too valuable and the lorry to take away the logs—the spoils of slaughter—is just round the corner.

We stop to talk to the people cutting the tree. They tell us that the order is passed by the Highways and Forest Departments to cut the trees. The order is passed—what a passive statement of active slaughter! They say the road will be made wider—another order has been passed, perhaps. They also think the trees are over 500 years old. They continue their work—swing their axes and pull at their saws, taking turns to rest, and to hack. Two men hold a rope tied to the top of the tree and pull taut, away from the sawyers at the base of the tree; it should not fall on them, or harm them, even in its fall. They saw away with zest.

It is just a day’s wage labour to obliterate the growth of centuries.

The extraordinary value of the fig trees is something the entire world of ecologists, particularly those from tropical countries, has come to appreciate. Fig fruits are a favourite food of many animals. Research has so far identified over 1200 species of animals to eat fruits of different Ficus species around the world.

A brown palm civet gorges on wild figs in a rainforest (Photo courtesy: Kalyan Varma)

Studies have also highlighted how, by fruiting copiously, producing tens of thousands of fruit on a single tree, often during seasons when other foods are scarce, figs are a critically important resource, labeled keystone resource or keystone species by ecologists. The remarkable relationship between the tiny fig wasps and the fig tree is the stuff of ecological legend and fascinating natural history. Anyone who has spent an hour under a fruiting banyan can attest to the life that such a tree brings to a landscape.

Why, then, do we need to cut these trees? Yes, we need roads, good roads; that is something most of us would not dispute. But what really is meant by a good road? Something that is more wide, more open, more homogeneous, and more barren in appearance, and, coincidentally of course, also requiring bigger contracts to be laid? Or something that is well surfaced, well marked with road signs, well integrated into the landscapes that it passes through? Studies have shown that roads with aesthetically pleasing vegetation, with grand trees on either side, even have positive, restorative effects on driver behaviour, reducing frustration on the road and perhaps making it a more enjoyable journey.

What manner of person, what kind of State, would perpetrate this horror, this butchery of the banyans, and that too apparently without hesitation, or a moment’s doubt? Needless to say, it is being done in the name of the Indian citizen and we ask: where are you, citizen, who wishes these great trees cut?

Is it too much to ask that trees such as this, which are markers of our country’s great natural and cultural history and heritage, be saved rather than sawed?

Here in Central India, in the middle of May, the forests appear to be baking in the sun. The seasonal drought has turned many trees in the tropical forest nearly leafless and the grasslands are brown. The heat of summer is hard to escape, here, in the heart of India.

Finding water, is key. The deer make their daily beelines to the waterholes…

through the browned grasslands, unmindful, perhaps, of lesser predators, such as this jungle cat…

Although, it is good to be alert perhaps, when you reach a waterhole…

For a tiger may be waiting, nearby. This one, though, snoozing under the trees and the bamboo, behind a little rise and beyond our prying eyes, appears to be merely waving a disdainful paw.

The heart of India is tiger country. People come here to see tigers and be awed by their presence. They have learned that where there is water is a good place to wait to see a tiger. Some have learned to mark the tiger’s progress through the forest by the alarms of the deer, or the paw prints on the dusty roads. Others note that the tiger needs such a forest to exist. But, is this the main message from the heart of India? Don’t we need such a forest, too?

The heat is stunning and the soil is parched. And yet, the trees, as if knowing something we do not, or from habits derived over the ages, are putting out fresh green leaves. There has been no rain—only an anticipation of it. The mahua and the sal have fresh leaves, too, and the branches of the latter are laden with winged fruit. Perhaps there is an anticipation of wind, too. Even in this heat, as fields lie dry and fallow in the human countryside, the trees have found their moisture and are investing in growth, and in their future. And from the forest, the waters of the Charan Ganga continue to flow.

Deep in the forest, lies a great idol of Vishnu, the Sheshshaiya, a supreme deity signifying, pertinently, existence and preservation. The waters of the Charan Ganga appear to emerge from his feet. It is not hard to imagine, in a hot, dry summer as this, that a place from where springs clear water, which can keep the trees green here and for miles downstream, must have some divine origin.

A different perspective may obtain if one can emerge above the forest, high above, and soar on the wings of a vulture such as this one. Then one sees the vista of forest in the landscape around the spring where rests the Sheshshaiya.

From here, it seems it is the forest that taps, and soaks, and channels the water through aquifers to emerge as a spring. The forest is divine, in an aesthetic sense, but needs no divinity to perform this basic hydrologic function. Now, it seems that Vishnu, as a being signified by the idol, is but a wise person who, like the tiger, found a good place, close to water, to rest under the shade of the trees and the bamboo. His presence, as a preserver, is but a marker of what needs to be preserved.

* * * * *

The anticipation was not belied. The wind and rain were coming. As the day came to a dusky death, and as the jackal trotted away into the growing darkness of the evening…

… so did the clouds gather, with gusts of wind, thunder, and lightning.

The fruits of the sal trees, around the courtyard of the Mahua Kothi lodge where we were staying, took wing. Whirring like a fan, they dispersed away with the wind, until the ground was carpeted with the winged sal seeds. The naturalists of the Mahua Kothi lodge joined us in watching this magnificent spectacle with delight and an excitement that grew with every gust of wind. As interpreters of nature, from the humble sal to the royal tiger, for us and for the many other visitors, these splendid naturalists do a daily job, whose value is immeasurable.

With the pre-monsoon thunderstorm has come the wind to carry the sal seed, and the water to nourish the soil where they may grow. And yet, the water is an unwanted burden on the fruit itself, as it makes it short but enormously important spinning journey away from the tree.

Such is the economy of nature that, even as the parched earth soaks the water, the sal shrugs it off its seed.

* * * * *

]]> http://conservation.in/blog/the-heart-of-india/feed/ 4 http://conservation.in/blog/earth-scar-evening/ http://conservation.in/blog/earth-scar-evening/#comments Mon, 04 May 2009 16:30:58 +0000 T R Shankar Raman http://www.conservation.in/blog/?p=25 The road winds through a disfigured landscape of tea plantations. It skims the contours over the open reservoir with its sloping banks of naked red earth. It passes the checkpost with the inevitable tea stall, and only then does it plunge down. Down towards the rainforest, our destination for the evening. The Nilgiri langurs, on the tree near the tea stall, watch us go.

There is a hint of rain in the air. And the clouds hang dark over the landscape.

The fallen trees by the road

We come upon the fallen trees a short while later. Twenty-two of them, many towering giants felled as if by an invisible blow, scattered along less than two kilometres of road through the forest. In their fall, they had snapped some of the neighbouring trees leaving their crownless, leafless boles standing like wooden pointers at the sky. These trees had not been felled by axe or chainsaw; at first look, their fall was natural. Was it?

A picture begins to emerge as we look closer to understand what has transpired here. The trees must have all come down at roughly the same time and not so long ago either, as the leaves were still on the branches and just turning brown. A thunderstorm with lashing rain and wind and even hail, typical of this pre-monsoon season, would be the most obvious, immediate cause. There was not one, but two recent storms, on 21 and 24 April. The ground is littered with leaves, twigs, and branches, much of the latter has clearly broken off during the wind and rain. The tree falls seem only natural.

All but one of the trees that have fallen are large, over a metre in girth, some more than twice that. Several are Vateria indica, true giants of the dipterocarp family. Upright, their crowns would have emerged over the rest of the forest canopy, drinking in the bright sun, but exposed to every buffeting wind. Their disproportionate misfortune—if one may so label the almost instantaneous end to their centuries-long existence—seems natural, too.

Almost a third of the trees had fallen on a short stretch of road, less than half a kilometre long, which climbed a little rise—a small, exposed hill crest—before it dipped down into a stretch of bamboo and drier forest. The forest here had clearly received the battering of the wind and rain, in sharp contrast to a more sheltered valley a little distance away. The damage from the storm was only natural, one may be led to believe.

And yet, and yet, a nagging thought tugged us away from believing what appeared to be so plainly evident. Why were all these trees along the road? Is it because we could not see far into the interior of the forest, where doubtless some trees have also fallen? Or, is it the road itself, this earth-scar cleaving its way through the forest that in some insidious, silent way brought down these giants of the rainforest? We look a little closer and the picture begins to clarify even more.

Taking down others

The road takes a sharp bend and we are able to see the opposite slope above the earth-scar. One tree has fallen on that slope, amidst hundreds, and it is just over the earth-scar. The fallen trunk has been axed and sawed and moved out of the way of vehicles. The earth-scar brooks no obstruction.

All along the road, the earth has been scraped or gouged off the sides, to fill in erstwhile potholes. Even as these road-surface quick-fixes have exposed the roots of tree after tree, they cling to the sides, trying to hold back what is left of the earth. The earth-scar feeds on itself.

Punctuated along its length are deepening furrows where, with the open sky and the slope, the pelting rain can now directly strike the earth and carry the soil away. The gullies cut the sides and more roots show. The road goes one way, the soil another. The earth-scar spawns scars.

The forest is a churning engine of life, more complicated than anything human-built, and it can clothe and heal itself. As it tries to heal itself, through a succession of forest ferns, shrubs, and trees, its innards are ripped again by the repeated, thoughtless slashing of vegetation along the road. The canopy, once fully covered overhead, is now rent asunder; the streaming light feeds the weeds. Now the weeds have to be controlled by slashing, again. The rainforest canopy that kept the weeds away and clothed the earth with beautiful ferns and orchids for no extra charge is ignored by the people who, for wages paid by the government, slash away under the arc-sky over the road. The earth-scar craves the sun.

Mikania weeds on slashed roadside

The weeds that now stifle the rainforest seedlings, like a wart growing on a wound, have traveled along the road, with the vehicles, and the dust and the people and their plastic and debris. The mikania is here, and the lantana, as is the eupatorium. With the fall of the giants, light can now stream into the forest, and the weeds, too. The road has also brought a plantation nearby; the seeds of the robusta coffee grown there have now spread into the rainforest. The understorey is a beguiling green—every fourth or fifth plant growing among the future forest is a robusta. The earth-scar brings visitors.

Like the vehicles, the wind, too, can speed along the earth-scar. It can gently toss the leaves and sway the branches. It can lighten the humidity and desiccate the earth. It can bring moisture to the forest even as it lifts it from the leaves. It can, and it does, also blow the trees over. The earth-scar funnels the wind.

Is it Nature that felled these trees? Perhaps. Is it the road? Or is it I, who, getting into my car, ride the earth-scar back home?

As we reach the checkpost, the langur are still watching. There is a hint of rain in the air. And the clouds hang dark over the landscape.

The dipterocarp tree

Looking up from the road, I see the blue arc of the sky slicing through the forest canopy. Into the arc, the dome-like crown of a tall dipterocarp tree emerges from the dark rainforest. The tree is over a hundred feet tall, its straight bole emerging from a spread of stout roots that snake along the ground to meet and form supporting buttresses. Two-thirds of the way up, the bole is encircled by a ring of bird’s-nest ferns. Further up, the branches are held out, firmly, confidently, and hold clusters of two-winged fruit. The fruit await a gust of air to disperse across the forest with their valuable package of seed.

The scratch-mark of man and seeds in the leaf litter

I am at a place where the foothills of the Western Ghats hills begin to merge with the plains. The great Periyar river is not far. The rainforest around me is testimony to the amount of rain this place must receive every year. This is a small fragment of the humid tropical wet evergreen forest that once covered vast stretches in the foothills and plains of Kerala. I am sweating in the humidity, and the shade of the tree is welcome. The road and the village nearby mark the presence of people in the landscape. The tree itself carries the mark of people, too. A row of bamboo stakes are driven in an ascending line into the tree—driven many months or years ago by a honey collector who needed to ascend to reach a hive of bees on a high branch. At the base of the tree someone has scratched for the ooze of resin, too.

I hear the call of the Malabar Grey Hornbill and the Fairy Bluebird, and hidden amidst the leaf litter are two-winged dipterocarp seed.

***

The spathodeas by the road

Its a few days later and I am in a little town in the hills—a wannabe tourist town of little distinction and much crowds, garbage, and noise. Loudspeakers blare songs extolling the virtues of various political parties—perhaps they  feel that the election is all song-and-dance. The street is full with the press of people, cars and buses, carts with fruit and vegetables, pavement hawkers, and the passers-by. Some goats eating vegetable waste and a woman who is sitting and spitting, chewing betel leaf, appear to be the only calm creatures amidst the bustle.

The seed-strewn street

Its a blistering hot, sweaty day. The sun is scorching. I look up at the wide expanse of blue sky flanked by the untidy cluster of buildings on each side. There is little shade. There would have been, perhaps a little over a hundred years ago: a dense canopy of cool, dark rainforest. Now, I see few trees close by: two spathodeas or African tulips, backed by a dour line of Australian eucalypts behind the buildings. On the spathodea, the bright red flowers of the year gone by have turned into brown spike-like pods that are dehiscing open with the dry weather. With a gust of wind, little seeds with their disc-like wings take to the air and drift all around, over the street, onto the buildings, and into the ditches.

I hear the sound of the car-horn and the election-song, and the ground is littered with African tulip seed.

***

Another famous song comes to mind:

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
…
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

(From Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the wind“, 1962)