Tag: Elephants

Govt Notifies Captive Elephant Transfer Rules

The transfer, according to the new rules, would be permitted if the donor is no longer capable of taking care of the captive elephant.

New Delhi: The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has notified new rules for the transfer of captive elephants.

The Times of India has reported that for initiating transfer of elephants from one state to another, the chief wildlife warden (CWW) of the state, where the elephant is being transferred, has to be notified. S/he, would, in turn, forward the application to the CWW of the state from where the animal is being transferred.

The state’s CWW, which would accept the elephant, has to send the application and documents concerned to an official not below the rank of deputy conservator of forests (DCF) within seven days. The DCF would conduct the enquiry in 15 days and submit the report to the CWW.

The CWW of the recipient state would share the report with his counterpart in the donor state. The donor state CWW would be taking a final decision on transfer to be accepted or rejected.

Hindustan Times has reported that the transfer, according to the new rules, would be permitted if the donor is no longer capable of taking care of the captive elephant. For a transfer to be allowed, the genetic profile of the elephant has to be entered into an MoEFCC application, electronically.

Three States to Work Together to Address the Elephant in the Room

In the ongoing human-elephant interaction crisis in South India, the role of translocation and its impact needs attention.

Bengaluru: “He has never harmed anyone.” That’s a sentiment shared by many in Karnataka’s Hassan district, when they talk about ‘Thanneer Komban’, a wild elephant that frequently crossed their paths. On February 3, however, Thanneer died after a re-capture operation by the Kerala Forest Department in Wayanad’s Mananthavady town.

A week later, another elephant was in the news, again near Mananthavady. In the interactions that resulted between people and the Belur Makhna (makhnas are tuskless male elephants), a local died on February 10.

“Belur Makhna killed a man in Kerala,” most headlines screamed the next day. Over 225 forest staff across both states were tracking this male for two weeks. Makhna is back in Karnataka, unaware of his fate: a walk into Wayanad, and he is at the mercy of a sharpshooter. On the Karnataka side of the border, he could be captured again.

Both these elephants have one thing in common: they are both radio-collared translocated males from Karnataka, captured in Hassan and released in Bandipur. In the week following the incidents, the Kerala High Court called upon the governments of Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu to coordinate efforts in addressing the escalating problem of human-wildlife interactions, resulting in the formation of an inter-state committee.

Where to release?

There has been opposition from other states against Karnataka releasing its “problem” elephants at the border areas. In this ongoing narrative, now highly political – some political parties, including the union minister, Bhupender Yadav – have voiced against the Karnataka government’s decision to pay 15 lakhs in compensation to the deceased’s family in Wayanad. However, it is essential to note here that this was not a regular elephant but a radio-collared, translocated one. Also, the Kerala forest department points towards the Karnataka forest department’s delay in relaying information on the elephant movements – data that could have helped avoid human death. Unfortunately, one of the key causes of this escalating issue, the adoption and impact of the translocation of elephants as a mitigation measure, is still not being addressed. Many scientists state translocation is a political phenomenon rather than an ecological one. “For several species, translocation is counter-productive, either for people or for the species,” confirms Sayan Banerjee, a doctoral scholar looking at human-elephant interactions in Assam.

One of the highly-cited studies on the viability of translocating Asian elephants as a mitigation measure proves how it “translocates” the problem elsewhere. In Karnataka, one of the very few states in India using this method extensively, that is literally what is unfolding on the ground.

The elephant named “Thaneer Komban” which died after being re-captured from the wild in Wayanad district, Kerala. Photo: Vinod Krishnan

In February, Thanneer – an elephant translocated from Hassan to Bandipur Tiger Reserve in January this year after locals (as per some reports) raised concerns of the animal’s crop-raiding behavior – ventured into neighboring Wayanad district in Kerala within a few weeks of his release. After protests by locals, the Kerala forest department decided to recapture the elephant. The operation lasted for over 17 hours. Thanneer died in an elephant camp in Bandipur, where he was brought after the capture. Some claim the death resulted from shock and trauma; others speak of injuries.

Within a week, yet another radio-collared translocated elephant – the Belur Makhna – relocated from Hassan to Bandipur, also moved into Kerala. In the interactions that followed, a man died. For over ten days, close to 200 staff of the Kerala forest department and an 18-22-member team from Karnataka were looking for the Belur Makhna to recapture him. The Kerala forest department also roped in sharpshooter Nawab Shafath Ali Khan for the operation. As of February 24, Belur Makhna is said to have reentered Karnataka. It’s a wait-and-watch situation.

This is not the first time the negative impacts of translocating elephants have transpired as a “border issue”. Arikomban from Kerala, for example, in a day-long effort, was captured by over 150 forest staff and four kumkis (captive elephants that are trained to capture wild ones). The department moved him to Periyar Tiger Reserve and recaptured again after he moved into Tamil Nadu. Similarly, elephant PM2 from Tamil Nadu, post-translocation, was recaptured after it was found in Kerala.

Studies globally have shown how a scientifically carried out translocation – which is unobtrusive to a large extent – still leads to elevated physiological stress response for up to 30 days after the release of the animal. Translocation may also generate various stressors at any stage of their execution, which have additive or cumulative effects on animals. So, it’s not surprising that these translocated animals are already stressed. Also, as most studies have proved over the years, most translocated elephants move widely to return to their home range or try to establish home ranges in new areas. Interactions have always cropped up in these areas, as seen in the above-mentioned cases.

Is translocation worth the effort?

During most of these translocation efforts, authorities declare curfews and close down schools and colleges for a day or two. For many local communities in the areas of capture and release, the stress is unbounded.

When one of the elephants from Hassan was radio-collared and translocated to Bandipur, a scientist who was part of the operation, on anonymity, explained: “Most of these translocated elephants make attempts to go back to their home range. We have also found interactions in areas of release. Locals now believe most of the radio-collared elephants to be those translocated from other areas. Hence, they protest.”

An IUCN report on guidelines for the translocation of African elephants states that communities around the release site should be consulted and kept informed for the long-term security of the translocated elephant. None of the forest departments in South India seek permission from locals in the release area before translocation. In Tamil Nadu last year, an elephant called Makhna was translocated for the second time and spent an agonising 24 hours on a truck traveling 200 km: because locals in two separate areas protested against Makhna’s release near their villages.

In almost all cases of translocation of elephants in these states, the cost of operation runs high.

“Captures are expensive. The amount for tranquillisation and the transport of kumkis alone costs lakhs,” a forest official from Kodagu stated.

For example, Karnataka spends Rs 22 lakh to radio-collar an elephant. According to some news reports, Kerala spent Rs 15.85 lakh to translocate Arikomban and Rs 17.32 lakh in capturing and relocating PT7 to an elephant camp. Tamil Nadu, when rehoming some of the captured elephants, at times, spends Rs 10 lakh on a single kraal (an enclosure made to constrict and tame a wild elephant into submission). Authorities often spend more than Rs 2-3 lakh on cage construction to transport the animal. Then comes the cost of transporting kumkis – sometimes, up to eight are used, like in Karnataka’s Operation Jumbo which aims to capture elephants and fix radio collars in Hassan district. Costs covering transport, earthmovers (numbers exceeding 100 and above at times), staff, their food and stay for all the days spent searching and capturing an elephant – are additional. The cost of the upkeep of elephants captured for captivity is over 11 lakhs for one individual for a year, according to an RTI report. And all these go into a single capture and translocation operation.

No science behind identification

While discussing plans for Operation Jumbo, a senior forest department official said in a press note, “We would start our operations in Belur taluk where more than 50 wild elephants had come. These wild jumbos, which came around two months ago into the Taluk area, have to be driven away to the elephant habitat.”

This knee-jerk reaction to interactions and an unscientific method of identifying elephants for translocation has disrupted the lives of several elephants not responsible for interactions. At the same time, it has not addressed conflicts with humans on the ground. Locals have also expressed anger at such mishaps in the past. As in the case of elephant Bhaira in Karnataka’s Chikkamagaluru, whose capture led to further protests by locals claiming the forest department picked the wrong elephant.

In other cases, people have mourned such unscientific decisions, like in the recent case with elephant Thanneer, where several expressed their grievances on social media. Vinod Krishnan, who has worked in Hassan for a decade handling human-elephant interactions and has observed Thaneer since 2018, says: “Thaneer would simply walk away at the sight of any human being around. He kept to himself and did not harm anyone.”

In a public post, Krishnan recounted Thaneer’s story as an individual, as well as its behavior and life: who, in public memory, had passed on, being remembered as just another featureless “rogue” elephant.

In 2017, I interacted with locals near Karnataka’s Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary after elephants raided over 55 farms in a single day. They demanded barricades, the timely presence of the forest department during the crisis, and compensation. No one spoke of capture. However, that has changed now. The use of translocation as mitigation has doubled since 2014 after authorities captured/ translocated 22 wild elephants from Hassan based on the recommendations of scientists and members of the then Karnataka Elephant Task Force. Unfortunately, this also triggered dependence and a pattern in locals, who have since been requesting capture as the only solution to interactions across Karnataka today.

Despite being evidenced as a mitigation measure, often leading to more interactions, this solution has been used in reckless frequency in the past two years, which is expensive, highly stress-inducing and risky to humans and elephants but has yielded (mostly) a cycle of misfortunes: conflict- capture – translocation-conflict – conflict-recapture. Repeat.

Interestingly, resorting to intrusive solutions like translocation is rarely adopted by states that witness more interactions than Karnataka, such as Assam and West Bengal. Banerjee says that investing in short term, band-aid, tech-only solutions (such as radio collaring and translocations) for long-persisting issues like human-wildlife interactions doesn’t always help. Addressing the local driving factors – political, social, and cultural – is essential.

“One needs to go a bit deeper to understand the roots through which these narratives were set and put into motion. We are solution-centric, trying to find new techs to solve an apparent unsolvable problem. The assumption of wildlife conflict management is that we cannot treat socio-political causes and find newer solutions (or tech) to pacify the situation. Both elephants and people who live around these elephants are the losers.”

Gana Kedlaya is an environment reporter based in Bengaluru.

Heartwarming Photo of Rescued Baby Elephant Napping With Mother Goes Viral

The four-five month old elephant was rescued by foresters after it was spotted searching for its mother in Tamil Nadu’s Anamalai Tiger Reserve.

New Delhi: A heartwarming photo of a baby elephant sleeping next to its mother days after it was rescued by forest personnel is going viral on the internet.

Supriya Sahu, who is additional chief secretary to the Tamil Nadu government’s environment department, shared the photo on social media platform X on Tuesday (January 2) evening.

The Anamalai Tiger Reserve is located in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore and Pollachi districts.

Sahu said on Saturday (December 30) that the baby elephant was rescued by foresters after it was spotted searching for its mother.

“With the help of drones [and] experienced forest watchers, the herd was located and the tiny calf was safely reunited,” she said on X.

The baby elephant is around four or five months old, news agency ANI cited an Anamalai Tiger Reserve official as saying.

It was washed and then covered by mud to remove human imprints, following which it was released close to the herd, the official added.

An elephant census held in 2017 said that there were 29,964 elephants in India, making up almost 60% of the world’s population of Asiatic elephants.

Under India’s wildlife protection law, elephants are Schedule 1 animals, which means they are accorded high levels of legal protection.

SC Expands Ambit of Pan-India High Powered Committee to Curb Capturing of Wild Elephants

The top court empowered the HPC to recommend the transfer of ownership of captive animals or of seized wild animals to any willing rescue centre or zoo.

New Delhi: A Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice P.S. Narasimha expanded on May 12 the remit of a High-Powered Committee (HPC) constituted for the purpose of stopping the capture of wild elephants.

The bench issued the direction while disposing of an interlocutory application (IA) in Prerna Singh Bindra & Ors vs Union of India, a writ petition filed in 2021.

It agreed to further expand the remit of the HPC to cover the following aspects:

(i) Duration of ownership certificates in relation to elephants; 

(ii) Enquiring into the capacity of the facility where the elephants are proposed to be transferred

(iii) Monitoring of the health and age of the elephants; 

(iv) Monitoring the facilities for transportation; and 

(v) The need to shift elephants.

The HPC consists of the Director General of Forests (Union of India); Head of Project, Elephant Division at the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of India (MoEFCC); Member Secretary (Central Zoo Authority of India); Chief Wildlife Warden (State of Tripura) for Elephants; and Chief Wildlife Warden (Gujarat). It was conferred pan-India status by another bench of the Supreme Court on March 3 in Muruly M.S. vs State of Karnataka.

The committee was created by the Tripura high court last year in response to a public interest litigation seeking a direction restraining the transfer and transportation of captive-bred elephants from Northeast India, and in particular from Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh, to the elephant camp of a charitable trust ostensibly engaged in the rescue and rehabilitation of wildlife.

The high court declined to grant relief to the petitioner, but directed the HPC constituted by it to oversee the transfer of the elephants from the northeastern part of the country to the camp in Gujarat. 

It appointed former Supreme Court Justice Deepak Verma as HPC’s chairman. 

The high court had directed the Project Elephant Division of the MoEFCC to issue necessary directions to all Chief Wildlife Wardens to conduct a census of all elephants in the captivity of private persons or Government departments, and create an inventory of the same with their name, ownership certificate details, microchip number and photograph. 

It had also directed the issue of provisional certificates of ownership or confiscation of the elephant after necessary inspection and verification of its history and source. 

These directions included DNA sequencing for new offspring to be conducted so as to identify and prevent the capture of young elephants from the wild.

The Supreme Court, in Muruly M.S., conferred a pan-India status to the HPC to serve the “real public interest”, to advance the cause of welfare, care and rehabilitation of wild animals, and to curb the “filing of frivolous PILs before different High courts by busy bees”.   

This case involved a different Supreme Court bench directing all State and Central authorities to report the seizure of wild animals and abandonment of captive wild animals to the HPC. 

The top court empowered the HPC to recommend the transfer of ownership of captive animals or of seized wild animals to any willing rescue centre or zoo.

The committee was also empowered to investigate, with the help of all authorities in India, any pending or future complaints concerning the transfer, import, procurement or welfare of wild animals by any rehabilitation centre.

From Kerala to Tamil Nadu, a Good Week for Elephants

Both states recently saw moves aiming to decrease the use of elephants in temples, festivals and religious rituals due to the cruelty that they are subjected to during the process.

Kochi: It’s raining good news for captive elephants this week.

In a first, a robotic elephant took the place of a captive wild elephant to conduct rituals at a temple in Kerala on February 26. On March 1, the Tamil Nadu high court ruled that temples or private entities should not acquire more elephants in the state.

Both moves are an effort to cut down on the use of captive Asian elephants in temples and festivals, so as to eliminate the cruelty that the animals are subjected to during the process.

A god in chains

Elephants are revered as gods in Hinduism and are therefore a common sight in festivals and processions in many states. But nowhere is it possibly as routine a fixture in temples and festivals, including processions, as it is in the state of Kerala. As per a 2019 survey, there were around 2,450 captive elephants in the country. At 905, Assam then had the highest number of captive elephants, followed by Kerala (518).

The elephants are usually captured from the wild and trained to obey commands. Animal rights activists have long pointed out that the animals undergo cruel treatment at multiple stages of capture and ownership, and their health is often ignored to ensure that they are paraded in as many festivals as possible to rake in profits for their owners.

Captive elephant deaths are a concern. One NGO that works on elephant welfare alleged that 23 captive elephants died in Kerala over a span of 10 months in 2021 due to torture and neglect. Owners also often illegally transport the animals without valid travel permits. The treatment of elephants (often more than 100 individuals) that are paraded during the Thrissur pooram, an annual festival in Kerala’s Thrissur district, has also come under scrutiny. As per a letter written by the Centre for Research on Animal Rights – an animal rights group based in Goa – to Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan on February 20, for instance, as many as 138 privately-owned pooram elephants died between 2018 and 2023.

Yet, at the same time, elephants are an integral part of Hindu worship, and their presence is considered mandatory in temple rituals in some areas. In an effort to ensure that temple ceremonies can be conducted without causing pain and suffering to the gentle giants, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India came up with a novel idea: they gifted a robotic elephant to conduct rituals and ceremonies that are part of temple worship to the Irinjadappilly Sree Krishna Temple in Kerala’s Thrissur district.

On February 26, temple authorities unveiled ‘Irinjadappilly Raman’, the first robotic elephant, in the temple premises. Award-winning Indian film actor Parvathy Thiruvothu also lent her support to the move by participating in the inaugural ceremony.

The life-sized 11-foot-tall elephant weighs 800 kg, and is crafted out of rubber on an iron frame, as per the Indian Express. The robot, which runs on five motors and cost Rs 5 lakh to create, can spray water from its trunk and thus be part of temple ceremonies.

“Irinjadappilly Raman will help conduct ceremonies at the temple in a safe and cruelty-free manner and thereby support real elephants’ rehabilitation and lives in forests and end the horror of captivity for them,” said PETA’s press release.

“We are extremely happy and grateful to receive this mechanical elephant which will help us to conduct our rituals and festivals in a cruelty-free way, and we hope that other temples will also think about replacing live elephants for rituals,” said Rajkumar Namboothiri, head priest of the temple, in a press release.

The need for change

Some, however, claim that the move is equivalent to “destroying culture”:

However, elephant management in Kerala has been deteriorating over the past two decades, primarily due to extensive commercialisation, said elephant biologist Sreedhar Vijayakrishnan, who studies elephants in the wild and is a member of the IUCN SSC Asian Elephant Specialist Group.

“It has come a long way from what it used to be – a cultural phenomenon – and practices of bidding tuskers for six digits a day or head-lifting competitions are a testimony to that,” Vijayakrishnan told The Wire. “Despite untimely deaths at alarming rates being a concern, there is little or no effort towards understanding where key issues lie and addressing them to ensure elephant welfare.”

Some people also still advocate bringing in more elephants through interstate transfers and departmental auctions, Vijayakrishnan added. “To me, that will worsen existing conditions if there are no efforts made to better [the] current scenario. Instead of bringing more elephants into captivity, or into the state, the robotic elephants do seem like a better idea.”

The February 20 letter written by CRAR requested chief minister Vijayan to “phase out and wholly discontinue the use of chained elephants in the poorams, not just as a symbol of compassion, but as part of the larger project of social reform”. The letter urged the chief minister to issue orders to inquire into the deaths of the 138 pooram elephants, retire old and ailing elephants and rehabilitate them in rescue centres, and promote the use of mechanical or robotic elephants in the festival.

No acquiring more elephants: TN high court

Noting the pitiable condition of captive elephants in temples after visiting an ailing 60+ year old elephant in Virudhunagar district, Justice G.R. Swaminathan of the Tamil Nadu high court on March 1 ordered that temples in the state should not acquire more elephants, reported LiveLaw.

“In many a temple, the elephants are housed in absolutely unacceptable conditions. The concrete flooring, the tin roofing, the lack of freedom and poor supply of food make their lives hell. They are chained 24 hours a day. The drunk mahouts inflict terrible pain and cruelty on them. Separated from their natural family and unable to bear the torture, the poor animals do sometimes turn aggressive and violent,” the order noted, as per LiveLaw.

As per the article, the judge directed the secretary of the Environment and Forest Department to coordinate with the secretary of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowment Department to consider shifting the existing captive elephants to government rehabilitation centres.

In Janaki Lenin’s New Book, ‘Every Creature Has a Story’. What’s Hers?

The book is illustrative of her own journey into the wild: a slow, gradual immersion into tales of discovery of the natural world and its ways.

I had imagined Moby Dick as an angry head-butter, doing a Zidane on the Pequod.

How else did the great sperm whale sink the massive ship? While reading Herman Melville’s classic as a child, I was on the whale’s side: not for a second did I agree with the vicious captain Ahab that the beautiful whale was a tentacle-less Kraken; rather, I felt he was intelligent and protective of his kind, destroying ships out to harpoon them.

Melville’s tale is through human eyes. Perhaps Moby Dick had a whale equivalent of it, entitled ‘Ships That Pissed Me Off’.

Janaki Lenin has vindicated this belief, although the answer like everything else in the wild is not as simple. According to her, scientists are divided about the question of whether sperm whales have a habit of head-butting each other, although one sperm whale was filmed going the Moby Dick way on a research vessel in 2007. Lenin tells this story and others in her new book, Every Creature Has A Story.

The book is illustrative of her own journey into the wild: a slow, gradual immersion into tales of discovery of the natural world and its ways. In previous interviews, she has mentioned a dissatisfaction with her then job as a filmmaker and her epiphanic transition into writing after her partner Romulus Whitaker suggested she pen a column.

The ideas and questions soon came rushing forth, resulting in a column that ran for four years in one of India’s national newspapers. She went on to describe the adventures of living with her husband and other animals (to borrow the title’s turn of phrase) in two books, published in 2012 and 2018.

But her writing, while beginning at home, has spanned wildlife in other countries as well. In a two-year series for The Wire, called ‘Amazing Animals‘, Lenin wrote about the questions that occurred to her every Monday: Why don’t elephants get cancer? How do some wasps enslave their prey? Do African wild dogs have a voting system in their packs? Along the way, she also wrote about the giraffe’s blood pressure problems, palm cockatoo drumming and the toxic private armies of the European nightshade.

Her latest book is a compilation of about 50 of her published essays, and gave her a chance to revisit and refresh her work, and continue the stories of every creature she wrote about. Lenin talked to The Wire about the book, due out on July 27.

Q: Why did you write the ‘Amazing Animals’ series in the first place?

In the later pieces of my previous column ‘My Husband and Other Animals’, which I had just wrapped up, I tackled some big questions such as why does one sex and not the other leave its family, and why did homosexuality evolve. To answer these questions, I spent a lot of time reading a whole range of studies and writing to scientists with my questions.

I enjoyed the process and felt so enriched by it that I wanted to try my hand at science writing. The Wire had recently started. I had read the science editor Mukunth Vasudevan‘s work before in The Hindu and felt he would be encouraging of the idea. And he was.

Every Creature Has a Story
Janaki Lenin
Harper, July 2020

How did you pick and choose the animals you wrote about? What was the thought and judgment behind your process? And then how did you decide which 50 essays went into the book?

Mukunth wanted fresh-off-the-press research. At the end of every day, I scrolled through all the press releases and news alerts while half-asleep and exhausted, and I bookmarked anything that jolted me. On Monday mornings, I looked through these bookmarked items and picked the best one, whatever seemed the most interesting of that crop. The studies I wrote about had been published within a week to a month before the column was to be published. Nothing older than that.

Setting that narrow window determined what I wrote about that week. The column really is a snapshot of the animal behaviour research of that time period and the book is the ‘best of’ of that snapshot.

For the book, I was ruthless in selecting the essays; only the best made the cut. This is not to say the others in the column were not exciting research. The readers for the column and the book are different. I thought, rightly or wrongly, the readers of the column were a bit more science-savvy, while the book would cater to a more general readership. So I chose essays with that in mind and only 50 survived that selection process.

I rewrote many of the essays and updated the research published after the column.

Which are the stories you have enjoyed writing the most, or whose answers surprised you the most?

Every time I cast my mind back to all the stories, I’m struck anew by how so many of them are spectacular. When I started writing these essays, I didn’t know any of these bizarre, wild and amazing behaviours and traits, so every one of them was a surprise.

We all know many cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. How do these cuckoo nestlings know they are cuckoos and not the offspring of their foster parents? It won’t do them any good if they learn the wrong songs or think they are warblers or some other species. The way they avoid imprinting on their foster parents is ingenious.

Then there’s the chameleon that everyone knows changes colour rapidly. But even more remarkably, it can move its eyes independently. How does its brain process two different images? It takes multi-tasking to another level. Even creatures we think we know well surprise us in unexpected ways.

What is the reader that you have in mind when you write? Does she vary from story to story?

My reader is always an imaginary grandmother who is easily bored and impatient, and therefore a hard reader to please.

You’ve shifted from being a filmmaker to a writer. Do you wish that you had got to collect and document your current stories visually? Would that have been a better way to tell these stories, do you think, for readers in India who may not be familiar with some of the creatures you describe?

My break with filmmaking is complete, and I don’t wish to return to that form of storytelling. I remember reading Gerald Durrell’s Catch Me A Colobus without knowing what a colobus was or what it looked like, but that didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the book. I could imagine from the word-pictures he created. If books like that worked in pre-cable TV, pre-internet days, I’m certain such books can be appreciated today.

You’ve written about the hype around charismatic animals like tigers in your previous books. So was there a specific reason that there aren’t many such ‘charismatic’ species in your book? Any reason you chose to write more about the smaller life forms?

Elephants, giraffes, humpback whales and chimpanzees are charismatic large animals that feature in the book. But you are right that the majority are non-glamourous. It wasn’t a conscious choice since all the filters – latest research, the most exciting, the best writing – decided what species and behaviours were included.

Of course, I’m thrilled with the diversity of creatures that feature in the book, some of them truly obscure.

The series ran from 2016 to 2018, coinciding with a time of great socio-political upheaval as well. Interesting time to pitch and then pursue a series about animals’ inner lives. Did the series offer you any solace or hope, or even escape? Or did you think your readers would be able to feel that way?

It was actually a time of enormous anxiety. I was trying to write about science without having a background in it, and I was petrified of getting it wrong. I felt like an imposter whose bluff could be called any minute. That fear didn’t lessen with time as I had hoped. But when I forgot myself, I enjoyed writing about how evolution solved the life-threatening problems some of these animals could have faced. It was – and is – my hope that readers found some respite from the world in the series.

Janaki Lenin. Photo: Rom Whitaker

It wouldn’t be remiss to say that when the series was going on, it was one of the best environmental writing appearing in the English press in the country. Did you learn anything during the series as a journalist and science writer?

Thank you. I learned many things from Mukunth. For instance, he pushed me to speak to other scientists in the field to seek their inputs. After all, they know a lot more about the subject than Janaki-come-lately. I also used to quote them extensively until Mukunth said, not directly to me, but on Twitter as a general comment I think, that was lazy reporting and one should quote scientists only if you can’t say it better.

Those are just a couple of examples. I look back at that time as a period of phenomenal growth as a writer. I could feel my brain rewiring itself with all the science I read week after week.

Can you talk a little bit about why you feel this book is important to be published today, in the middle of a pandemic? What is the impact you’re hoping it might have?

I didn’t write this with the pandemic in mind. It was ready to go before the lockdown hit, and it was stuck for a few months. This is such a strange time when everyone is anxious about the present and future, navigating lockdowns and emerging from them. I’ve been reading a lot in the past few months which has helped me cope with the restrictions on my life.

I’m hoping the book can do something similar for readers: offer an escape hatch into another universe right around us to which we don’t usually pay any attention. I hear some folks are noticing their plants and the little lifeforms living on their balconies for the first time. Perhaps this book will enrich that experience.

Is there anything you think these amazing animals can teach us about getting on with this lousy world of ours?

I often think I’m being an escapist for spending so much of my time thinking about the animal world. Then I flip that thought around and wonder where does an animal having a bad time seek solace. You’ll find the answer in chapter 23.

Are you currently working on your next book? What is it about?

When other writers say talking about their book-in-progress jinxes it, I used to think that was superstitious. But it’s true. Something about talking dissipates the writing energy, and I’ve learnt this costly lesson a couple of times. So as hard as it is, I now keep my mouth shut and focus on the writing. When it’s done, you’ll know!

Renuka Kulkarni is a science writer based in Pune, India, and is currently pursuing a PhD in political ecology.

Death of an Elephant: Wildlife Protection Must go Hand-in-Hand with Crop Protection

Out of necessity, the Indian farmer has been forced to fight and compete with wild animals for resources such as water and land.

Wildlife news has been in the public spotlight recently, centering around the tragic death of a pregnant elephant, which ate a pineapple allegedly stuffed with a firecracker. Subsequently, this elephant stood in the middle of a river and died.

The story is tragic but the events that led up to it are not as obvious as simple animal cruelty. Elephants are some of the most formidable wild animals. It is very difficult to approach elephants in general, and further it is difficult to imagine a wild elephant friendly enough to humans to take food out of their hands. Even if the animal was hungry or desperate it would much rather have ransacked someone’s home or field for food, rather than willingly take it from someone’s hand. In a report that came out in 2019 in The Hindu, it was stated that more than 2300 people were killed by elephants in the last five years.

Clearly this means that people are still approaching these dangerous animals in close proximity willingly or unwillingly. For a small scale farmer, his crop is his entire basis for survival. He depends on its success to keep himself and his family alive for another year. In order to protect their crops they utilize different methods such as snares, traps, electrical fencing, sound machines, rudimentary scarecrows, and apparently as in this case the use of explosive devices. 

The reason why farmers are compelled to use such invasive and cruel methods is the high cost of losing their yield. The systems that have been put in place by the government have failed to protect farmers. Although there have been several government instituted insurance schemes that have been widely available to farmers for many years, in a report published by the Observer Research Foundation in 2019 it was found that schemes such as the Pradhan Mantari Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) were unsuccessful in their implementation. Due to widespread corruption, lack of transparency of insurance policies, political unwillingness of governments to spread awareness and provide insurance, and high premiums for policies, poor farmers are unable to avail insurance schemes. Additionally, the government has through almost laissez-faire incentive programs encouraged the palm oil industry to make massive inroads in the tropical states of Southern India. 

Neha Simlai, writing for The Wire in 2018, pointed out the dangers of “dirty” palm oil, how it is spreading fast and devastating ecosystems and farmers alike. Palm oil has become lucrative for farmers that are looking to make a little more than what they would have from traditional small land holdings. It is in everything, if you pick up a packet of chips, laundry detergent, or the back of your lipstick you will see that palm oil is one of the major ingredients in these products. 

Palm oil has virtually destroyed most of the rainforests across South East Asia. The climate of a rainforest is ideal for the crop but the amount of land required to have a viable yield makes it a threat to wild animals like elephants that also have wide ranging habitats and require a lot of land. Larger corporations essentially franchise out palm oil plantations to farmers. The farmer is indebted to several people, including corporates and surviving on credit is not something any farmer would choose. Thousands of hectares of oil palm plantations have now been planted in Kerala, destroying significant elephant habitat. 

Basically, the farmer out of necessity has to fight and compete with wild animals for resources such as water and land. Growing cash crops instead of subsistence and local crops also means a higher risk and higher stakes for the farmer. The returns on his investments may be higher but because of debt and failure to grow food crops the farmer has no money and cannot feed his family if the crop fails. 

The systems that we have in place are making it impossible for wild animals and the men and women that we depend on to grow our food to survive. The adverse effects of cash crop plantations have been known for many years, farmer suicides are linked to growing failed cash crops and the insurmountable debt incurred by the farmer for the same. The real tragedy that has been highlighted after the death of this particular elephant, is how little is being considered when it comes to wildlife conservation or farmer protection. The issue of human wildlife conflict has complex solutions but simple origins.

The bottom line is that wild lands are being encroached upon and because of habitat loss we have devastated communities of wild animals across India. During the lockdown images of animals, even rare and endangered ones, walking the streets of Indian cities were circulated. They didn’t come into the cities because we went inside our homes, they were just walking along ancient and long forgotten paths of their ancestors in search of food and shelter.

We will continue to read about and witness many more stories of tigers being poisoned, elephants being killed, and other animals threatened as long as we do nothing to protect a sustainable way of living for our often forgotten farmers. 

Who Killed the Elephant in Kerala?

It makes little sense to outrage at the death of an elephant while we keep stealing animals’ homes and resources.

Representative image of an elephant. Photo: Renato Conti.

The social network has been aflutter with outrage and anger over the demise of an elephant in Kerala. These platforms are full of gruesome cartoons and caricatures of the ‘pregnant’ elephant that was ‘brutally murdered’ on May 27, 2020, after allegedly being offered a pineapple stuffed with firecrackers by an errant person. TV news channels and some newspapers across India since followed up with sensational news items of their own. Skimming through all these posts and presentations prompts a few questions about what we’re being told happened, and what really happened.

Notable here is the fact that BJP MP Maneka Gandhi lashed out on her Twitter account against Malappuram, marking it out for its “intense criminal activity”.

Malappuram district is located in Kerala’s north. It consists of 138 villages under seven taluks. It has a population of 4.1 million, of which 70.24% are Muslims (Census 2011). What could a Union minister have meant when she said an entire district is “active”, criminally speaking? Islamophobia has been on the rise in India for quite some time now, more recently being targeted against Muslim people after allegations that the Tablighi Jamat congregation in New Delhi had been singularly responsible for coronavirus case-load spikes around the country. Calling an entire Muslim-majority district “criminally active” only worsens the Islamophobia.

More importantly, let’s examine the other facts of this story. It began with a Facebook post by Mohan Krishnan, a forest officer who narrated the death of the elephant near the Velliyar River. His narrative raises a few concerns, especially the obviously fictionalised bits, such as – in his words – the elephant having a “sixth sense” that she was going to die. People are emotional, but the emotions here seemed to lend credibility to other attempts to sensationalise the event.

Surendrakumar, the principal chief conservator of forests and the chief wildlife warden, told PTI that it was ‘certain’ the elephant had been offered a pineapple embedded with explosives by a man, and she died when they exploded in her mouth.

Physical geography is important here, as the minister may like to know as well. The elephant had wandered off from Silent Valley National Park in the Mannarkkad region of Palakkad district. Palakkad and Malappuram districts share a long border, dotted with villages all along. The elephant was found near the Thiruvizhiamkunnu forest station, which falls under Mannarkkad forest division. This is geographically located in Palakkad district.

So Maneka Gandhi is wrong: the elephant died in Palakkad, not Malappuram. Why misguide the public and promote Islamophobia?

Also read: As Captive Elephants Starve, Lockdown Brings a Problem Practice to the Fore

Second, according to The Hindu, Mannarkkad divisional forest officer K.K. Sunil Kumar said that prima facie there was no evidence this act was intentional. Forest officers also told the newspaper that there was no proof of the elephant having consumed an explosive-filled pineapple.

It’s common and longstanding practice among farmers living on the fringes of forests to embed pineapples with explosives to scare away wild boars that destroy their farms. In fact, the Government of Kerala passed an order in March this year allowing forest officials to gun down wild boars that were damaging the crops, after declaring the animals ‘vermin’. This was in accordance with the law: Section 62 of the Wildlife Protection Act 1972 empowers states to send a list of wild animals to the Centre requesting it to declare them ‘vermin’ for selective slaughter. This list, apart from wild boars, includes rhesus macaques and nilgai. And on May 15, forest officers gunned down a female wild boar in Pathanamthitta district. Many people celebrated this act.

What happened with the elephant is definitely heartbreaking but what followed is more worrying. The elephant was one month pregnant. There was no way this could have been noticed. Instead, a tragic coincidence – but a coincidence nonetheless – has allowed various people to grind their own axes. The people who are responsible for transforming this incident into a disaster of sorts are public servants at various levels: the forest officer who presumed whoever he thought was involved to be “selfish” and merciless; journalists who failed to perform the basic checks; the general public who amplified these claims as the next sensation; politicians who used this incident as a propaganda tool; and so forth.

It is important, at the end of it all, to ask: To whom do our forests belong? The elephant should not have died – but are we, who have condoned the destruction of forests and have appropriated the commons in the name of development, not the ones who are ultimately responsible for this death? Humans occupied more land as cities kept growing, eventually eating into forests in search of space to occupy as well as grow food in. And as we used up more of the local resources, including water, the forests ran dry and forced animals into new areas and new habits.

Just as it makes little sense to install smog towers while we keep polluting the air, it makes little sense to outrage at the death of an elephant while we keep stealing animals’ homes and resources.

Also read: The Ugly Side of Wildlife Tourism

Finally, it is inhuman to attack any animal – whether wild boars or elephants. For example, the areas surrounding the Attapadi forests near the villages of Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu – of which the Silent Valley National Reserve is only an extension – have many buildings, including farm houses, with electric fences to deal with elephants. One of these buildings belongs to a public institution and another to a spiritual organisation. The fundamental issue is the insensitivity of the people who barge into forests, leaving the animals there homeless.

Why do we care so much when an elephant is killed by coincidence and not when wild boars are killed intentionally by the same practice? Why do responsible people who hold public offices act irresponsibly? Let us take a minute to condemn what has happened – but let also take more than a minute to contemplate, discuss and debate what is happening in general.

Vaidyanath Nishant is a lecturer and researcher at the Loyola Academy, Hyderabad.

Note: In an earlier version of this article, Maneka Gandhi was referred to as a minister. While she was a minister in Narendra Modi’s first government (2014-2019), she is currently only a member of parliament.

How the Proposed Highway Through Pakke Tiger Reserve Could Endanger the Forest

The government has ignored a 2019 circular by the transport ministry asking projects that impact wildlife sanctuaries to take detours when possible.

A new proposed highway between Seijosa and Bhalukpong in Arunachal Pradesh will cut through the Pakke Tiger Reserve, an 862-sq.-km tropical forest refuge for hundreds of animal and plant species, some found nowhere else in the world.

The 49-km Seijosa-Balukpong road has been designed as an elevated corridor near the border of Arunachal Pradesh with Assam. If built, it will destroy at least 160 ha of forest land and fracture a continuous jungle corridor between Pakke and the Nameri Tiger reserve in Assam, an important tiger and elephant passage in the region.

The flyover could violate provisions under the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972, the Forest Conservation Act 1980 and various government orders issued by the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

The Seijosa-Balukpong road constitutes phase I of an ambitious East-West Industrial Corridor (EWIC), a 539-km double-lane state highway planned between Pasighat in central Arunachal Pradesh to Bhairabkund in the west (both towns). Phase II is a 160-km road connecting two foothill towns, Manmao and Kanubari, in eastern Arunachal Pradesh.

When complete, the highway will bridge nine neighbouring districts and ensure faster travel for residents, ferry agricultural produce and shuttle machinery and equipment along the state’s southern border. Good roads could encourage companies to set up manufacturing plants and rubber and tea estates.

The Arunachal Pradesh government first proposed EWIC in 1990 and received in-principle funding support from the Centre in 2015 if state authorities could finish preparatory work related to land acquisition, forest and wildlife clearances. However, the Centre offered no money to compensate families whose lands would be acquired or to shift public utilities like electric lines and water pipes.

Nature conservationists and scientists recognise what new tar roads could spell for households that to this point have only been promised its benefits. However, they’re also concerned that a road cutting through the tiger reserve could threaten the sanctuary’s future.

“The estimated length of the new highway through the Pakke Tiger Reserve would be about 49 km,” Nandini Velho, a conservation biologist who has worked in the Pakke Tiger Reserve since 2007, told The Wire. “It seems awfully wasteful to draw up a new road to shorten travel distances by 25 km at the cost of destroying acres of globally, nationally and locally important reserve forests that has evolved a unique conservation model.”

Camera-trap image of a tiger. Photo: Pakke Tiger Reserve

Pakke is a hilly jungle reserve watered by seven rivers. It sustains diverse animal and plant life, including over 2,000 species of plants, 59 species of mammals, 300 species of birds, 380 species of butterflies and hundreds of other reptiles and amphibians. Camera-trap images released every year by the Pakke forest department provide a glimpse of the astonishing wildlife, such as tigers, elephants, clouded leopards, marbled cats, Himalayan black bears and binturongs.

“The forests in Arunachal Pradesh are the furthest point from the equator anywhere on this planet that has tropical forests,” Chintan Sheth, an ecologist and geographer specialising in the eastern Himalaya, said. “It is so unique that even in the southern hemisphere, we don’t have tropical forests so far from the equator. We are at risk of losing thousands of trees that are integral to an incredible ecosystem that support people living around them and have positive impacts for climate and weather feedback.”

Roads are deadly to wildlife. Trees felled to accommodate them destroy whole animal habitats. For example, there are numerous nesting sites of three hornbill species, all classified as ‘vulnerable’ by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, on the proposed elevated corridor road. Eventually, when cars zip on the road, they could run over unsuspecting snakes, frogs, birds and other creatures. Roads open up previously inaccessible routes for loggers, miners and poachers as well; poachers in the region have already targeted tuskers, pangolins and otters, among other animals.

Camera-trap image of a dhole. Photo: Pakke Tiger Reserve

“The permanent staff employed as forest guards is inadequate compared to other tiger reserves,” Velho said. “Due to factors such as tough physical terrain, a porous inter-state boundary and a long history of hunting, Pakke is already a challenging reserve to patrol. A new road would only compromise the forest department’s ability to properly manage the reserve.”

Jorjo Tana, an environmental activist in Seijosa, called the road “a gift to the timber mafia and a freeway for loggers to access the depths of the Pakke tiger reserve.”

Deforestation is already rampant in the eastern Himalayas. In September 2019, following a petition that Tana had brought, the National Green Tribunal had directed Arunachal Pradesh to act against illegal logging in the state. In recent years, forest guards and activists like Tana have also been routinely threatened and attacked by poachers and loggers.

Wreathed hornbills at roost in the Pakke Tiger Reserve. Photo: Aparajita Datta

A 2019 preprint paper that assessed tree cover in a reserve forest adjacent to the Pakke tiger reserve reported the loss of 32 sq. km of forests – a 5% decline of cover – in four years. The authors concluded organised crime was an important cause, among others.

Undisturbed tropical forests harbour more species vulnerable to fragmentation, a study published last December found. Its authors surveyed 4,493 species in 73 forest regions around the world. “A large number of species are unable to deal with fragmentation of habitats,” Velho said. “For instance, in the Amazonian understory, bird home ranges become smaller after a road is built, with the road acting as a new hard boundary that birds will just not cross.”

Roads fragment tiger habitats and cut tigers off from the rest of their species. This affects the genetic diversity of the population and pushes them into territorial conflict.

In September 2017, the chief secretary of Arunachal Pradesh chaired a district commissioners’ meeting about the proposed EWIC’s route. The administrators unanimously endorsed the road alignment plan presented by the Public Works Department (PWD) for the corridor, including sections that passed through the Pakke sanctuary.

Also read: Study Finds Central Reserve Tigers ‘Highly Stressed’ During Tourist Season

However, the government nod likely violated recommendations by a subgroup of a standing committee of the National Board for Wildlife in 2014, which said “new roads shall not be proposed inside national parks and wildlife sanctuaries”. The government also ignored a May 2019 circular by the Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways, which noted that highways cutting through wildlife sanctuaries can have “wide-ranging and complex impact on ecology and wild species”, directing authorities to “spare sanctuaries” and make “possible detours”.

In July 2018, ten months after the district commissioners’ meeting, the PWD state commissioner organised a meeting with ministers, local legislators and government officers to “sensitise the public” about land acquisition and forest clearance. Nektor Engineers and Project Consultants, an engineering firm from Ahmedabad contracted to produce the detailed project report (DPR) on the industrial corridor, was also present.

DPRs form the basis of government decision-making and implementation on infrastructure projects.

Rrivers in the Pakke Tiger Reserve. Photo: Google Earth

On July 9, 2018, six days after the PWD conference, Tana Tapi, the divisional forest officer of the Pakke Wildlife Sanctuary and Tiger Reserve, who had attended the meeting, wrote to the chief engineer of the Arunachal Pradesh government reminding him that the proposed Seijosa-Balukpong section of the corridor fell inside the reserve.

In his response, Tapi quoted legal provisions under the Forest Conservation Act 1980 and the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 that prohibit, for example, non-forestry activities within the limits of the national park and ban surveys without the National Board of Wildlife’s and the Supreme Court’s okays. Tapi recommended the chief engineer consider another “economically viable and ecologically stable” route. Tapi’s objections were formally recorded in DPR-related paperwork about the Seijosa-Balukpong road.

Sometime between July 2018 and February 2020, Nektor submitted the final draft of the DPR to the Arunachal Pradesh government. On February 4, 2020, a high-level committee group of the state government approved the DPR and proposed sending it to the Centre for funding.

In the DPR and related documents, Nektor proposed three possible routes between Seijosa and Bhalukpong. The preferred option is a flyover through the sanctuary expected to cost Rs 2,452 crore. Nektor argued the elevated road would minimise human-animal conflicts, permit 24-hour vehicular traffic and enhance opportunities for tourism.

The consultants provided schematic drawings for a range of possible passages both above and under the corridor for animals’ use. If the Pakke route was unfeasible, the consultants offered to develop two existing state roads that connect Seijosa and Balukpong – both significantly longer – that don’t run through the sanctuary.

Also read: The Hornbill’s View

A February 22 report in the Arunachal Times quoted an unnamed Nektor employee saying the DPR for the Seijosa-Balukpng road had been prepared using satellite imagery. Nektor never applied for permits to survey the tiger reserve – a process that would have involved applications before the State Wildlife Advisory Board, the National Board for Wildlife and the National Tiger Conservation Authority. It is unclear how effective a report prepared without a physical survey can be.

“You can’t build an elevated corridor without thoroughly understanding the fragile ecology and geology of the land,” Sheth, who has previously advised the Border Roads Organisation, a defence ministry department that maintains frontier roads, said. “The Himalayan foothills are composed of sedimentary rocks like mudstone, sandstone and pebbles that have been deposited in a floodplain system over millions of years and tectonically uplifted, making them susceptible to frequent landslides.”

Landslides in the Pakke Tiger Reserve. Photo: Google Earth

Seijosa is being mobilised. On February 15, 2020, the deputy commissioner of Pakke Kesang district, organised a meeting in Itanagar with state legislators and district authorities, village heads, rubber and tea planters, social workers and other community leaders in the district to review the government’s plans to secure forest clearances, including possibly in the Pakke Tiger Reserve. The Wire also confirmed the PWD is yet to apply for environmental clearances, including forest and wildlife clearances, related to the road project.

Experts wish the Arunachal Pradesh government would consult more widely, review environmental laws and guidelines rather than muscle a highway that could endanger the tiger reserve and the lives of those living on its boundaries – especially when other paths are open.

Nikhil Eapen is an independent journalist based in Bangalore.

‘Wild Karnataka’ Brings Wildlife Into the Spotlight, Leaves Conservation Behind

We must question the union of state and capital to depict Karnataka’s wildlife in a certain light because, in the same state, forest officials and mining companies undermined wildlife for years before being exposed in the Bellary mining scam.

It is not for the first time that a documentary film has attempted to showcase Karnataka’s natural heritage in all its variety and vividness, but it is perhaps the sheer scale of its ambition that sets Wild Karnataka apart from previous efforts. With ample budgets, cutting-edge technology, untrammelled access to the remotest corners of the state, unprecedented logistical support from the forest department, and world-class post-production resources, Wild Karnataka is in a league of its own. Further, it is possibly the first Indian wildlife documentary commercially released to cinema screens, with the public paying to watch. So it is entirely reasonable that one must expect a lot from such a film.

On several counts, the film delivers creditably. The cinematic quality of the film’s visual spectacle is breathtaking. It celebrates the commonest and the humblest of nature’s creations, just as joyously as it does the rare and majestic. Rather than in the staple fare of tigers and elephants, the film’s high points are in the fascinating natural history moments it pulls together: the riveting standoff between a cobra and a young jungle cat, the Malabar pied hornbills gorging on fruits from the poisonous strychnine tree, the fast-paced foraging by countless crabs in the intertidal flats, and the family of peeved otters evicting a tiger soaking in their pool.

It also makes an admirable effort to show how it is not just Karnataka’s forests that pulse with wildlife, but also its reefs, mudflats and even its bare, rocky hills of the Deccan.

I was struck however, by the film’s framing of Karnataka’s wild places for us: our gaze is often gently averted from what is actually being shown on screen. The film opens to the claim that Karnataka is “one of the last places where big, wild animals can roam in safety”as a majestic tusker strides the backwaters of a dam that drowned several thousand acres of its forested habitat, possibly within that elephant’s own lifetime. There is shot after shot of vast swathes of forest parted by large dam reservoirs, with otters and terns fishing and herbivores grazing on the dam’s backwaters without even passing mention of what these locations really are. Later in the film, a once-forested hilltop, now a bare, marooned island in the middle of a reservoir, is blandly called a “temporary sandbar”.

Shortly after a tiger cub retreats into a wall of the invasive and destructive weed lantana, we see drone footage of a stream choked with the same plant while the commentary celebrates “the thickness of these jungles”. Later, there is the incredible and dramatic footage of flying draco lizards, mentioned as living in the lower slopes of the Western Ghats, but filmed entirely within an arecanut plantation, of course, without any mention of that fact. In effect, what the film does is to quietly nudge its viewers away from every evidence of human influence that the film itself puts out.

If the dissonance between what is being shown and what is being said left me uneasy, what the film chose to entirely omit, was, to say the least, disturbing. For starters, the film systematically constructs a wilderness that has neither adversity nor challenge. In this utopia, there are no fires, no invasive plants, no tourists, no highways, no dams, no mines, no forest department, no local communities – and no conflict. Just wildlife doing its thing. That this is narrated in the authoritative, voice-of-god delivery by David Attenborough heightens our belief in the existence of this distant paradise. And yet, Karnataka has the largest share of the world’s most densely populated Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot.

To even acknowledge this would mean having to lead the viewer out of a sanitised, make-believe bubble of an unpeopled wild Karnataka, right into the complex and noisy world of the real wild Karnataka: a place rife with standoffs between wildlife, local people, governments and corporates.

Am I imposing my own expectations here on a film whose aim or approach may have been entirely different? Speaking about what drove them to make the film, Amoghavarsha, one of the producers, says in an interview that they were driven by a “huge sense of responsibility” to share with people what they had seen of wild Karnataka. He goes on to say, “In India, wildlife does not live in a separate sort of enclosure; it lives with people. And there is a lot of coexistence. And we wanted to bring that out and make that accessible.” Against that stated motivation – which I totally dig – I think it only fair to call out the film for not having even a glancing mention of people or coexistence.

But does it dilute the ‘blue chip’ value of a wildlife documentary to present a more real picture of wild Karnataka? In response, I am reminded of two recent, world-class documentaries from the same state – one on wild dogs, and another on wolves – by the venerable duo, Krupakar-Senani. Both films sensitively and skilfully weave in the pervasive human elements, and the dilemmas of confronting conservation challenges, without diluting their firm natural history focus.

Certainly, it can still be argued that it is the filmmakers’ prerogative to choose their narrative – in this case, of a pristine, unpeopled wild Karnataka free of problem and challenge. Equally, the viewer may examine what may have prompted such a choice.

Also read: ‘Wild Karnataka’ Is Beautiful to Behold but Embraces an Idea That Deserved to Die

The film  is the outcome of a collaboration between the filmmakers, the forest department, and a bunch of mining and tourism corporations, who funded the venture (through cash and kind). The forest department is responsible for protecting wild species and wild lands, but its record, both within Karnataka and elsewhere, is mixed at best. One may be permitted then, to look askance at the film for creating a very particular public image of Karnataka’s wildlife and habitats as entirely untouched and untarnished.

Further, some of the biggest and most difficult threats to the species and habitats in the film,  come from extractive industry, like mining. In its very nature, the goals of mining are incompatible with the goals of wildlife protection. That the film chooses not to mention such conservation problems is itself quite striking, but that it does so while using funds from mining companies is deeply troubling. It is a little like making a film on the earth’s climate with funding from fossil fuel companies and somehow forgetting to mention climate change. When the producers’ professed aim for the film is to evoke not only wonder and love for the state’s wildlife but also to inspire people to “care for it”, one is forced to wonder whether their omissions, and their editorial stance of erasing conservation are themselves not forms of self-censorship.

The reason it is relevant to question the coming together of state and capital to show Karnataka’s wildlife in a certain light, is that in the same state, officials of the forest department and mining companies colluded and heavily undermined wildlife for years, before their activities were exposed in the Bellary mining scam.

I fear the day is not far when talented but apolitical wildlife filmmakers start working under a new, generously-funded business model. In this model, films eulogising a wild Chhattisgarh, Odisha or Gujarat will be made by waltzing in step with the coal or bauxite or oil companies that are laying these very wilds to waste in collusion with officials and politicians. And that would be a travesty of art and of conservation we could certainly do without.

Instead, if through the moving image, we wish to create inspired spokespersons for nature, we may be better off doing so through honest, fearless and independent storytelling, rather than by crafting pretty and sanitised mythologies of nature underwritten by those with direct conflicts of interest.

M.D. Madhusudan is an independent researcher who has worked on ecological research and wildlife conservation projects in Karnataka for nearly three decades. He co-founded the Nature Conservation Foundation and worked there for 23 years.