Independent stories on the environment.
I want to dedicate this piece to birds I have seen in the hottest months of the year- May and June, in North India. My little homage to these little ones who have to brave dust-storms, drought, and apathy.
And here’s some poetry and pictures for these heroes!
*
Don’t miss the Ibis,
Heed the Hoopoe,
Turn for the Titar,
Peek at the Prinia,
And a little later,
You’ll see the Bee-eater,
Sharing water with the Sparrow,
And some more Titars.
*
In the cities, we wait eagerly for monsoon rains.
It’s a break away from the sultry, claustrophobic humidity that precedes the rain. We want the skies to change colour, we want a breeze to blow, umbrellas and waterproof footwear to be whipped out, we have a need to experience a different, more exciting season.
Yet as soon as the skies open up and the rains come crashing down, cities throw up litanies of dramas. Red lights stop working, and serpentine, honking queues of cars fish the romance out of any rainy commute.
Somewhere, there is awful water-logging, while in another part of the city, water turns mysteriously grey in taps, making one wonder if the stuff coming out of one’s backside got mixed with the stuff we splash our faces with.
Unless you are very young or very bohemian, the charm of monsoons is often belied by the peculiarities of cities.
Also read – Eight lions on the prowl on Gujarat’s streets. Why is the wild going viral?
But hold that thought. Before you think cities are whimsical in the rain, wait till you hear of some unforgettable (good or bad) monsoon tales from the Indian wilds.
The year was 2011. We were in Ranthambhore tiger reserve, as a group of researchers. We were hoping to spot some tigers, but all we had got was rainwashed forests, and no sightings of animals, who were either hiding under foliage or getting drenched, away from the gypsy trails.
There were flies buzzing everywhere, and after an exhausting ride through the forest and a 4.30am start, we were fatigued to our souls. The sky had just cleared, bringing with it the typically blinding, eye-watering sunshine that follows rainfall.
Slowly but surely, the temperature had spiked up, taking us from squelchy to hot uncomfortably quickly. We were turning our gypsy around to go back, and the words of senior forest staff, who had said “you won’t see anything during rainfall” were ringing in our ears. Our gypsy got stuck.
A particular patch in the forest trail had collapsed inwards, softened by the rain. This is a rite of passage in the forest- your car will get stuck just as you make up your mind to go somewhere. We were stuck at an awkward angle, diagonal to the trail, impossible to turn this way or that, without embarrassingly loud attempts to get out.
And then, the forest seemed to hold its breath. Appearing almost out of thin air, there appeared a full-grown tigress.
Picture of T-17 tigress in lush monsoon foliage.
She catwalked towards us, with the ease and insouciance of a dancer loping on rose petals.
We were right in her path, awkward, clumsy, the very opposite of all that she stood for. She seemed used to this sort of human folly, and there was no annoyance on her face.
With the same elegant calm that brought her to us, she softly got off the trail, bypassed our vehicle, and climbed back on the trail again.
Then, she turned. Her face drew itself into a distinctly feline snarl, whiskers bunching together. The look said, “Don’t follow me”.
If our car hadn’t gotten stuck, we would have missed a sighting of one of Ranthambhore’s most well-known tigresses, T-17, also called Sundari, who met an untimely end a few years later.
Also read – [Photo essay] Ranthambore’s wildlife left me mesmerised
More importantly, if our car hadn’t gotten stuck thanks to the rains, we would have missed the chance of closely seeing a tigresses’ attitude-sure, fierce, and tinged with the haughtiness of self- preservation.
If tigresses are haughty (and rightly so), leeches are always hungry (especially in the rainy season).
In the month of September, I was in the forests of Biligiriranga Tiger Reserve, known as much for its fabulous beasts as for its amazing Soliga people, who live in the forest, with a felt understanding of its plants, leaf litter, its rhythm, its darknesses, and its lifecycles.
I was being led through the forest by a Soliga friend, and he was taking me to his temple. His temple was a large tree, with milky, fragrant flowers.
This tree is called the Dodda Sampige Mara, also known as the Big Champaka tree. Said to be more than 1,000-years-old, this tree is a silent, flowering testimonial to the forest, having survived generations of storms, monsoon rains and human death and decay.
The barefoot author at the Dodda Sampige Mara tree.
Standing in a particularly lush and damp portion of the forest with the Big Champaka tree, small creatures looked out from the undergrowth.
Leeches. Near the temple, flushed by monsoon rain, were dozens… and dozens… and dozens of leeches.
All of them were making hungering movements, heads pushing forward. Leeches are not my favourite thing.
Blood makes me queasy. I dug my toes into my floaters, not wanting any part of my skin to touch the forest floor.
We reached the tree temple, and I stood at a distance, awed by its splendour and presence. Come closer, the tree will bless you, my friend said.
And you have to take your shoes off, he added, straight-faced.
Also read – Where birders like me from Delhi can go and see rare cranes and more
There was no question about it. I couldn’t be in that tree’s awesome presence with things like sandals sticking to my feet.
Steeling my mind, I took off my footwear. The leeches moved in, like they’d been waiting for me their whole life.
The monsoons remind me of The Planet of the Apes, that didactic morality tale of what would happen if animals (in the movie’s case, apes) ran our planet.
In the monsoons, my thoughts turn to cousins of leeches – all manner of insects.
Winged, not-winged, with pincers or without, awkward and clumsy or long and many-legged, the monsoons are a time that truly belongs to insects.
They come out of every crack and crevasse, outnumbering us by millions, seeing a short spurt in their lives before getting crushed, sprayed out or eaten.
At one time, insects similar to dragonflies lived alongside dinosaurs. They were huge, the size of chairs. The time of the monsoon is a time when one wonders: what if the world was run by insects?
A many-legged, centipede. (All pictures: Neha Sinha)
I was thinking similar thoughts in a forest rest house in Haryana a few monsoons ago. The thing about government buildings like forest rest houses is that they are often well-made, and have gorgeous locations. The problem comes with the maintenance.
No one seems to be interested in maintaining these buildings – not the crusty guards who seem to have better things to do, and not the officers, who have immaculate offices but bypass run-down corridors and guest rooms in the same complex.
I was to spend a night in a nameless government building, with the only thing between me and the thundering sky being a leaking roof. The little citizens of the world were busy. Insects were everywhere. There were little bugs on my bed, and moths on the one light I had on in the room.
Insects with pincers behind them walked on the lime-washed walls.
Winged termites flew here and there. I should have turned off the light to stop attracting more insects, but ironically, I wanted to be able to see what was walking on the bed.
Before turning in after some time spent on the bed trying to avoid the insects, I went to the washroom to brush my teeth. Like innumerable forest rest houses I have stayed in, the bathroom door didn’t shut properly.
Somehow, no one seems to care about bathroom doors not shutting, and bathrooms not having curtains in these places, leading me to believe not a lot of women are on these trails; but it didn’t matter that evening as there was barely anyone around.
I was brushing my teeth when I felt a sensation on my foot. The back of my mind already knew what it was.
I looked down. A long, many-legged centipede, known to bite when threatened, had crawled out of a crack in the floor, and was now proceeding to crawl up my leg. That was it.
I unceremoniously spat out my toothpaste and strode out of the door.
I found the building guard, who was asleep under a thick blanket. I can’t stay here, there are 200 insects in my room, I told him.
Also read – How I was shamed for being a woman in the forest
He looked at me like I was a raving lunatic. Just wait, I’ll come, he said.
Wait on the lawn, he said. He came out, blanket around his shoulders.
We stepped into my room. With our re-emergence and movements, many of the insects had vanished.
“Kahan hain kahan hain, (where are the insects?)” the man asked me.
“Har jagah hain,” I said, “neem ke patte nahi hain aapke paas? (they are everywhere, don’t you have neem leaves, known to repell insects, I asked)”.
I have this, he said. And he brandished an All-out mosquito repellent. My heart sank. Of all the insects in the animal kingdom, the only one missing from my room were mosquitoes.
Ah, well.
Being close to nature is a certain brand of tough, biting love.
I woke up having survived various insect bites the next day, but the stories I had were even better.
This was first published in my DailyO column, here.
A Black-necked Stork that made global headlines because its beak was locked in a garbage ring has been rescued!
After about 5 days of trying, the Stork was finally caught on Wednesday at 9 in the morning. The stork was first spotted at Basai IBA in Gurgaon.
The Stork was fed a fish and given some water. It ate after days! We are not sure if it managed to drink any water all these days.
Also remember Delhi and Gurgaon is at its hottest in June with temperatures between 40-45 degrees C!
It took attempts over many days to catch the Stork.
The final team that caught it includes: Haryana Wildlife Inspector Sunil Tanwar, Krishan guard, drone experts Ajay and Amresh, birdwatchers Sonu Dalal, Anil Gandas, Rakesh Ahlawat, from BNHS: Kasim, Mansur, Debashis.
The bird has been ringed- with the number K16- and will hopefully lead a plastic free life!
And I also hope other birds and animals don’t become victims to garbage thrown by us.
Long live this young Stork!
Photo Courtesy: Haryana Forest Department and Rakesh Ahlawat
A rescue team near Gurgaon is looking for an unusual subject – a black-necked stork unable to open its mouth, as it has a plastic ring around its beak.
Images of wildlife with plastic fatally stuck to them are becoming increasingly common. There are marine turtles with plastic rings around their neck, there are albatross chicks dying with bellies chock-full of plastic, there are whales and elephants dying agonisingly with plastic bags in them.
The bird is unable to open its mouth because of the plastic ring. Photo: Manoj Nair
Who would write obituaries for these ancient races filled with symbols of the modern age? The wildlife die unloved, unmourned, detected on coastlines and forest areas, in various stages of decomposition — and only if someone finds them. Most importantly, they die because of us.
Many of these animals are found in remote locations — islands, tiger reserves and coastlines and thus, it doesn’t seem like our problem. At least two things in the case of the stork show us this is our problem.
Firstly, Basai Important Bird Area (IBA) is in our backyard — Gurgaon — and shows the devastating impacts of plastic waste. Ironically, we are in the middle of a Clean India movement, and on World Environment Day on June 5, PM Modi called for an end to single-use plastic.
Secondly, this incident proves just how badly our natural areas are treated. Wetlands become wastelands, and rivers become sewage drains. I wrote earlier how some of Delhi’s biodiverse wetlands, Basaiand Najafgarh, are under imminent threat.
A construction and demolition waste plant is coming up next to Basai wetland, something the Delhi Bird Foundation has been fighting against in the National Green Tribunal. Not only does Haryana not recognise Basai as a wetland, making a waste plant near this wetland is likely to have terrible impacts on the biodiversity – such as debris, further water pollution, wetland dumping and filling.
Marine turtles have been found with plastic rings around their neck, or their nose. Photo: Reuters/File
The stork with its beak encased in a plastic ring is just an early sign of what litter and pollution tragedies take place when waste is dumped in wetlands and wildernesses.
Birders from NCR and the Haryana forest department have been trying to rescue the stork, which is doomed to die without intervention. “The bird was spotted today but could not be caught. There is a huge mountain of plastic bottles dumped next to the wetland,” says naturalist and birdwatcher Abhishek Gulshan. Till June 11, a team comprising conservationist Rakesh Ahlawat and the Haryana forest department were still looking for the bird.
Meanwhile, the Municipal Commission of Gurgaon has asked the company that dumped the bottles to immediately clear the area.
The problem of haphazard and harmful municipal waste dumping and management in NCR though, is far from over. Plans to make a landfill site on the Yamuna river plain, near Sonia Vihar, are afoot.
This could be yet another way of ensuring plastic and leachates reach our gravely imperilled Yamuna river. The problem is the colonial mentality—which saw wetlands (which did not earn revenue) as “wastelands”. Dumping in wetlands also dries up the area, leading to encroachment.
Plastic is killing our rivers. Photo: PTI/file
“Wetlands are not wastelands awaiting “development”. Dumping of municipal solid waste and debris has been the most insidious way of reclaiming the wetlands by vested interests. Plastic is the latest despoiler. The sad plight of the stork is a tight slap on the face of civilised humans. If only the stork too could poke our faces!” says Manoj Misra, convener of the Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan, and petitioner in several cases for river and wetland rejuvenation.
Less than a week ago, PM Modi had said on World Environment Day: “The choices that we make today will define our collective future. The choices may not be easy. But through awareness, technology, and a genuine global partnership, I am sure we can make the right choices. Let us all join together to beat plastic pollution and make this planet a better place to live.”
What is a municipality for if it cannot systematically deal with our waste? Photo: PTI
One of the ways to do this is to cut down on plastic trash by not using plastic bags (the kind you’d find in a whale or elephant’s stomach), plastic can holders (whose rings you may find around a bird, dolphin or turtle’s neck or mouth), and plastic straws (found recently inside the nose of vulnerable Olive Ridley turtles), to name a few.
That’s on the individual level.
On the collective level, we have to make our waste — and how it is dealt with — an election issue. No more can our waste go into “wastelands”, “behind the colony”, “in that pond” or “next to that river”. These are not places for our waste. The idea is not just to get waste collected from our doorsteps but to ensure they don’t poison our last wild places and to place accountability for these urgent public health issues. What is a municipality for if it cannot systematically deal with our waste?
Poisoning our last wildernesses — which have their own range of ecosystem services — would be like putting a plastic bag over our heads as we roam about in NCR’s critically polluted “air”.
Meanwhile, a stork awaits its fate — metaphorically holding its breath, without opening its mouth.
Rauf Ali, wildlife biologist, was a dear friend. We lost him too soon to Cancer. I knew he was many things- ribald, jovial, talented and honest, but I didn’t know he was such a good writer! Rauf, I miss you!
I was honoured to review his memoirs for The Hindu. Don’t miss this book!
(Link to buy below).
Early on in his book, ecologist Rauf Ali writes on a langur monkey’s food-gathering techniques, which had “deep psychological insights” on people. At a temple in Agra, the langur would sweetly beg Indian tourists for food, which would result in a few peanuts. But when he saw a foreign tourist, the langur’s technique would change, and he would “charge at them screaming. Whereupon they would also scream, drop their peanuts and run!” This was, Rauf writes, straight-faced, his first encounter with racism.
For the rest of Running Away From Elephants, Rauf says it as it is — and how. He is ribald, keenly observant, and writes with deep affection for “boring” Slow Loris, “nasty” Bonnet Macaques, butting Blackbucks, lazy Gir lions and occasionally, drunk spies and excise officers. Unlike many wildlife conservationists, he has no cloying sentiment or moralising. And on his own life, spent between Andaman and Nicobar islands, Western Ghat rainforests, and Auroville, Pondicherry, he writes: “Forget the Gerald Durrell stories. Nobody dies in these stories, and nobody falls ill either. Field work in reality is, to paraphrase Claude Levi-Strauss, being cold, wet, hungry, tired, or more usually, all four at the same time, most of the time.”
Faced with several challenges (he studied wildlife through the 1970s and 80s, when this was unheard of, and he was often accused of being a CIA agent), university politics, recurring bouts of malaria, and a final, short tryst with cancer, Rauf went through life with Dionysian frenzy. The book is light-hearted, but that’s not to say the author takes his work lightly. He is hard on himself and his own knowledge. Indeed, this is that rare humorous book written not for humour’s sake, but with a thorough understanding of the subjects he takes on —rainforest ecology, how dams negatively impact forests, migratory birds, and monkeys.
Rauf was related to India’s Bird Man Salim Ali, and true to style, he writes a thoroughly funny character study. Salim was deaf in one ear, and when he had to avoid someone, he would turn his deaf ear towards the other, and keep nodding. He would go into paroxysms of rage if birds were not properly identified, but gave Rauf a lot of books. For many others, including this writer, Rauf was an untiring knowledge sharer. Rauf helped set up ecology studies at Pondicherry University, and broke fresh ground in the study of and advocacy against invasive species. Through this book, I also learn he is a fine writer. This book adds to India’s natural history writing in a way none has. Don’t miss it.
Running Away From Elephants; Rauf Ali,
Speaking Tiger Books,
₹499.
Buy it here.
Photo of Rauf Ali: internet.
There is a sense of oldness in natural places.
The earth before you will have evidence of being freshly trodden- the many-grooved footprints of birdwatchers in their field shoes, tracks of Nilgai, three-cleaved marks left by hopping birds. The marks may be new, the smell of fresh animal droppings stinging the air.
If you’re standing under trees in Aravalli’s Mangar forest, the leaves dapple the sunlight, leaving chequered shadows on the ground and on your face. The colour of the light, and so your immediate world, may become a greenish yellow, sieved through the leaves; on the ground, shadows shift as the leaves move, creating a kaleidoscopic effect. If there are Nilgai nearby, say in the Delhi Ridge, you may be standing on a path made by them. If you are in a wetland – like Basai or Najafgarh, the levels of the water are different in different seasons, and the land around the water shifts accordingly. You could be a completely bone-dry spot that becomes aquatic at other times. Water shapes the place, migratory birds mould its character. The oldest things on earth — birds that are actually living dinosaurs, water that whips terra firma — create the place.
When Delhi talks about being an “old” city, we mostly refer to fifteenth-century monuments and tombs, the sun warming their stone on winter afternoons. We think of Old Delhi’s ancient bazaars – still selling spices and silver, flanked by solid wrought iron pillars which have seen the times of kings. We think of the feeling of Delhi, an old capital, a centre of power, the sense of government flags, corridor whispers, red beacons, which are hints in the air — power was and is here. But very few think of Delhi as an old city through its natural spaces.
Maybe that’s why Delhi-NCR’s spectacular natural spaces are under threat.
We are at a remarkable moment in the story of the city – citizens are fighting, under duress, to preserve Delhi’s history, for its future. Of the many struggles going on in the city — to preserve avenue trees, to save the trees at the iconic Pragati Maidan from getting axed for redevelopment, and to conserve lakes, three stand out in scale.
One is the pitched battle to save parts of the world’s oldest mountain range, the Aravallis. It may not be enough to say that these hills and ridges are ancient geological heritage; it may not even be enough to say the Aravallis act as a safety net for Delhi, protecting it from complete desertification from the Thar. Clearly, these arguments are not enough for developers and a determined state government bent towards hacking away Aravalli’s trees, levelling the ridges, and to sell green-view apartments, which certainly won’t have a “green” view for long.
A concerned citizen has moved the National Green Tribunal against the cutting of more than 6,000 trees in the Aravallis in Faridabad. While the Haryana forest department says all of the Aravallis are deemed forest, trees were cut all the same. Not only does this fly in the face of environmental concerns, it is a denial of the fact that the Aravallis too — and not just apartments — are part of cultural and lived heritage for Delhi, Faridabad and Gurgaon. Delhi’s Paharganj, derived from “Pahar” or hill, is named such as it was a hilly area, and today the Delhi Ridge (named as the area undulates with Aravalli hills, ridges and streams) is a forest that gives lungs to the gasping city.
Another chapter of forgotten history, lost through tomes of city master plans, is Delhi and Haryana’s Sahibi river. “Cartographic assassination” is what rivers and wetlands face, as they get described in public record and maps, says urban ecology and planning expert Manu Bhatnagar. What was once Sahibi river has today become Najafgarh naala. In this naala too, Delhi and Haryana show reluctance to recognise the old Najafgarh jheel, which hosts flamingos, and migratory birds from Tibet and other high altitude regions.
The area also has what is considered one of the biggest heronries in North India – more than 200 birds have created communal nests in a clump of trees. Heronries are classic features next to wetlands, reminiscent of the sight of squawking chicks-in-a-row at heronies in the world heritage site, Bharatpur. Indian National Trust for Art and Heritage (INTACH) had filed a case in the NGT for the conservation of Najafgarh jheel, though the lake is yet to be officially protected. Birdwatchers and citizens have been rallying for the conservation of the area for years, even as flats in Gurgaon inch closer to the wetland, and have swallowed its basin.
Finally, there is Basai. It is known in bird watching circles as Delhi-NCR’s finest wetland. It lies unassumingly in a corner of Gurgaon, shoved uncomfortably close to construction sites. This incredible site, hosting nearly 300 species, designated an “Important Bird Area” due to its avian wealth, is created by sewage water. But ecosystem processes sieve and save the water, creating not a filthy cesspool but a resounding arena of life. This is one of those rare places where you will find both the migratory goose in the water and the resident eagle in the sky; where you have a wet grassland merging into a wetland, creating a green-and-blue, grass-and-water mosaic one normally sees in far more “remote” or “wild” spaces.
In less remote, urban spaces, which ironically jostle for both breath and water, wetlands often turn to wastelands, quite literally so. The Delhi Bird Foundation, helmed by avid birdwatchers, has approached the NGT against waste going into the wetland –a construction and demolition waste plant is coming up next to Basai wetlands. Fifteen-year-old birdwatcher and Delhi resident Maitreya Sukumar explains why: “It is a wetland home to many birds. It is a thriving ecosystem. It gets rare birds each year and should definitely be preserved,” he says. Maitreya’s mother is one of the petitioners in the case.
All over the world, natural spaces in crowded cities are cherished as islands of succour. These are not just points, but “places”, which hold deep meaning for those who visit, an ongoing relationship of belonging between person and place. These places carry a sense of being old, timeless, and un-changing in the surrounding echelons of chaos and noise. New York’s Central Park is not famous because it is a park, but because it is in one of the world’s busiest, fastest-paced cities; the park itself is maintained more as a wilderness than a fully manicured area. The Nara Park in Japan holds several deer; the deer come out and stroll through the city of Nara, walking between people, an unsaid conversation between hooves and heels.
Closer home, Sikkim has recently passed a unique legislation to increase fraternal bonds and personal relationships with trees, allowing a person to adopt a tree as a child: the Sikkim Forest Tree (Amity and Reverence) Rules 2017.
Delhi’s own amity does not lie only in its buildings. Delhi’s geological and ecological history has shaped the names of its places, the quality of local life, and resilience — an ancient story of Nature’s survival in a harsh, polarised environment and environs.
It would be imperative for India’s national capital to not forget where it came from.
This first appeared in my column for DailyO, here.
Most bats fly high/ Swooping only/ To take some insect on the wing; But there’s a bat I know/ Who flies so low/ He skims the floor; He does not enter at the window/ But flies in at the door. In his poem, ‘The Bat’, Ruskin Bond recounts the tale of a ‘crazy’ bat — albeit a fairly benign one — that made itself cosy at the foot of his bed on a lonely night in Mussoorie.
But ‘benign’ is certainly not the reputation bats have: superstition has them down as bad omens; science has proven they are carriers of disease — they are linked to the spread of SARS in China, MERS in Saudi Arabia, Ebola in Africa, and most recently debated as the possible cause of the Nipah outbreak in Kerala; the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, lists them largely as vermin. And blood-drinking Dracula hasn’t helped the creature’s cause.
The bat is something of a chimera: it has wings like a bird, the furry face of a mouse, it often flies zigzag or flits giddily like a moth. It belongs to the taxonomic order ‘Chiroptera’, derived aptly from the Greek words for ‘hand’ and ‘wing’.
Thinning dwellings
I’ve been spooked by bats too, mostly because their movements are so inscrutable. While looking for a white barn owl perched on a lamp-post in Delhi one night, I was startled by a large flying fox that swooped down from the sky, it’s membranous wings translucent against the street light. I was convinced it was coming for my face, though of course, the frugivore was headed for a fig tree behind me.
India has no less than 128 species of bats — yet very little is known about their population status, their behaviour, or their role in the spread of zoonotic disease. Most species are listed as ‘data deficient’ in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. What we do know, however, is that many species are likely under enormous threat.
For instance, found in just one cave in a Karnataka village, the Kolar leaf-nosed bat is threatened by granite mining. Because of its very small range and a population of 200 or less, it has a high risk of extinction and is classified as critically endangered in the Red List. Salim Ali’s fruit bat, which also has a very small range in the tropical forests of the Western Ghats, is classified as endangered.
Research has shown that bat diversity has reduced in Delhi. Species once found in the crevasses of old buildings and in the Humayun’s Tomb complex are no longer found there. Humayun’s Tomb used to be known for its colony of Megaderma lyra, or the greater false vampire bat, distinguished by its long ears. And once found in several old buildings was the Tadarida aegyptiaca or the Egyptian free-tailed bat, which feeds on insects while in flight or while crawling on the ground with equal ease.
“Neither species is easily spotted in Delhi anymore,” says Sumit Dookia, Assistant Professor, University School of Environment Management, Guru Govind Singh Indraprastha University. Today, there are only four generalist bat species that remain in Delhi, he says: the fruit-eating Indian flying fox and the Leschenault’s rousette; and the insectivorous greater Asiatic yellow bat and the least pipistrelle bat.
Apart from habitat loss, bats are also prone to fatally colliding with wind turbine blades — and several wind power projects are coming up in India, particularly in Gujarat and in the Western Ghats. Greater mouse-tailed bats have been reportedly killed by wind turbines in Kutch. Concerns have also been raised about turbines impacting the movement or local migration of bat flocks.
Natural history has largely overlooked bats. As for the Wildlife Act, it names just two bat species for protection — Salim Ali’s fruit bat and Wroughton’s free-tailed bat. The Act does not name other bat species except the generic ‘fruit bats’, which are listed in Schedule V, where they find themselves in the company of ‘vermin’ such as common crows, mice and rats — species that can be legally removed or killed. Fortunately though, as bats are considered ‘wild’ animals, they must, at least in protected areas, remain protected and cannot be driven out, unlike feral dogs or buffaloes.
The only instance the animal got its due in terms of formal conservation was when Karnataka declared the Bhimgad forest a sanctuary to protect Wroughton’s free-tailed bat.
More than spooks
But much remains to be done. Bats, after all, provide huge ecological and economic services, says bat biologist Rohit Chakravarty. “Without insectivorous bats, farmers would lose billions to pest insects. Fruit bats are also important pollinators and seed dispersers in tropical forests. For example, the durian is mostly pollinated by bats.”
Chakravarty, like many others, believes that bats must be removed from the vermin list, because their populations could take time to recover from losses. “Bats are long-lived, slow-breeding species. A small 5 gm insectivorous bat is capable of living up to 30 years and gives birth to one or two pups a year. So, killing them indiscriminately can wipe out large chunks of their populations.”
Several organisations have recently asked for environmental impact assessments of wind energy projects, with a focus on impact on bats. Chakravarty adds, however, that we also need to find an urgent, cost-effective solution to mitigating fruit damage by fruit bats in orchards.
It is not yet clear if bats are responsible for the Nipah outbreak. While some bats have been tested — and found free of infection — those were insectivorous bats, not fruit bats. Further testing, and a greater understanding of the movement history of infected people, should bring clarity.
In his 1902 book The World of Animal Life, Fred Smith describes bats as ‘hand-winged animals’, ‘rendering good services to farmers’ by eating pests. It is a 117-year-old reminder that bats are in dire need of conservation focus; and that they deserve adjectives far better than ‘spooky’.
This first appeared in The Hindu, here.
“So, what do you do?”
The guy leans forward, all city slickness, adding, “You look like a designer.”
“Actually, I am a wildlife conservationist,” I meekly say, keeping up with the ping-pong game of what-do-you-do conviviality.
“A what conservationist?” incredulousness is writ large on the questioner’s face.
“Wildlife.”
“Oh, dogs and cats.”
“No, tigers and falcons. In the forest.”
“But you don’t look like a wildlife conservationist,” he expertly avers.
“How does a conservationist look?”
“Like… more wild… more tough.”
Leeches bite, a lot, in the forest. But nothing that a woman can’t take.
At which point I put down my rum and coke with a lemon twist and move away from the man, because what he means – and what many other men and women mean – is that a wildlife conservationist should look more like a man.
When I was thinking of what I wanted to do, wildlife conservation was not some expertly gendered feminist choice. I love wild animals, I love the forest, I love wild spaces, and I decided to study a science degree in the field and work in wildlife conservation.
It was a personal calling, rather than a statement. But conversations around a woman taking on an “unconventional choice” because she is a “free spirit” and doesn’t care about “triple bottomlines” are invariably comical, and perpetually stereotyped.
Cut to the road leading to the Sariska tiger reserve, circa 2008. Me and a photographer friend, both of us female journalists at that time (also seen as an “intrepid field” for women, sigh), were headed to Sariska to cover a story.
The road stretched between fields on both sides, with towering and impenetrable trees, grasses and crops skirting us. We were admiring the birds in the skyline, who were settling down to roost at dusk. When suddenly, a knocking sound in the engine brought us to a juddering halt.
The leech in question, after biting the author.
The phrase “in the middle of nowhere” was probably written for the rare occasion when you are stranded in the middle of fields leading to a forest. Our car was completely out of commission, and we got out to make some calls. As we were standing with the tough task of making sense over call drops, a group of bikers came down the road, jeering.
It’s when they came back a second time that we decided we needed shelter, and we moved down the road. Many calls to Jaipur later, a car came to pick us up. The driver had golden-dyed long hair, glass earrings, and had music playing, and blindingly-flashing blue LED lights in the interior of his car.
We got in, ruing the garishness which was completely out of sync with the surroundings. We told him our destination, and he started the car, wordlessly. His stack of CDs rocked from side to side as he took us, not too gently, down the bumpy road. At the first petrol pump he saw, he stopped his car, filled up the tank and then spoke his first words to us, asking us for a couple of thousands. “You can’t fill your tank without asking us,” I protested. “We are not that far from Sariska, there was no need for a full tank!”
My colleague added darkly that this was not professional, and it would just not do.
The man just heard us out, some incomprehensible emotion passing through his face. Finally he spat out, “I am a Rajput. I don’t talk to women.”
It was the beginning of the end. Throughout the drive, he would sigh audibly, appalled that his customers were two sharp-tongued women. Under many threats (which were grimly unanswered by the gent in question) we were taken to Sariska, but he left his car and escaped with the keys the next day. We called his boss, who called his mother, who called the driver, interestingly threatening to slap him and deny him her homemade rotis. He finally came back. But he would not speak to us for the next three days.
Not speaking may perhaps be better than blurting out prejudice. In my years in the forest, in villages, and in the middle of nowhere, I have heard the oddest of things, many of which would make Fair and Lovely proud. “Aap jaisi ladki jungle me kya kar rahi hai?” (what is a girl like you doing in the forest?) a divisional forest officer will ask.
What do you mean sir, a girl like me, I politely ask, my hackles raised. “Mera matlab aapko toh shehar me hona chahiye, jungle me aap kaali ho jayengi” (You should be in the city, you will become dark in the forest). Sometimes the firebrand in me wants to say I am more than a skin colour, but I usually end up laughing and talking about tigresses who don’t give a shit.
Another friend of mine, also a young wildlife conservationist, is often asked, “What do you eat in the forest?” followed by the priceless “How come the tiger hasn’t eaten you yet?”
I remember the time I was camping at the edge of a tiger reserve and a fellow female researcher asked me to quietly ask a field assistant to burn my used sanitary pads. Why? Because none of the male researchers should know that such a thing as menstruation happens each month.
And secondly, hyenas would come to scrunch up my pads. I wasn’t in favour of burning anything, but ultimately had to. The secrecy bothered me though. My concern was about hygiene and pollution, not shame and guilt. A couple of years down the line, I am happy to report that we now have the she-cup, which is not polluting and will have no hyenas (or city dogs) coming for it.
A langur sits in Pench tiger reserve. These are naughty monkeys, carrying away lingerie and rotis with equal relish.
There was another time when a langur ran away with my bra. My field assistants were not sure if they could laugh audibly or feel deeply embarrassed. They ended up making strange sounds. But I thought it was just as funny as a monkey running away with a pair of boxers.
Because ultimately, forests and animals do not discriminate between men and women. Though natural history has been penned by men, and the forest has traditionally been seen as a masculine space, forged, hunted in, and conquered by valiant men, or pious male missionaries, reality in the forest is far from being so gendered.
One of the best things about being in the forest is the lack of discrimination, and the lack of sexism. The trees arch above our heads, and nature is the most ruthless leveller. Animals regard us all as irritants, or as another species, not as men or women. Tribal societies in many forests are egalitarian, and in the mountains, many women work harder (and are stronger) than men.
So while history says wildlife conservationists should be like men, or more offensively, always look like men, there is a veritable army of women proving this wrong. Each time I hear I don’t look like a conservationist, I say, that’s because I look like me.
Many of us don’t want to look either like a man, or like a supermodel on a forest shoot. We don’t want the men in our lives to draw hearts around us and fill us in with hot pink, drawing us into glass cages of butch or model. If I look delicate, it doesn’t mean I can’t live in the forest. And vice versa for women who don’t give a fig about looking delicate.
Many of us didn’t get into natural history or sciences to make statements or become superheroes. The forest doesn’t see us as breasts and wombs; it doesn’t see us as intrepid and amazing, or masculine and crazy. It sees us as neither the exception nor the rule. It looks at us with its green eye, judging us only by our actions, not by our looks, or body, or hue of cheek. Time men followed suit.
This first appeared in my column for DailyO here.
It was also reproduced in Sanctuary Asia, here.
The most successful animal on earth is the human being. The second most successful animal is the human’s best friend, the dog.
Cuddly, loyal, loving, playful, enthusiastic, forgiving: those are usually the richly intense terms that people use for dogs. There’s no companion animal like the dog — the domestic dog has co-evolved with people and considers humans to be part of its pack. If treated as pets, dogs will love and protect “their pack” — their human family. Pet dogs have given their lives for their owners, and will stick by their pack through thick and thin. Unlike any other animal, people talk about dogs like they are people — for most, the loss of a dog is the loss of a family member.
Yet, dogs also hit the headlines for much more gruesome reasons — 14 children have been killed by dogs in Sitapur district in Uttar Pradesh. Some others have been injured. This is not an isolated incident: dogs are increasingly chasing down both people and livestock. Dogs are also the third biggest mammalian predator of wildlife — they chase, hunt, disturb and transmit disease to wildlife, eating up birds, antelopes, hares, turtles, deer, eggs, and anything else they can find.
There are two questions here: one, how do “cuddly” dogs become predators, and two, what do we do about it? These two questions need to be looked at together, because the answer for both is the same. In clear words: people are wholly responsible for the dangers that dogs pose today.
A dog with a Blackbuck kill in Haryana. [Photo credit: Neha Sinha]
The first question first. Do dogs kill? While one may find it hard to believe that dogs can hunt down people or other animals–similar questions have been asked on the Sitapur incidents, blaming “mysterious animals” for the killing — the biological fact is that the dog is both a predator and a carnivore. If not taken responsibility for, a dog can and will hunt, with increasingly lurid consequences. Biology does not point fingers — animals are what they are, and predators will predate — that does not make them any worse than say, a vegetarian bunny that munches on grass and flowers.
A follow-up thought would be: many animals kill people, how does that make dogs any different? The answer is enmeshed with the question of what we must do. The domestic dog was created by people, domesticated from the wolf. The edge the dog has over other predators is the familiarity it feels with people, honed over thousands of years of co-evolution. A dog can hunt at nearly any time, and regardless of the physical closeness of human beings. It often has a lack of fear of man. Compare this to any other wild animal which does not have the benefit of familiarity — even a tiger known to kill people will stay away from groups of people.
So, what do we need to do?
Blackbucks being chased by dogs in Haryana. [Photo credit: Neha Sinha]
Dogs that hunt people and wildlife need complete removal from site. Sterilisation does not help in such cases. Sterilisation of dogs proven to hunt may lessen the numbers, but not the threat.
This leads us to an associated issue — what of free-ranging dogs that are partially fed by people? If you tell someone her friendly Browny or Tommy is hunting birds, you may face complete incredulousness. It’s like telling a parent their kid does drugs on weekends. But free-ranging dogs do often hunt, even if they are fed. Having dogs on the road, given food but not a home or hearth, also leads to puppies getting run over and exposure to temperature extremes and disease. For those who love dogs with passion — this author included — the answer lies in taking responsibility for dogs.
“The goal of any policy for the management and welfare of dogs — for that matter any domestic animals — should be to ensure that the only dogs that exist should be those owned by people. We cannot have ownerless dogs. There should be a piece of paper linking each owned dog to a person to hold that person accountable for the actions of the dog. We need to take responsibility for the dogs we feed. These dogs need to be confined. If they are hunting, they must be immediately captured and confined,” says wildlife conservationist Aditya Panda.
Some would say not all dogs hunt. This may be true. But enough dogs are hunting.
Dogs hunting on a beach in Mangalore. [Photo credit: Neha Sinha]
Dogs that hunt will need to be put down or confined. For some others, people can adopt and take responsibility, individually or with the help of a community. For the rest, the humane solution would be to open nationwide shelters and give dogs lifetime care, post sterilisation. This will require huge investment, but can be accomplished through crowdfunding, individual and government-led investment. On priority should be problem dogs.
Mark Twain famously said: “If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.”
This is true. Dogs are incredible creatures. The fact that they hunt does not mean the entire species needs to be demonised and clubbed to death in acts of revenge. It does mean though, that we need to find solutions to a problem we have created. Not taking responsibility for Canis lupus familiaris is shunning tens of thousands of years of shared history. It is also an act of immense cruelty — to both dog and man.
This first appeared in my DailyO column, here.
You can also read the piece in Hindi, here.
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