BIG BUCKS FOR LITTLE STARS

The unedited version.
Published as 'Uncovering the Tortoise Trade Route', The Hindu, Saturday, Jun 02, 2007

For years, a pair of smugglers – Umesh Kishore Tekani, alias Mexx, in Singapore and Wai Ho Gin, nicknamed Bobby Gin, based in California – smuggled Indian star tortoises, among others, into the US by calling them “toy figures.” Another character, John Pen Tokosh, had tried the same trick, which landed him in prison for a year in June 2006.

While our papers today are full of tiger and lion poaching, what passes unnoticed is an equally well-organized criminal network of smugglers ripping off our star tortoises, much sought after in the international pet trade. In India, star tortoises feature on Schedule IV, the lowest rank of protection under the Wildlife Protection Act. A smuggler can be penalized with a maximum of three years in prison or a Rs. 25,000 fine but they are rarely jailed for trading in a Schedule IV animal. Besides, the people apprehended are usually just the couriers or mules and not the actual kingpins of the trade. Local hunters, reportedly members of the Hakke Pakke tribe, catch these animals from the dry scrub forests of Chittoor and Madanapalle districts in Andhra Pradesh and Kolar District in Karnataka and they are paid no more than $ 1 for each animal. By the time the animal reaches American shores each tortoise can fetch anywhere from $ 350 to $ 1000.

Occasionally there have been fanciful claims that the seized animals were captive-bred (The Hindu, July 28, 2005). However, such an assertion is merely a fig leaf to cover the government’s pathetic enforcement record and to downplay the impact on the wild population. In a communication to TRAFFIC (the trade monitoring arm of Worldwide Fund for Nature) in the year 2000, Conservation International’s tortoise expert, Peter Paul van Dijk wrote, “This species is not bred anywhere in the world in the quantities needed to supply the commercial demand.”

In 2005, wildlife authorities gloated that smuggling had declined (The Hindu, Sep 29, 2005), but in reality it was merely a breakdown in intelligence gathering. At least 9500 Indian star tortoises squeaked through their hands that year and were traded internationally with legal documents. “Also noteworthy is the fact that most of the seizures in India have occurred at airports. This indicates that there is either a total lack of intelligence gathering by the wildlife authorities or connivance at the lower levels,” says an official of the Wildlife Protection Society of India.

Tortoises are smuggled out of India to transit countries such as Thailand and Malaysia where the smugglers seem to be a step ahead of law enforcement. An animal dealer who was raided in Bangkok in January 2007 produced Lebanese export papers for 1000 Indian star tortoises! Chris Shepherd of TRAFFIC Malaysia writes, “The only department within Peninsular Malaysia which can currently enforce CITES regulations for the Indian Star Tortoise is the Royal Customs and Excise Department.” If Customs fails to nab an illegal shipment as it enters the country, then the smugglers are home free. They can then sell them openly without fear of prosecution as indeed happens. According to a study conducted over a two-week period by TRAFFIC-Malaysia, 173 Indian star tortoises were offered for sale in 24 out of 31 pet shops visited. The shopkeepers reported that more than 80% of the star tortoises they received were from India while the rest came from Sri Lanka. The ready availability of Indian star tortoises in Malaysia is illustrated by Shepherd’s statement, “When asked if it was possible to acquire a large batch of 20-30 animals, traders usually requested only 1-2 days to acquire the tortoises.”

At the last meeting of CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) nations in 2004, Malaysia gave an assurance that it will amend its laws to fix this loophole, but nothing has been done and stars continue to be smuggled through its borders. CITES strives to control the international trade in wildlife species by implementing licensing regulations. As a CITES Appendix II animal, the Indian star tortoise needs an export permit only to facilitate its legal crossing of international boundaries (besides any local legal restrictions). The export permits can be issued only “if the export will not be detrimental to the survival of the species.” And therein lies the crux of the issue - except for a couple of studies, Indian star tortoises have never been studied in the wild, nor their distribution and status mapped. So nobody knows how the current levels of exploitation have impacted a slow breeding reptile. But regardless of these concerns there are some countries (where star tortoises are not found) unscrupulous enough to issue the export permits.

According to the CITES trade database (www.cites.org) between 1975 and 1994, about 9200 star tortoises were exported with CITES certificates, mostly to Japan. Aware that wild-caught, smuggled Indian star tortoises were finding their way into the international trade with export permits issued by some countries, CITES issued a Notification in 1994 recommending its member countries not to accept any export or re-export permit for tortoises unless these documents were verified. There followed a five year lull period (if about 270 animals per year could be called that) and then in the year 2000, Lebanon entered the picture and the total number of tortoises traded under CITES began rocketing.

The smugglers picked their country right – Lebanon is not a signatory to CITES and since 2003 has re-exported more than 9000 Indian star tortoises claimed to be captive bred (in Kazakhstan of all places!). However, Kazakhstan, a party to CITES, has not reported exporting a single star tortoise since 2000 (the year it became party to CITES). Lebanon also exported 6000 more tortoises without disclosing the source. There are only 3 countries in the world where the species is found – India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka – and in the last 12 years they collectively exported 1038 star tortoises only. So where did the thousands of tortoises come from? All indications are that they came from India routed variously through Thailand and Malaysia with Lebanon laundering these illegally procured animals by providing fraudulent export documents. It is doubtful if these star tortoises even touched Kazakh or Lebanese soil.

Between the years 1995 and 2005, a whopping 32,000 tortoises were traded and of these Japan accepted the export permits for 20,000, contravening the CITES notification of 1994. From 2002 to 2004, Afghanistan, a country where the star tortoise is not found in the wild, exported more than 5000 of them listed as “wild caught” to that black hole - Japan. While Japan is the single largest market for scores of laundered tortoises, thousands more are smuggled to the high paying markets of Europe and the US.

Between 2001 and 2004 less than 7000 star tortoises were confiscated across India, while 19,000 were recorded to have been traded internationally with fraudulent papers. Within the last few years, in an act of ‘spring-cleaning’, several old CITES Notifications were cancelled including the one on trade in tortoises. Today there is no cautionary advice on the subject. In 2005 (at the same time that Indian authorities were claiming a slump in smuggling) the trade hit an all time high of 9480 animals. (There are no figures for 2006 on the CITES database yet.) If these are the “legally” traded numbers worldwide, the numbers smuggled without papers is definitely several times higher.

Meanwhile the US authorities showed a distinct lack of creative imagination by refusing to see the star tortoises as “action figures”. After four years of surveillance, they swung into action on May 17, 2007 and indicted Bobby Gin (and Mexx if he’s ever caught) on a dozen charges of conspiracy, smuggling and money laundering. If convicted on the first two, they’ll get five years in prison and twenty years for the latter. While the severity of the punishment was no doubt because of the CITES Appendix I tortoises they also smuggled, it’s a damn sight better than India’s record in convicting smugglers of even Schedule I species, clearly illustrating how seriously wildlife crime is viewed in this country.

Obviously India must slam down on wildlife crime while pushing countries such as Malaysia and Thailand to do more to prosecute smugglers. Japan has to be coerced to reject dubious export permits such as those issued by Lebanon. CITES needs to demonstrate that it is indeed an effective mechanism in controlling such illegal international trade. How can CITES signatory countries so blatantly accept documents from non-party nations such as Lebanon? When the tortoise route spans the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and the US, a united stand against smuggling is the only way to stop exploitation of the species in the wild. Hopefully the upcoming meeting of CITES nations to be held at The Hague between 3 and 15 June will re-assess measures taken against the global illegal trade in wildlife and perhaps this charismatic little tortoise will win a reprieve.

FROM THE JAWS OF EXTINCTION…

Published: BBC Wildlife June 2007

With its fantastically long, tooth-filled snout, the gharial takes the crocodile design to the extreme. Sadly, such weaponry has been useless in saving the species from a dreadful decline and its last hope rests with ROMULUS WHITAKER and his colleagues.

Story by Janaki Lenin

THE SUN BLAZED overhead. It was midday and we had been walking for hours. I wanted to believe that the wisp of blue in the distance was the River Padma – our destination – but I worried it was a mirage. The river is the official boundary between India and Bangladesh, and has changed its course so many times I feared it might have vanished altogether.

Finally, a ribbon of cobalt swam into view. We reached the brow of the high bank, knees buckling with exhaustion, when, in the water below us, we saw a crocodile with an unfeasibly long snout. Was it a gharial or just another illusion?

The reptile’s sleek body glistened in the sun. She seemed unafraid of us, and we guessed she was guarding eggs buried in the sandbank. Instantly revived, we dug until we found the nest, watched suspiciously by its owner. We were hoping to rear her young safely in captivity and then release them, but she didn’t know that. Still, she didn’t attack us.

GOING TO POT That was in the mid-1980s. We didn’t know it then, but this may have been the last time gharials nested in Bangladesh – a symptom of the species’ decline across its entire Asian range. The problem was that no one knew enough about this unusual croc to be able to help it. This is what prompted me to work as much as I could in gharial country – India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

What sets the gharial apart from all other crocodilians is its incredibly long snout, which it wields like chopsticks. These slim jaws, lined with sharp teeth, are ideal for catching fish. But they have another function. When a male reaches adolescence, at about age 12, a wart-like appendage begins growing on the tip of his snout. This is the ghara (Hindi for ‘pot’, which it resembles), and it completely covers and presses down on the nostrils. When the male breathes out forcefully, it produces a flatulent noise that carries across the water. The politest term I can come up with for this noise is ‘buzz-snort’. It serves two purposes – to attract females and warn off rivals.

We heard the buzz-snort in action near Rajghat on the Chambal River in northern India. We saw a big male gharial patrolling and heard his underwater territorial jaw-clap – the gharial is the only croc to advertise its presence in this way under water (some biologists think this could be a method of stunning prey as well as marking territory). It was an early winter morning, and when he surfaced and buzz-snorted, we could see the vapour leave his nostrils. Though it was winter, when crocs bask on the sandbanks to warm up, this adult male spent most of his time in the water, attending to his harem of females and alert to any male who might try to usurp his position.

Fights between male gharials involve terrific displays of prowess. The territory-holder surges forward, churning the water into a froth with his tail. If the intruder remains unintimidated, the two males engage in combat. Their slender snouts clash like swords in the air, though they seem too fragile for such violent action – indeed, you can often hear the crack of a tooth splintering or bone hitting bone. Eventually, one gharial will prevail and the other retreat.

MUM’S THE WORD The testosterone that fuels these fights between males ebbs after mating. Then the females go to war, battling over the best nest sites. Their conflicts are less brutal than the males’, though the same rule applies – the larger individual invariably wins. Once the territory squabbles are over, a mother gharial makes a 40-50cm-deep nest hole with her hind feet, into which she lays about 50 large eggs. She then covers the nest, tossing sand over the area to hide her tracks from predators such as hyenas, jackals and mongooses, before returning to the river to keep watch from a distance.

Many crocodilians are attentive parents, but little was known about how gharials care for their young until I observed our captive-breeding population. One day I noticed a mother begin to dig up her nest. As I got closer, I could hear her babies calling from beneath the sand, just as other young crocs do. It can take mother crocs hours to assist their babies to the water, as they cannot see exactly where the youngsters are. They often mistake rocks, egg shells, clods of dirt, even baby turtles for their own young, and will tenderly carry them to the river.

This female dug with her front feet until she flipped out a baby, which landed by her hind feet. She then ‘back-heeled’ it through the air into the water. She excavated the rest of the nest without jettisoning any more youngsters, and then turned around and slid into the river. Her 36 babies followed, rather like ducklings.

Alerted by all the activity, the male lurked nearby. When he swam close, the babies climbed onto his head, transforming him from an aggressive fighter into a devoted parent. Both adults then guarded the youngsters. In the wild, their behaviour is no doubt similar. It’s likely that family groups are only split up when monsoon rains wash the juveniles away.

RIVER DEEP
Up to 100 years ago, the gharial’s buzz-snort resonated along the deep rivers of the northern Indian subcontinent. Not for the gharial the still waters of ponds or lakes where other crocs thrive: this is a hardcore river-dweller that eats only fish. Unfortunately, this narrow choice of habitat and diet has been the gharial’s downfall. Its rivers are being dammed, which isolates populations. After the last Ice Age, the gharial staked out about 20,000km2 of rivers, spanning Pakistan to Burma. Today, its domain is a mere 200km2 and dwindling.

To counter this decline – and that of other Indian crocodilians – Project Crocodile was set up in 1974 by the Indian Government with help from the UN. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, we carried out surveys, behavioural studies and captive breeding. We reared thousands of youngsters and released them in protected areas. Sadly, few of these pioneers survived for long – but we didn’t know why.

For example, the beautiful Satkosia Gorge in Orissa appears to have everything a gharial could want – fish, sandbanks, protection – and threats such as bamboo-rafting and net-fishing have been eliminated. Yet only two of the 700 gharials released here in the past three decades have survived. When I visited the Gorge during the monsoon in mid-July, I saw how small streams had become torrents. The river roared up to nine metres above its dry-season mark, eroding the banks and uprooting trees. The released gharials were obviously being flushed downriver, out of the protected area and even into the sea. One was seen on a beach, others in mangroves and ponds. Those that took refuge in tributaries were caught in fishing nets.

Fishing is a massive problem. In supposedly protected areas, we saw several gharials whose snouts had got tangled in nylon fishing nets. It was clear that, despite the rules, gill nets were being set at night, entangling gharials that tried to swim through them or attempted to eat the netted fish. The crocs didn’t drown, but they were left unable to open their jaws and thus in danger of starving to death. In other places, dam construction disturbed nesting gharials and local people raided the nests for eggs to eat.

Clearly, though the gharial’s slide towards extinction had been slowed, our 30-year strategy of captive-breeding has not been enough. The species faces an uncertain future and its survival is closely linked with the needs of the humans dependent on the rivers. Our campaign (see right) is part of a much larger initiative to ensure the survival of these rivers. The threats – from development, pollution and climate change – increase day by day, but we are guardedly optimistic that people are at last ready to do what it takes to save the gharial, the ultimate icon of a healthy river.

SIZE MATTERS!

Published in Sanctuary Asia Vol XXVI No. 6, Dec 2006

Kalia was a woman-eater. He was estimated to be a 23 to 24 foot (7.01 to 7.32 m.) salt-water crocodile who ruled a 10 mile (16.66 km.) stretch of the Dhamra River in Bhitarkanika, Orissa. The then Raja of Kanika wrote in 1973 that this unusually dark skinned reptile eluded shikaris including his grandfather and father for 50 years. In 1926, the captain of a ship on a run from Chandbali to Calcutta eventually shot it. The injured reptile crawled onto the bank taking shelter in the reeds and tall dry grass. Seizing the opportunity, the villagers set fire to the vegetation killing the croc.

For several years, Kalia’s skull welcomed visitors to the palace in Rajkanika while the bangles and anklets found in his belly were displayed on a table, gruesome reminders of a horrific period in the region’s history. J.C. Daniel and S.A. Hussain of the Bombay Natural History Society were the first to measure the salt-water crocodile’s skull in 1973 and reported that it was the largest skull in the world at 100 cm.

Robert Bustard and Romulus Whitaker wanted an accurate figure and in 1974 they went up to Bhitarkanika to measure the skull. It was hanging way up on the wall out of reach and it wasn’t a simple job getting it down. So using a stick they came up with 98 cm. Years later, Rom realized that they had made a mistake. Instead of measuring the skull from snout tip to the occiput (back of the head of the upper jaw), they had measured it all the way to the back of the lower jaw, a mistake that several people continue to make thus confusing the issue of crocodile morphology.

If you are wondering why the measurement of the skull has to be so specific, it’s because crocodile biologists use it to extrapolate croc sizes. The length of the skull (measured along the median line from the tip of the snout to the back of the occiput) is multiplied by seven to arrive at the animal’s total length. Scientists came up with this equation after measuring hundreds of alligators in the United States and rapidly biologists around the world began using it to estimate the lengths of several species of crocodiles.

Although there have been several reports of bigger crocodiles being shot in Australia – one was estimated to be 27 ft. (8.23 m.) – there is not a shred of evidence (skull, skin or photograph) to prove the hunters’ claims. In the 19^th century, a monstrous 33 ft. (10.06 m.) croc was reportedly shot in Bengal and the skull lodged at the British Museum of Natural History. When the skull was measured it was only 60 cm. long and a simple arithmetic puts the animal at 13.78 ft. (4.20 m.).

For a couple of decades Rom tried unsuccessfully to access Kalia’s skull and in recent years began to fret that it might have disintegrated. Through Aurodam David in Auroville, we finally met Shivendra Bhanjdeo, the Yuvaraj of Kanika. He confirmed Rom’s worries – the skull was indeed falling apart and he wanted assistance in preserving it. Rom, in turn, sought the help of Dr. Russ McCarty, paleontologist at the Florida State Museum in Gainesville, who is a professional preserver of bones. He recommended a substance called Butvar (polyvinyl butyral). It wasn’t available in India, so friends kindly brought over a pound of the white crystals.

Earlier this year, we went up to Bhubaneshwar where the skull had since been moved from Rajkanika. It wasn’t in as bad a shape as we feared – the sutures holding the various parts of the skull were still intact. A slice of the upper jaw was missing (as it was even in the 1973 photograph); the captain must have shot the animal through the body. The skull had to be cleaned thoroughly and an enterprising businessman friend, Vinny took on the dirty work – alternately brushing and pumping jets of air with a bicycle pump, he managed to get most of the grit out. It was impossible to reach the crevices and the tooth sockets, so he hauled it off to the local tyre puncture fixer. It was only because Vinny was barking orders that the bewildered mechanics did what was needed. After being air-blasted, the skull returned looking several shades whiter. The Butvar had to be dissolved in acetone (without forming lumps, just like good gravy) and the thick glue brushed on the skull. An iron tub (plastic melts when it comes in contact with acetone) of adequate size was found and with the heavy skull levered by a long bamboo pole, the Butvar was poured over it. The preservative soaked into all the cracks, crevices and pores virtually encasing it and now the skull is good to last another 100 years and probably a lot more.

Finally, the moment Rom had been waiting for 30 years arrived. The tip of the snout to the occiput measured only 73.3 cm. We added three centimetres for the four per cent shrinkage when the skull dried out, and checked and double-checked the measurements. There is no doubt about it, by using the standard ratio for crocodile head length to total body length, Kalia would have measured 17.52 ft. (5.34 m.), significantly short of the 23-24 footer that it was claimed to be.

Some experts however, have expressed doubt if the 1:7 ratio can be applied universally. While the ratio is consistent in alligators, it varied wildly in crocodiles. In 1979, while Rom was doing a crocodile survey in Papua New Guinea, tribal hunters proudly showed him the skin of a crocodile that measured 20.34 ft. (6.2 m.). The fresh skull was 72 cm. long making it a 1:8.6 ratio. The behemoth had drowned in a tiny barramundi net.

In another instance, Australian croc biologist Grahame Webb measured a salt-water croc skull at 66.6 cm. belonging to a freshly killed 20.18 ft. (6.15 m.) animal. This ratio of 1:9.23 made Kalia a whopping 23.11 ft. (7.04 m.), closer to the Raja of Kanika’s claims. As a final test, we measured the closest giant at hand, Jaws III, at the Madras Crocodile Bank. The ratio was 1:9. The emerging theory is that young crocodiles may follow the 1:7 ratio, but as they grow older, the skull doesn’t keep up with the rest of the body, until at 35+ years of age they reach 1:9. If we could estimate these growth changes, it would be relatively simple to estimate the age of crocs.

Recently, we traced the skull of a false gharial from Borneo to the Munich Museum. It measured 81 cm. (snout tip to occiput). So the current record holder for the largest crocodilian skull in the world is not a salt-water crocodile (the traditional favourite) but an endangered long-snouted fresh-water reptile. It seems likely that none of these ratios would apply to gharials and false gharials so we can only speculate what length the Bornean false gharial reached.

Among crocodiles however, the largest skull, measuring 76 cm, belonged to a salt-water crocodile from Cambodia, now at the Paris Museum. The second largest skull (73.5 cm) is of an American crocodile at the American Museum of Natural History, New York and the Kanika skull ranks third in the world. There may yet be other larger skulls collecting dust in private collections but until they are measured, all stories of humungous crocodiles remain in the realm of old hunters’ tales.

The crocodile census conducted in Bhitarkanika in January indicated the presence of a 23 ft. (7.01 m.) crocodile (would we love to put a tape measure on that beast!!). Given the high degree of protection the Crocodile Sanctuary enjoys from the Orissa Forest Department (and the salt-water crocodiles themselves), it seems that this is one of the few places on the planet where these giant crocodiles will continue to rule into the 22^nd century.

Crocs of the tidal zone

Published as a chapter in Sundarbans Inheritance, Sanctuary Books, 2007

Narrated by Rom Whitaker; written by Janaki Lenin

Abdul Aziz Mulla, a honey collector, stumbled upon a saltwater crocodile nest just as the eggs were hatching. Since he couldn't see the female anywhere close by, he picked up a baby croc, which immediately started squawking in alarm as baby crocs will do. The mother, which had slipped into a muddy wallow on his approach, heard its baby's call and swung into defensive action, erupting from hiding to grab his leg. He threw the baby croc at her, which is all she really wanted. A few bad scars later, even Abdul admitted she wasn't a man-eater. Surprisingly, this was just one of the few croc attack accounts I heard in the Bangladesh Sundarbans about 25 years ago.

I spent three weeks in the mangrove forest aboard the 10-metre-long District Forest Officer's launch, Bana Sundri in 1981. With its six-man crew we conducted perhaps the first crocodile survey undertaken in the Sundarbans. The swamp was always notorious for its man-eating tigers and we had a 24-hour armed escort; while I appreciated the necessity, I soon began to chaff at the lack of privacy. Celebrity-hood was never my bag!

The best place to start my study was by interviewing the people who lived on the edges of the crocodile swamps. Interestingly, apart from their myths and legends, few really knew about crocodile natural history or behaviour. Many actually confused the nests of wild pigs and crocs, and I found myself personally checking each nest they thought they had located. This involved crawling on hands and knees through thorny Phoenix palms and 1.5 m. tall tiger ferns, not named for its feline looks but because its dense stands are a favoured hide-out for tigers.

Visibility at such times was about as far as my nose. Elsewhere humans are usually the hunters -- the kings of the forest. In the Sundarbans the tables are turned. You feel hunted; just prey. Understandably, we constantly looked over our shoulders, listening for every small sound and, I am not ashamed of admitting, quaking in our shoes. It was the poor visibility combined with constant reminders from everyone I met that made walking in the tiger's turf as heart-pounding as running a marathon at high altitude. Yes, the armed guard was always behind me with his ancient and cumbersome Enfield .303 cocked. But that itself was a creepy feeling. Would I end up as tiger fodder, or would a jumpy guard armed with an unpredictable rifle accidentally get me?

Walking in the mangroves is a seriously tough business. I was often knee deep in mud in some places, thigh-deep in others. If a tiger did actually turn up running was never going to be an option. The big cat had the advantage of enormous snowshoe-like paws, but the aerial roots, the pneumatophores, of some mangrove trees would be an impediment even for the cat. My feet slipped and slid sideways as I tried to step between the sharp spear-like roots, straining muscles unused to this strange manner of walking. Meanwhile, monkeys jumped artfully from pneumatophore to pneumatophore and deer raced through them faster than a tiger possibly could. Any two-legged human treading this swamp was at a major disadvantage.

Once you are out of the tiger’s turf, you walk straight into bull shark waters. The first time I returned after a walk in the mangroves, I recall trying to wash the black gooey mud off my legs in the river before getting on the launch and was chastised for my trouble. In the boat crew’s view my white legs were ideal shark bait so I was ordered to always hop up on the launch first, scoop up a bucket of water from the river and only then wash my legs… away from of jaws of water-borne predators.

When the tiger does not make it into their conversation, people who visit the Sundarbans talk of crocodile attacks. It’s more hype than fact. Though that might have been true in the old days when crocs were common, 25 years ago I found no evidence to support the stories. Also there was confusion about whether people had been attacked by sharks or crocs. None of the scars from the injuries I physically examined were caused by crocodiles and six or seven victims down the line I was inclined to think that the so-called croc attacks was the work of sharks. People sifting for shrimp seedling were especially at risk because bull sharks commonly hunt in muddy waters along the shore. Some are maimed by relatively small sharks, about 1.5 or 1.8 m. long, which would grab a leg or an arm and shake vigorously tearing off skin, flesh, part of an arm, or a leg. As for the crocs, I just never saw enough of them. Nor it would appear do most land animals because deer, wild boar and tigers seemed to have no qualms about swimming across creeks, streams and rivers as evidenced by the many pugmarks and hoof prints visible on the edges of muddy banks.

When darkness fell, I would stop conversing with humans and begin working on what I loved best – looking for crocs. I used a powerful spotlight that made crocs’ eyes shine, giving them away. High tide was never any good to me as the reptiles would be deep in the mangroves. I found myself gliding along the waterways using the same methods that croc hunters once did, to devastating effect, in the 1950s when the skin industry was at its peak. Three decades later the few surviving crocs in the Sundarbans were still wary of humans.

Days passed. And despite scouring ideal croc habitat night afternight, frustration began to set in. The only crocs I was able to spot were hatchlings or yearlings. Though I followed up on local advice: “Go downriver to such and such place and you will see them basking” all I ever saw were a few slide marks. Then, out of the blue (brown actually!) one day, I saw the broad back of a monster croc – an 18 footer (5.5 m.) -- swimming languidly out in the middle of the Bhola River. I am unlikely to forget that sighting because it was one of the precious few crocs I ever saw in the Sundarbans. Ultimately after covering over 433 km. of mangrove creeks and rivers in three weeks, I counted just six, and saw evidence of six more during that survey. That’s a density of 0.028 crocs per km.

Drifting along the mud-lined and mangrove clothed waterways of the Sundarbans, watching the forest go by day after day can get monotonous so I would entertain myself fishing. Occasionally we would stop at a forest rest house and I would go out looking for snakes to take my mind off the survey that was not working out quite as I had hoped. When I go snake hunting, I don’t like people around; I like to concentrate on what I’m doing. But since the forest was ‘dangerous’ I could not casually wander off on my own. One afternoon while the guard was catching some shut eye post-lunch I sneaked off to look for snakes around the dighi, a freshwater pond away from the main river. I found some interesting water snakes and was totally engrossed when I suddenly heard shouting -- the guard was running towards me with his rifle ready. I quickly looked around to see if I was about to be pounced on by Dakshin Ray, the tiger god. The guard was angry: “If you get eaten by a tiger, they will blame me.” And I responded: “Yeah, but I’m right here. The rest house is in plain sight.” It was then that he narrated the hair-raising story of a Forester who had been taken by a tiger right in that dighi months earlier.

My survey was not particularly exciting in terms of snakes either. Cruising along one of the meandering mangrove rivers in a launch one day I saw a largish snake swimming across at speed and I scooped it up with a landing net. The boat crew was horrified that I had dumped a monocled cobra on the deck. As it sat hissing and dramatically displaying, the six crew members stood nervously as far back as the boat would allow, causing it to rock precariously. “Throw it back. Throw it back,” they yelled in unison and I replied in my best American-Bengali accent, “Nai… nai… nai. I want to take it to the shore and take pictures.”

My will prevailed and as they took me ashore I jumped into the mud. It was tricky – I had a camera around my neck, a cobra in one hand, a stick in the other, and was stuck up to my knees in mud. I did manage to get pictures, however, and this made an impression on the boat crew who talked about it all the way back. They then told me about the king cobra that climbed up the anchor rope of the launch that they “somehow beat off” before it could crawl aboard.

That night while the boat lay anchored in the middle of the river, I heard many tales of tigers with superhuman talents. Like ghost stories, everyone in the Sundarbans has his own tiger tale. The boatman narrated particularly extraordinary stories of tigers stealthily climbing aboard anchored fishing boats in the middle of the river and making off with adult men without waking anyone else. For effect he informed me that tigers make people lose not only their voice, but drains energy from their limbs so they cannot run. In a philosophic aside, he quoted the motto of the Sundarbans “Jale kumir, dangai bagh” -- crocs in the water, tigers on land.

If merely floating midstream could cause so much fear, I can only imagine what they thought about crawling through the mangrove slush. The armed guard walking with me in the thick bush was a psychological prop, but the benefit of doubt would have to be given to a determined tiger against the old bolt action .303 of the shaky guard. Nevertheless, even I was grateful for company as this halved the odds of a tiger attacking me! (Besides, a gun going off with a bang would probably scare any sane cat away.) Nobody went into the Sundarbans alone, whether fishermen, wood cutters or honey collectors. The bigger the group, the lower the risk. People sought safety in numbers for the same reason fish schooled together. I found myself inwardly happy that there was a part of the planet where humans were forced to think and behave like prey animals. Early man must have felt the same fear when sabre-toothed cats prowled around his campsites.

These people whose lives were governed by the tides lived in a fantastic world of terror and mythology embroidered with fact. I just could not tell what was real and what was not. A group of honey collectors spoke, as expected, about crocs and man-eating tigers and surprisingly, a few people who “got away.” One might imagine that if a tiger got a hold of you that was where the story would end. But in one case a charismatic honey collector spoke of a tiger that made the mistake of catching a man by the leg rather than his neck and began dragging him away, still alive. When the man realised that he was bouncing around between the hind legs of the tiger, he is said to have reached up to bite hard on the tigers’ testicles until it let him go. This was probably the only tiger attack story in the world that made everyone roll on the floor with laughter. There were other cases of people who actually fought tigers with their axes or machetes. And one man in the group philosophically concluded that “people are eaten by tigers because they torture the forest.”

What really scared the daylights out of me about the Sundarbans was not being attacked by an animal; it was being caught in a storm while paddling a canoe. I was there in April, the pre-monsoon storm season. If we were surveying by canoe at night, we ventured out only after carefully reading the skies for signs of an impending storm. One night, we misread the signs and got caught by the weather gods in Bainkari Khal. The chop of the waves even in that little creek was so bad that the canoe was swamped within minutes. Sharks and tigers were the last things on our minds when we jumped into the mud to haul the canoe up out of the water. The craft was our lifeline and the strong current kept trying to pull it away from us until we managed to tie it to some mangrove roots. We were covered in mud from head to toe and the strong wind against our damp clothes chilled us to the bone. Shivering, we crouched in the donghy, retying it periodically as the tide came in. For an hour and a half the wind tore through the forest shaking down sticks and leaves and sending them flying around like dangerous confetti. Lightning struck all around us and we just hung on for dear life. During this season, a lot of boats get lost and people lose their lives.

In the aftermath people remembered a super storm that hit in 1978-1979. The tidal surge had been between six and nine metres high, and people had to climb fast to stay above it to survive. Fortunately, because of the optimum salinity, mangroves species grow to over 15 m. tall in the swamp forests of Bangladesh. Along with the clinging humans, tigers, wild boar and even deer had been seen on trees together with the snakes and other creatures. When the storm subsided, 200,000 people and as many animals lay dead among the mangrove roots.

Mangroves are one of the most vital buffers against super storms anywhere in the world as we recently discovered when the huge tsunami hit Asia. No other place in the world attracts as many devastating storms as the Sundarbans does. If you trace the paths of a hundred cyclonic storms spawned in the Bay of Bengal, about 90 of them hit the Sundarbans. Without the mangroves to absorb the fury of the elements, a tidal surge up the Meghna River would flatten many villages and towns in its path.

Despite this critical function, the Sundarbans has been systematically whittled down to roughly half its original extent. For centuries, mangrove wood was extracted for construction of piers and jetties because they are naturally resistant to damage by saltwater. Much continues to be burned as firewood. When there were working plans for timber extraction, one tree specie was particularly discriminated against – the baen or Avicennia officinalis. These big, mature trees rot at the base creating big holes where tigresses are able to deposit their litters, pythons their eggs, and where a host of creatures such as civets, mongooses and monitor lizards can find a home. These old, rotten trees were useless as timber and were the ones removed for firewood.

I was told of a female python that was found incubating her eggs in one such tree hole. It was promptly killed and her four metre long skin hung in the launch that was my home in the Sundarbans. It was one of the biggest Indian python skins I had ever seen. As if to confirm the story, I discovered a shed python skin in one such huge tree hollow.

Many years later when I returned to the Indian Sundarbans in 2003, my spotlight survey was just as fruitless, though we did see a few more small crocs. It was the same old story. In contrast, in 2006 I counted 65 saltwater crocodiles in Bhitarkanika in an hour’s cruise. So why were there so many in Orissa? It has to be because pro-active conservation helped the crocodile make a remarkable recovery. The number of crocs of all sizes in Bhitarkanika, a comparatively small 672 sq. km. forest, is around 1,500. That’s a density of 10 crocs per km. Yet in the 10,000 sq. km. of the Sundarbans, which ought to have many times more crocs, reportedly supports only a miniscule population.

I am puzzled by the appallingly slow recovery of the saltwater crocodile in the Sundarbans (both sides of the border) despite nearly three decades of protection. Could lack of ideal nesting sites be the reason? Croc nests are not only obvious mounds; the females also draw attention to them by creating visible tracks. So it is vital to have undisturbed nesting areas with little or no human interference. In the years past, people collected eggs opportunistically to eat, but only two active nests had been found in recent years. Once croc exploitation reaches a certain threshold, their chance of recovery hits a point of no return unless the nest sites are vigorously protected.

Like crocodiles, monitor lizards too have been hammered by the skin industry. People camped in large parties on the edge of the Sundarbans and used dogs to corner and kill monitors with ruthless efficiency. So, even though the habitat was intact the numbers of these lizards seemed pitifully low. Someone should investigate what is preventing them from recovering.

The river terrapin, Batagur, is another reptile in trouble. The mangrove swamps once abounded with these huge turtles that were hunted for meat with baited hooks. The method was simple, a rope was strung across a fairly large river with hundreds of hooks and each hook was baited with the little yellow mangrove fruit of Sonneratia apetala that turtles love. My crew demonstrated how they used to catch them years ago, but all they could show me were the half a dozen captive terrapins being reared in village ponds.Today, the turtle is more or less extinct with small chance of recovery.

To understand what happened to the Sundarbans in the early days of human colonisation I looked at the Andamans where some of the pioneering human settlers of the smaller mangrove ecosystem were Bangladeshi refugees. The first thing they did was to clear the area, where the freshwater meets the saltwater, of all vegetation – mangrove trees, Nypa palms, Phoenix palms, the lot. Apparently, this is the best rice growing zone. This is also prime croc nesting habitat. In the Sundarbans, when the monsoon combines with high tide, storm surges sweep up through the mangroves drowning croc nests. The only place where croc nests will not be inundated is the non-tidal rice growing area.

What really drove this poignantly home to me was finding the bones of a female croc still on top of the remains of an old nest on the edge of the Sundarbans that had been freshly cleared for rice planting. She had been killed while guarding her nest. Ironically it was her maternal protective instinct that sealed her fate as she could easily have swum away from her tormentors. This epitomises how crocs were wiped out. The first wave of hunters killed the animals for their skins, the second wave of egg collectors robbed nests and the final nail in the coffin was the loss of prime nesting habitat.

The only available habitat left for crocs in the Sundarbans now is the tidal zone and although babies were successfully hatching in some years, they need freshwater to drink. During the rains they survive on rainwater, but after this when the rivers slow down to a trickle and saltwater flows in from the sea, baby crocs do not have a hope in hell of surviving. Which meant the yearlings I was seeing on my night surveys were probably a doomed lot.

Besides habitat, the other important factor is the prey base. Fish is a primary food source for crocs, monitors, and turtles, so I checked on the fishing trends. The high shark population inhibited fishermen from getting into the water to drive fish, so some used tame otters to do their job for them. Once the net was set up the otters corralled the fish along the shoreline. The mullet jumped through the air in panic and some actually leaped onto the shore and lay flapping in the mud. But most fishing is still done with traditional nets and the size of the mesh is one standard method of estimating resource exploitation. Typically people started out with nets of five to eight centimetre mesh size. Then gradually the mesh size got smaller, and now they use what can only be described as mosquito nets to pick up even the tiniest fish. Of all the other pressures stacked up against the aquatic reptiles, this is perhaps the main whammy – the bottom of the food chain is collapsing.

We had gone to the Sundarbans expecting to see crocodiles rule the tidal forest but came away instead with the realisation that despite the vastness of the mangroves, these animals had been systematically wiped out.

There can be no one silver bullet recommendation to set things right. The deep malaise afflicting the Sundarbans needs systematic long-term research, coupled with instant, effective conservation action. For a start, a comprehensive survey is needed to pinpoint nest sites for focused protection. I was thinking about this when a loud thump jolted the boat and almost knocked us overboard. The propeller had hit a submerged log and the blade had broken. The choking exhaust fumes caught us fully in the face as the boat sputtered into silence. Until the propeller was fixed we stewed in our sweat as we drifted downriver watching macaques picking the debris left by the receding tide.

Dogs and Us

Photo credit: Nikhil Devasar
A pack of stray dogs attacking a nilgai in Sultanpur Wildlife Sanctuary, near New Delhi.

An earlier draft was published as Stray Scare in Sunday Express

14/1/07

Four-year old Nina bent down to pat the little stray puppy that was curled up asleep on the pavement. Before anyone could prevent it, the puppy had ripped her lip. The traumatized girl was quickly whisked away to the doctor for stitches and anti-rabies shots. In this incident, both the dog and the little girl are victims of our poor management of stray dogs. The puppy was an insecure, poorly fed, abused animal at the mercy of passing humans. Like millions of others, it had to fight a daily battle to stay alive, dodging traffic, finding shelter against the harsh summer sun and rain. No wonder he had misinterpreted Nina’s approach with suspicion and had launched into an offensive. This is not an isolated incident but typifies a growing problem that we have to resolve now for the sake of dogs and people.

Rabies:

The first point we simply cannot ignore when we are talking about stray dogs is that India tops the world in rabies deaths. Rabies is 100% fatal, just like AIDS and stray dogs are the Number One transmitters of the disease in India. It is hard to get any figures on human rabies cases as the Ministry of Health does not require hospitals to report cases. The best estimate available is the WHO’s National Multi-centric Rabies Survey of 2003, which puts the figure at 20,000 rabies deaths a year in India (tragically, half of them are small children). Doctors candidly state that the infected person is treated as an outpatient, given a heavy course of tranquilizers for a week and sent home to die as peacefully as can be hoped. According to the WHO’s 2003 report, there are an estimated 22 million dogs in India of which 14 million are strays.

Population Control:

In India Animal Birth Control (ABC) is presently the sole legal method of stray dog control in India. Ironically, Rule 7.9 states, “Female dogs found to be pregnant shall not undergo abortion (irrespective of stage of pregnancy) and sterilization and should be released till they have litter (sic).” The very rules that are meant to control the stray dog population mandate that stray pregnant female dogs should be allowed to give birth on the streets! Hardly ethical and humane!

Pet ownership:

The abundance of garbage coupled with the dogs’ innate fecundity are not the only reasons for the burgeoning stray dog population (as it is made out to be). Irresponsible dog owners are largely to blame – they abandon unwanted puppies and dogs on the streets. Even well to do families may dump their pets when they move to another city, or to an apartment complex with a no-pet policy. When there is no protocol or effective law in place to check this practice, we can continue to sterilize strays for the next 50 years and still not reach the intended target. It’s like trying to mop water from the floor while the tap remains open. Besides, ABC does not prevent dogs from attacking people nor is a sustainable rabies control protocol in place for the sterilized animals.

Feeding strays:

To further complicate matters there are numerous voluntary organizations which actively feed stray dogs. For instance, in 2001 the Ministry of Culture disbursed Rs. 10 crores to such organizations on Mahavir Jayanthi for the purpose of feeding stray animals. So even if we clean up our streets and make garbage inaccessible to stray animals, there is enough food given by sympathetic souls to sustain a huge population of strays. All the organizations working towards reducing the stray dog population should work out an integrated policy for the problem.

Ineffective population control:

The WHO recommends that for ABC to be effective, at least 70% of the total population has to be targeted within 6 months. However, the reality falls far short of these recommendations.

According to the estimates released by animal welfare organizations, New Delhi alone has about 200,000 stray dogs. Contrary to WHO recommendations, 20,000 dogs is the admitted annual capacity of the 6 to 8 animal welfare organizations responsible for the implementation of Animal Birth Control in Delhi. That means only 5% of the total stray dog population is sterilized over a period of 6 months, 65% less than recommended. Although 20,000 dogs are sterilized a year, it still leaves the rest of the population (180,000) free to breed. Let's assume that only half of this remaining population (90,000) is female and that only half this number (45,000) is able to breed successfully (not juvenile, too old, or unhealthy) and only two pups survive per litter. That results in 90,000 dogs added again to the population. Although dogs reproduce twice a year, we'll keep the estimate conservative. Sterilizing 20,000 dogs still results in the population growing by nearly four times in one year! This estimate does not include the thousands of abandoned un-neutered pets that are added to the stray dog population each year. (According to the International Fund for Animal Welfare one female dog and her offspring can produce 67,000 puppies in 6 years!).

Charity or essential service:

Although the ABC programme is funded by taxpayers it is largely performed on a voluntary basis by NGOs with limited (urban) reach. Unless the infrastructure to deal with tens of millions of dogs at one go is in place, the good intentions of the many dedicated NGOs will remain futile. Dogs are capable of breeding faster than any organization can sterilize them and the bottom line is, they are the biggest reservoirs of the rabies virus.

Where is the Plan?

Currently, there is no strategic Action Plan that clearly evaluates how many years it will take at the rate of how many sterilizations per year to reach a target of zero stray dogs. The stray dog population control functions on an ad hoc basis and any claims of its effectiveness is challenged by the lack of planning, infrastructure, funds and a scientific policy.

Street Dogs:

India is disturbingly the only country in the world to follow a policy of returning sterilized stray animals to their respective localities. In a scene reminiscent of the Roman gladiator days, we are daily witnesses to these strays dodging traffic, getting run over by vehicles, fighting with each other, and suffering from diseases like parvo, enteritis, distemper, cancer and mange. According to the WHO’s 2003 data, an average of 17 million people get bitten by dogs every year in India of which 76% (about 12 million) are caused by strays. The Government of India’s annual medical cost for treating these bites runs close to Rs. 1.5 billion, while poor people form nearly 88% of the rabies mortality figure says the same report.

Is it surprising then that in many areas, the public view stray dogs as a nuisance and vans returning the strays after sterilization are stoned and chased away. Such stray dogs are released in the outskirts of towns and villages, and sometimes in forests to fend for themselves.

Are Sanctuaries for Wildlife?:

Dogs (like cats) are natural born predators and it is very difficult to teach them otherwise. Stray dogs are incredibly damaging to wildlife killing untold numbers of monitor lizards, birds, snakes, and other wild creatures. No discerning environmentalist would want to trade our dwindling wildlife for a world of free-ranging feral domestic animals. On the remote beaches of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 90% of the highly endangered leatherback sea turtle nests are destroyed by stray dogs; they are actually helping to push this largest of all sea turtles to the brink of extinction. Closer to home, packs of stray dogs regularly bring down black buck and deer inside Guindy National Park in Chennai and at the Vandalur Zoo. In Mumbai, the leopards of Sanjay Gandhi National Park proliferate on an unnatural diet of stray dogs, resulting in dozens of human and leopard deaths. Stalking and hunting stray dogs means the big cat is also watching human behaviour at close quarters. In several recently documented cases in Junnar, Maharashtra, leopards killed humans while chasing dogs.

Dogs regularly kill spotted deer in Lal Bagh Park, Bangalore and in Bori Wildlife Sanctuary, Madhya Pradesh. According to the Forest Department, dogs kill blackbuck, especially females in the act of giving birth, in the Great Indian Bustard Sanctuary, Nannaj, Maharashtra. In late 2004, thousands of stray dogs caught in the Hubli/Dharwad area of Karnataka were released in Dandeli Wildlife Sanctuary, Karnataka. In March 2005, ten deer were killed by stray dogs in Van Vihar National Park in Bhopal.

In parts of India stray dogs transmit rabies to wolves and jackals, creating a wildlife conflict situation that results in scores of wild wolves and jackals being killed by panicky humans. In Aurangabad district, a rabid wolf bit 12 people in a single day of whom 3 died despite receiving anti-rabies treatment. It is irresponsible to leave unmanaged populations of potentially dangerous predators such as domestic dogs to run wild in our streets and forests. India needs a large-scale publicity campaign to educate people on the necessity of sterilizing their pets and the State has to provide the infrastructure for cheaply affordable sterilizations. Unless this is done as a government initiative, stray dog population control has little chance of being successful. Rabies control cannot be effective if run as a voluntary charity as it is right now. It needs an effective campaign similar to the drive that eliminated that other scourge, small pox, in this country and requires the same kind of publicity and mobilization that goes into eradicating polio.

Is feeding enough?

When responsibly cared for, dogs are truly man’s best friends, but the issue of stray dogs has mushroomed into India’s worst public health problem involving animals. What we need is a meeting of minds to hammer out a solution to a problem that is rampant in both urban and village areas. Animal welfare doesn’t stop with feeding animals; it includes taking care of them and ensuring the animals don’t suffer from preventable diseases such as rabies. We have created a problem that has gotten out of control and now we need pragmatic, effective, humane solutions based on the best scientific advice, to prevent incidents such as the 1200 dogs poisoned in Kashmir recently (reported on 28^th November 2006) or the 6 year old girl who was killed by 15 stray dogs at 7.30 am on 5^th January 2007 in Bangalore or the 55 year old man who was killed and eaten by strays late evening on the 4^th January 2007 in Chandigarh.

Co-author: Meghna Uniyal Rabies Prevention and Dog Population Control Download

Film Review: The Right to Survive

“The Right to Survive”

Turtle Conservation and Fisheries Livelihoods

Directed by Rita Banerji and Shilpi Sharma.

Produced by: International Collective in Support of Fishworkers.

This is a long needed film – one that highlights the alienation of local people in the name of conservation. But it is too long and quite difficult to keep track of what battle is being fought where. We had to view the film twice and take extensive notes to figure out what it was about.

The film tells us that there are 3 main turtle nesting areas on the Orissa coast and 3 classes of fishing being used in these areas:

Gahirmatha – motorized and traditional fishermen

Devi – trawlers

Rushikulya – traditional fishermen

Gahirmatha – It was never made clear in the film if the motorized fishermen are fishing illegally in the Core Area of Gahirmatha. This area isn’t just a turtle sanctuary but is also a nursery for fish stocks. And by the film’s own admission over-fishing has seriously depleted fish catch in these areas. So advocating fishing here albeit by traditional fishermen who have minimal impact, is really shooting oneself in the foot – if we want to sustain fisheries in our rivers and seas, we need such Protected Areas where fish and shrimp can replenish themselves. This becomes especially urgent as recent Food and Agriculture Organization reports state that unless we do something about it, by the year 2048 fishing will be an extinct occupation.

Rushikulya – This area seems to function as an example of how conservation and fisheries can work together, like keeping the trawlers from Andhra Pradesh out and local groups rescuing baby turtles. But this situation is not highlighted enough or even identified within the film as an example to the fisheries sector or the Forest Department.

Devi – Here there is no protection, it is subject to intensive trawling, and the trawlers refuse to use the Turtle Excluder Devices (TED). The identified offenders were the day trawlers. The simple, large-meshed trawl guard to keep turtles out of the nets was ingenious but was only shown for a few seconds in passing with no discussion and left the viewer asking for more.

Although the use of these guards could make day trawlers turtle-friendly, the film left its initial accusations hanging: that day trawlers messed up the livelihoods of the traditional fishermen and that fish stocks were rapidly depleting. After making the statement that protection of fish resources will automatically protect turtles it is perplexing that no conclusions are made. When everywhere else in the world TED efficacy is identified as a way of minimizing the impact on turtle mortality while maximizing fish catching potential (with a loss of only 10%), here we have a trawler worker saying he loses 90% of his catch using TED. In the absence of any rebuttal, his words can only be taken as the gospel truth. It is curious that a tried and tested device such as TED is dismissed as causing such significant losses, and the trawl guard which has not been tested is being promoted as a turtle-friendly device!

Several vital points were passed over, especially the protection of the moving turtle congregation and alternate livelihoods for the Gahirmatha fishermen. Turtle conservationists Aarthi and Kartik’s opinion that we still have plenty of time to be creative and change methodologies could be deadly for the unique phenomenon of the Orissa Ridley arribadas. Considering that we know little about sea turtle biology and the fact that the average size of adult females coming ashore to lay eggs is getting smaller, the demise of the arribada could even spell the death of the species. Seeing tens of thousands of turtles come ashore should not make us complacent about their future. On the human side, the rising tide of suicides among the Gahirmatha fishermen further underlines the need for urgent action. Unfortunately the film didn’t stress this urgency.

Who are the main losers if the various ports and oil rigs come up? Do trawlers stand to lose along with turtles and traditional fishermen? The film did not mention the likely fall-out of these developments and who will be impacted. While the unstated purpose of the film is apparently to revoke the Central Empowerment Committee’s strictures on fishing in the turtle nesting sites, the film missed a crucial opportunity to focus the fight against a common enemy – Big Industry. Perhaps this should have been a key argument that might even unite the trawlers, traditional fishermen and turtle conservationists.

The bottomline however, is this: just because industry is a bigger threat to turtles does not absolve the responsibility of the fishing community (be they traditional, motorized or trawlers) to nurture fish stocks for the future by respecting Protected Areas for the vital function they have been established (including sea turtle conservation).

Although well-shot, the visuals have no story within themselves and merely illustrate the narration making it unexciting and pedantic (how many ‘boats on the sea’ shots does it take?). The graphics are good and effective. The editing has little rhythm - paying more attention to the rhythm of the narration rather than the inherent rhythm of the shots. The questions left unanswered, the missed opportunities for pushing arguments, the lack of any definite conclusions makes the film seem unfocussed, vague and results in more confusion than clarity.

“The Right to Survive” could have been a seminal documentation of the problem but unfortunately falls far short of the stated goal “attempts to provide a solution for tomorrow”. This may have been a more effective 30 minute film.

Co-written with Rom Whitaker

The Last Great Indian Unknown

Published as cover story in Outlook Traveller Oct 2006






The bridge washed away in May and no vehicle could cross the boulder-strewn, mischievously gurgling M’pen River. There was no choice but to walk the 18 km to Deban. Once we got there, there would be no guarantee that we could cross the Noa-Dehing River and the Deban Nullah into the Buffer Zone of Namdapha National Park where we hoped to camp for the following week. We'd just have to try our luck.

It was an embarrassingly large entourage for two people to camp in the forest for a few days. There were seven porters, two tour guides, a cook, his assistant and a mass of things to carry that included literally everything but the kitchen sink - stove, gas cylinder, tents (different ones for sleeping, dining, shower and toilet), provisions, toilet seats, etc. I vetoed the blankets, pillows and a folding dinner table. I tried to veto the rasogolla tins but the cook wouldn’t hear of it.

The M'pen River wrapped itself around us, firmly nudging us downriver with the muscular persistence of a large python. It was already mid morning and the forest was quiet – you quickly get used to the steady metallic droning of the cicadas. The only other creatures about were large wood spiders and leeches. There were plenty of the small plain brown leeches but the ones that took my breath away were what I consider to be the world’s prettiest leech – a spectacularly beautiful large velvety brown one with sparkling emerald green stripes. They sat inert on leaves angling for passers by. Once onboard, they worked their way to a patch of bare skin and sucked their fill of blood. Given a choice of bloodsuckers like mosquitoes, ticks, horse flies, I’ll take leeches any day. They do not have parasites or transmit diseases the others are notorious for. They just suffer from a bad PR machine that promotes the larger-than-life prejudice against slimy, wormy limbless creatures.

As the road skirted the boundary of the Park all we could see were Chakma settlements and fields. Namdapha itself was hidden from view by a steep embankment. The commonest plant along the way was a colonizer I was familiar with - eupatorium. A weed that came with ships’ ballast from the West Indies in the late 1880s, it has colonized most of our National Parks and Sanctuaries. It was easy to fantasize being a pioneering explorer in this remote jungle; this weed brought me down to earth. Eight km later, when the road swung into Gibbons Land, we got our first real view of Namdapha National Park. The towering trees occluded the sky, the variety of birds heard but not seen, and the occasional glimpse of a forested mountain were tantalizing. I had learnt not to hope for too much, as the rainforest is very miserly in revealing its secrets. Namdapha is reportedly the only place in India to see the four cats - tiger, snow leopard, clouded leopard, and leopard. But I knew that if I saw even one of them here, I had the good deeds of all my previous births to thank. What I could, however, hope for were butterflies, birds like hornbills and hoolock gibbons, India’s only ape.

At Deban, it was clear that we were never meant to get to Namdapha’s Buffer Zone. Deban Nullah was declared treacherous (too deep and the current too swift), the boatman had been transferred and the captive elephants were loose in the forest until the tourist season began in October. So we were going to have to chuck our carefully considered plans and instead make the best of the Miao-Vijoynagar Road. The guesthouse and its grounds looked like a Government guesthouse franchise – the concrete construction, the marigolds and crotons, the pine trees and the lawns. But on the bright side, it had a comfortable bed with a mosquito net.

MV Road, as it is marked on the map, was actually non-existent. In 1974, the Public Works Department (PWD) set out to build the road but twenty-four years later, they had reached only as far as Deban, a distance of ten km (that’s forty metres a year!). In 1998 the Forest Department decided that enough progress had been made and threw the PWD out. The only route to Vijoynagar is the Lisu path which wove along the southern bank of the Noa-Dehing River. The Lisu are forest people whose settlements, Gandhigram and Vijoynagar, on the other side of Namdapha, hugged the border with Myanmar. Their knowledge of the flora and fauna of this forest is unparalleled. During the open season they worked as porters and forest guides but with the rains all the Lisu, down to the last soul, had migrated back home to emerge only in October.

Although we were so far east, Arunachal Pradesh still patriotically followed Indian Standard Time. This meant that the sun rose at 4 am. At 7.30 am (about 10 am daylight time, long after the dawn chorus of birds and gibbons had ended) we headed for Hawa Camp, a spot five km further up the MV Road.

Lush, waist high vegetation lined the path. With shirts tucked into our pants and leech socks protecting our legs, we were all right. Leech socks look like Christmas stockings, made of woven cotton or canvas that cover the leg below the knee. They are worn over regular socks and inside the shoes. While the fashion-conscious would shudder at its crude cut, it effectively protected your legs from becoming a bloody mess at the end of a forest walk. The leech was to become the undeniable mascot of the trip. Pronounced "leese" by the Assamese, Wancho and Singpho people alike, we halted every ten yards, for de-leeching. It was a futile exercise – the longer you stood still removing leeches, the more the leeches got on.


It was too late in the day to see any animal and I contented myself with horticultural delights. Rocky outcrops covered with ferns, philodendrons dripping from tree trunks, the translucent green of the birds’ nest fern, a spectacularly large black orchid flower, the pink flowers of Impatiens (balsam) and colourful begonias lined the path. It was difficult to take one’s eyes off the slippery path to see the beauty of the forest above. Recent rains had churned the earth into a chocolate sauce consistency that threatened everyone’s ability to remain on two feet. In places the path wound around the sheerest edge of the slope and losing one’s step here could mean a rapid and bone-jarring descent of a km or two. Japang Pansa, a Wancho tribal, who was our guide warned that this was no place to lose one’s balance and fracture bones as it would take two days just to reach anyone at the bottom of the slope. Two captive elephants had tumbled down the slope and died, he said. Ouch!

The sheer size and spread of this forest made my head light; most of the rainforests I knew in South India were finite little oases hemmed in on all sides. Namdapha is one of the two largest protected rainforests in India at 2000 sq km, a whopper compared to that other iconic rainforest of the South, Silent Valley which measures only about 90 sq. km. Namdapha is also contiguous with Hukaung Valley Wildlife Sanctuary (21,000 sq.km) in Myanmar, the world’s largest tiger reserve making it one of the most extensive rainforests in all of Asia. When we arrived sweaty and breathless at the wayside clearing that is Hawa Camp, I gulped in the rare view of the Noa-Dehing River below and the forested mountain slopes beyond. Japang said aloud what was on my mind, “This is just one day of our lives but for the Lisu, this is their entire life.”

How do the Lisu survive in this remote corner of India, out of reach of medical help? Japang answered matter-of-factly, “If anyone is seriously ill, they just die. Every July-August a lot of them die of malaria.” In clear weather, it would take a healthy Lisu five days to walk from his village, across Namdapha to Miao. To survive in Gandhigram or Vijoynagar means complete reliance on one’s knowledge of medicinal herbs and edible plants with no outside support of any kind. Do the Lisu wear leech socks, I wonder? Japang says, “No, they just brave it; their skin is too thick for leeches to get through.”

On the way down, a raucous, piping birdcall echoed through the forest. Rufous woodpecker. Japang filled me in on the peculiar breeding habits of this bird. It lays its eggs in an ant nest about 2 to 3 m off the ground. Don’t the ants eat the baby birds when they hatch? He said the village elders told him that the chicks smelt like ants so they were left alone.

Although Japang had served in Namdapha for many years and patrolled its paths all year round, he had never seen a tiger here. There was no rancour in his voice when he said that visiting tourists had seen one in November. Such is the way of the forest.

After that ten km trek and nary a hide of any animal, the sight of a troop of Hoolock Gibbons feasting above the Deban guesthouse was welcome. As I watched a hairy arm shoot out of the foliage to grab handfuls of fruit, I noticed something moving around next to it. It was a baby gibbon – a recent addition to the 2500 left in the world – fuzzy and blond. It seemed an odd time to have babies but we were to see more of them throughout the trip. Papa gibbon was disconcerted by our focused interest on his baby although we were 75 metres below. Even at that distance you cannot mistake who the father was; he was black while she was blond.

Japang, pointing to the northern horizon where the clouds obscured the sky, said that on a clear day one could see Daphabum, the snow-capped mountain that presided over Namdapha. No outsider has ever gone there, Japang said. An army expedition ended in failure a couple of years ago and the only people who have been there were the Lisu. They had described Daphabum as a place littered with plane wrecks from the Indo-China War of the early 60s. They scavenged the scraps, and melted them to make woks and other kitchen utensils. A Chinese pilot crash-landed his plane there and the intact cockpit is still used by the Lisu to sleep in when they visit the mountain. I was incredulous. Japang insisted that it could be true, as he had recovered pieces of aircraft from the Namdapha River which originates in Daphabum.

It rained all through the night and into the morning. My plan of going down to Gibbons Land with Japang had to be canceled. I thought if we put on our raincoats we could go but Japang held me back, “The path would have become a river. Wait till it stops.” Instead we watched the Noa Dehing rapidly turn into a roaring muddy river, carrying heavy tree trunks like matchsticks. Japang mentioned that the M’pen River, on the way home, may also be running full with this rain and we might have to camp there for a couple of days until it subsided. As we sat out of the rain watching the river fill up, Japang recalled an incident when he had been on patrol with a party of eleven Forest staff in the Buffer Zone. They had been marooned by a flash flood. They had run out of food quickly and the Chakma fed them for three days until their supplies ended too. “So those of us who knew about such things went into the forest for edible leaves; others went to the river to catch fish. There were so many fish in the river then. We could stand in the water and wait for a large fish to swim by and we’d hit it with a machete or club. We cooked the fish and the forest leaves together and lived on that for a few days. Despite that we became weak and could barely move. In the meantime our families were very worried. They were finally able to get the boatman to rescue us after 12 days.” If the M’pen was flooded we would be stuck in a similar position and I had no illusions about how the team would fare.

Leading this team was a novel experience for me. Until then I had always been part of a team led by an experienced and hard taskmaster – wake up before dawn, instant noodles the only sustenance, and jungle walks late into the night. I had felt inadequate, a novice naturalist and on this trip I felt like a one-eyed jungli leading the blind through the rainforest. I had to make concessions for the rookies on the team who had never been in a forest before. A couple still suffered from aches and pains of the trek to Deban. Our walks would have to be limited to no more than 10 km a day.

Optimistically I made plans to leave for Gibbons Land with Japang at 5.30 the next day. The others would follow after breakfast. The day was bright and clear with the haunting ululating songs of Hoolock gibbons. All worries of swollen rivers receded from my mind. As we walked in blessed silence watching Great Indian Hornbills at fruiting fig trees, I nearly jumped when a loud “aar aar aar” came out of the bushes to my left. A moment later a small yellow and brown weasel-like animal shot up the embankment. Yellow-throated marten. Even before we could react, a young marten ran across the path and dived into the bushes. Japang moved forward to investigate when another marten crying similarly in alarm scrambled up the embankment. They had been feeding on a flying squirrel – just the head, skin and intestines remained. We left them to it and continued on. Japang surmised that the squirrel might have come down to the ground where it may have been killed by the martens. Why would it come down? Because it couldn’t fly, its skin may have become heavy with the rain. Or the martens killed the squirrel up in the trees and it fell down and they followed it. We’ll never know.

Numerous pugmarks of various small mammals were imprinted into the fudge-like mud; if we were better jungle watchers, these could tell us many a tale. But neither Japang nor I were that well-versed and we had to let the jungle hang on to its mysteries until the next time when I promised myself I’d go out with a Lisu. While Japang was invaluable, there was a lot he didn’t know. Without his aid, I’d probably never have seen the yellow-bellied leaf bird, long tailed minivet, dollar bird, great barbet or the racket-tailed drongo. Namdapha is a bird watchers hotspot where names such as purple cochua, green cochua, beautiful nuthatch and Blandford’s rosefinch come alive. The Park encompasses a range of altitudes - all the way from the floodplains of the lowlands to the snows of Daphabum. Such diversity of habitat spawns unique plants and animals, many not even known to science. The vast expanse of forests on the southern and northern banks of Noa-Dehing haven't been explored at all.

While waiting for others to show up at the Forest Department outpost in Gibbons Land, a flock of Brown Hornbills flew from tree to tree. Japang explained that these birds were unique in the hornbill world. Most female hornbills incarcerate themselves in a tree hole for the entire time it takes to incubate eggs and raise their babies. The male hornbill is the sole provider of the family during the female’s confinement. Should the male get killed, it’s curtains for the female and babies. Brown Hornbills, however, live in family groups and therefore the female hornbill has not only her mate but also her sons to provide for her.

Moti Jheel is a pond atop a hill, the only other "sight" to see along the MV Road. Although we had done ten km already, the fair weather wasn't going to last long. The team agreed to do the additional ten km that afternoon. Before we set out, the team bargained with the cook for the last spoonfuls of salt with which to thwart the leeches. The path to Moti Jheel was quite different from MV Road that we had been on so far. The canopy was entirely closed with minor breaks over streams. The forest was dark, leeches thick, and the climb steep. Birds’ nest ferns graced tree branches and there was hardly any undergrowth at all. It seemed like no one had been here in years, but Japang insisted he had come up in March. A wild pig guarding her family grunted in warning. We stood stock still until the pigs moved off into the forest and Japang gave the all clear. About an hour and some later, we unexpectedly arrived at a primeval pond coated with green algae. None of us would have been surprised if a Loch Ness-like monster or a hand holding Excalibur emerged out of the water. This was Moti Jheel. Mythology aside, it was hard to imagine what life forms lived in this pool. Japang looked at the water thoughtfully and wondered aloud if a huge snake could live in there. In reality, it was probably home to nothing more than a few turtles, frogs and assorted insects but then, there could well be a few surprises in store if explored further. The walk downward was slippery and our tired feet slipped and slid with leeches hanging on for dear life.

We spread out along the road intent on getting rid of leeches from our footwear. It was a black day for leeches – they were tortured with salt, sugar, tobacco and DEET. Within minutes those gorgeous green and brown leeches had turned into flaccid, colourless, lifeless bodies lying along the road. That night, one of the leech-paranoid members laid a white trail of salt around his sleeping bag like medieval Europeans hung garlands of garlic to ward off vampires.

It began to rain seriously that night. By morning the campsite was flooded. Japang sounded dire warnings about M’pen in spate. Tawang, a Wancho porter, was dispatched at 6 am. If he didn’t return by 10, he had crossed M’pen and we were to follow. At the appointed hour, already driven stir crazy, I picked up my knapsack and began heading out. Not even ten yards down the road, I met Tawang. Bad news. It looked like we may have to camp here one more night at least. I was worried. If we were marooned here we would not last very long – we were not forest-hardened enough to survive on forest leaves and roots. So far the rainforest had granted me more than I had dared to hope. I fervently wished our luck would hold a bit longer. An hour later the rain abated and we decided to give it a shot. The river had subsided since that morning but it was a lot fuller than the last time we had crossed it. Big smooth boulders underwater were a hazard and many a time we nearly fell into the swift current. Shikari, the Chakma porter, had the big tin trunk with crockery. This was going to be a challenge. But Shikari just tied a rope to the handle of the trunk and floated it across the river looking for all the world like a man walking a big rectangular dog on a leash.

Just after everyone had crossed without mishap, we heard a distant rumbling. I looked questioningly, pat came the answer “the mountain is falling” – a landslide. Soon the clouds closed in over Namdapha and the heavens opened up as we sped towards Dibrugarh blasting Assamese folk songs in our wake. As I gazed at the white clouds receding in the distance I knew I'd be back to explore that last great Indian Unknown.

The gharial on the brink

Published in 'The Hindu' 8th October 2006

Wispy tendrils of mist rose delicately from the water surface, tinged gold by the dawn. Your breath hangs as little clouds of vapour as you gaze upon the Girwa River on a cold winter morning. A trio of hollow clapping sounds from the other side of the river, half a kilometer away tells you that an adult male gharial is advertising his presence. It is the height of the breeding season. The place seems trapped in a time in early history when man was still clad in animal skins. It is only as the sun rose higher and burns the mist off the water that the world comes into focus with appalling clarity. The 5 km stretch of the Girwa River in Katerniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary is one of the only three wild breeding sites left in the world for the most unique of all the crocodiles. This gentle crocodile has become the most endangered large animal in India, twenty times more so than the tiger.

For the thirty years of Project Crocodile, initiated and supported by a joint Government of India/Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/UNDP programme, the National Chambal Sanctuary was the focus of intense gharial conservation efforts. The only Protected Area spread over three states – Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh – the Chambal has over 100 km of river that can be called suitable gharial habitat. So it was natural for conservation attention to be centred here.

Bandits as protectors

Traditionally, the Chambal has been protected by its reputation. The local residents lived under the thumb of the dacoits, and for a long time Chambal’s infamous icon was Phoolan Devi. The ravines afforded effective protection to bandits who successfully evaded any attempt to capture them. Gharial protection could then afford to be minimal only; the dacoits made sure no outsiders trespassed. Dedicated crocodile researchers from the State Forest Departments collected wild nests to be incubated at Kukkrail in UP and at Morena, MP. The resulting hatchlings were reared for three years, protected from predators under a programme hatched by FAO consultant Bob Bustard. When they reached a metre in length, they were released in the wild.

Over 5000 such juveniles were introduced into the Protected Areas of Chambal, Girwa, Son, Ken and Mahanadi rivers. Surveys to monitor how the gharial were faring had to be conducted only during the day. On the Chambal river at least, nights belonged to the bandits, but not for long.

The mafia takes over

When the notorious Chambal bandits started to give themselves up in the 1990s, the inadvertent protection that the National Chambal Sanctuary enjoyed began to unravel. The state police machinery didn’t sweep into the void created by the brigands and soon the Chambal became the hangout of the other anti-social element, the mafia. While the bandits of the earlier era were happy to sponge off the rich landlords and traders, the mafia exploited the natural resources. While one group excavated sand to feed the building boom in cities like Delhi and Agra, another poached freshwater turtles. While the sand-miners destroy basking and nesting sites, the turtlers kill gharial which get accidentally snagged by the thousands of vicious hooks. Fishing is banned in the National Chambal Sanctuary but there is no enforcement. Fishermen chop the snouts or kill gharials deliberately when they became helplessly entangled in their nets. Besides, fishing depletes the prey of the gharial, depressing the habitat’s ability to support larger numbers of the animal.

During the dry summer months, the river runs shallow as water is pumped to irrigate cucumbers and other crops. Barrages, dams, electricity pylons and other developments are driving the final nails in the river’s coffin. The Forest Department, charged with protecting the wildlife and resources of the Protected Area has no protection itself from the armed locals. Any outsider is liable to be kidnapped and held for ransom. Under these circumstances patrolling and protection has naturally been at a bare minimum. The Chambal is going down the drain and the future of gharials, turtles, river dolphins, otters and water birds looks bleak.

The Gharial Multi-Task Force

The first alarm bells rang in 2004, when researchers Dr. R.K. Sharma and Dhruva Basu compiled survey findings of the last ten years which showed a drastic decline in gharial numbers. Surveys conducted in 2006 reveal a worsening decline. At the recent meeting of the Crocodile Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union, in France, the Gharial Multi-Task Force was set up with a Core Group consisting of all the main gharial researchers in India and Nepal, the only two countries where wild gharial survive. One of the first tasks of the Task Force was to assess the population trend of the gharial. Has it declined sharply enough to justify uplisting in the Red Data Book from Endangered to a Critically Endangered species?

Although the revision hasn’t been effected yet, the initial assessment is startling. The area once occupied by the gharial has shrunk by over 98%, and the numbers have plummeted by 97% in the last sixty years. In the 1940s between 5,000 and 10,000 gharials were found from the Indus river system in Pakistan to the Irrawady in Myanmar, covering 20,000 sq. km. Today about 200 adult animals occupy less than 250 sq. km. When Project Crocodile came into effect, there were an estimated 200 gharials of all sizes left in the world. Thirty years and a massive crocodile conservation exercise later, the gharial numbers are creeping down to their lowest low in the early 1970s. But now the pressures on gharial habitat have multiplied and quality of what remains is deteriorating. The question is can we achieve now what we failed to do then?

If gharials die, so do we

The gharial requires deep, free-flowing rivers unfettered by dams and barrages. The water has to be clean and clear for its fishy prey to breed. Gharial must have undisturbed sand banks to bask and nest. We are also talking here about an intact, protected river habitat, on which our own survival hinges. It’s not for nothing that the wise ancients depicted Ma Ganga astride the gharial.

Six years ago, the world saw through Project Tiger’s hollow claims of success. Today, India’s second largest species conservation programme, Project Crocodile, is in danger of being similarly discredited. What went wrong? The quick answer is that the ‘simple’ part of the job was admirably well done: 12,000 gharial eggs collected, incubated and hatched, over 5000 juveniles released into Protected Areas and sporadic monitoring done. But the ‘hard’ part was ignored: there was little or no effort to get the river people on the side of the gharial and the conservation movement. As a result today, there are 2 gharial left out of over 700 released in the Mahanadi river in Orissa! In the Girwa about 60 of all sizes survive while over 900 were released. The Chambal has fared marginally better with about 78 adults out of the over 3500 gharial released.

Despite years of conservation education we are today facing the worst environmental crisis in history. The only way to reverse this trend is for every citizen to put conservation at the top of the priority list. We need a rejuvenation of political will that will encourage and support conservation efforts of the State Forest Departments and NGOs. And to save the gharial what we need now is a holistic approach to river conservation. The ban on fishing and turtle poaching has to be enforced while at the same time working with local communities for alternate livelihood options. The inter-linking of rivers is predictably the worst thing that could happen to all our riparian wildlife and has to be appraised by hydrologists and biologists before we flush away all our river resources. The gharial, turtles and dolphins are not the only ones dependent on healthy rivers; our own survival depends on it.