Sen. John Kerry does an Al Gore

Stepping into the shoes that we think Al Gore has now vacated since accepting the Nobel Prize, Sen. John Kerry takes over as the Next Big American Voice Against Global Warming. But despite the big press, the noises he is making are no different. And particularly, coming from another Presidential also-ran, they seem too much like - excuse the loaded ecological simile - a carbon copy. But, of course, this being G8 (as opposed to F1) season, the air is thicker with allegations than vehicular exhaust. And it's not surprising for America to flex its sanctions muscle in order to thwart third-world stances on the issue.

Writing in The Daily Beast, the senator warns:

Atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels have risen 38% in the industrial era, from 280 to 385 parts per million (ppm). Scientists have warned that anything above 450 ppm—a warming of 2 degrees Celsius—will result in an unacceptable risk of catastrophic climate change.

And the characteristic refrain, painted over with stars and stripes, goes:

The bottom line is that failure to tackle climate change risks much more than a ravaged environment: It risks a much more dangerous world, and a gravely threatened America.

Echoes of An Inconvenient Truth? Why aren't we surprised?

Perhaps the good senator, who hails from the cornfields of Iowa, should have read The Stern Review instead.

The Himalaya Story - from 2007

Footloose in Garhwal, my travelogue on our trek to Bedni Bugyal in April-May 2007, is finally available for viewing. It had been privately circulated until now.

Here it is:

On Yudu (Firefox users may have some Flash 10-related viewing trouble):

On Scribd:

Footloose in Garhwal

The name of the bird

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

- Richard Feynman (1918 - 1988)

Encounter: Chinkara or Indian Gazelle

“Eye, gazelle, delicate wanderer,
Drinker of horizon’s fluid line.”
– Stephen Spender

Very near the end of a long, fruitless afternoon tailing invisible bustards in Naliya grassland of Kutch, we were in no mood to savour the sunset muddying the windmill-stippled horizon. Forget the fact that we had, during that day, picked out chestnut-bellied sandgrouse camouflaged among the tinder-dry tussocks. Or watched a jungle cat hunt a spiny-tailed lizard. Or, as dusk neared, blinked our eyes to the silhouettes of nearly fifty or so Pallid and Montagu's harriers settling down to roost in the grass.

Such selfish ingrates!

But then, our eyes were drawn to a troika of little ungulates chasing each other in single file across the yellow grass. The Chinkara or Indian Gazelle (Gazella bennettii), more of a newsmaker for its association with a certain trigger-happy Bollywood hunk. We saw them on more than one occasion, and always in groups of three - we couldn't quite ascertain if the ménage à trois was the regular marital arrangement with the Chinkaras, or if they were just respectable double-income one-kid family parties.

Males are slightly larger than females and have longer, thicker horns. Mostly they trot, but when approached they break into a light, easy lope that chews up the miles faster than you can count them.

The dipping sun lit this fellow nicely, gilding his fawn coat to a glaze as Sandy's shutter whirred and clicked greedily. Something to remember the evening by.

Photo copyright: Sandeep Somasekharan. All rights reserved

An elephantine storm in a teacup

The Nature Conservation Foundation's EcoLogic blog has been around for some time now and its content is on my reading list. NCF does so well what other eco-research blogs fail to do - present great, relevant scientific information in a thought-provoking and easy-to-read way. Not to mention some high quality writing.

"An apology to the Iyerpadi gentleman", T R Shankar Raman's recent blog post on the problem of human-animal conflict, is a great example of science writing - the science is solid but not overwhelming, and it is extremely easy to read. If there are any J-school kids out there who want to take up a career in science writing (still a very, very nascent field here in India), this blog post is a mandatory cut-and-keep.

Raman (those close to him know him better as Sridhar) and his wife Divya work with NCF in Valparai. On this fragile but disturbed plateau in the Anamalais stand some of the last pristine Western Ghats rainforests, fragmented and continuously usurped by tea gardens and eco-tourism that's heavier on tourism than eco.

Tea gardens are not quite elephant-friendly - they offer little by way of cover, and the bushes grow densely. Elephants use ancient routes to water bodies, on which they depend. Of course, much has been changed (by humans) on these ancient routes. Ergo, the pachyderms occasionally trample through tea gardens and the settlements among them. The animals are also accused by local people of raiding their provision shops. While this, on occasion, has been documented as true by NCF researchers, investigations have shown that many 'raids' have been instances of villagers taking advantage of the situation at hand, and conveniently blaming the elephants. In a fragile and sensitive ecosystem such as that in Valparai, the conflict for space and resources between man and elephant is a screenshot of a larger systemic problem - proverbially, an elephantine storm in a teacup.

Carbon footprint - what a feat!

It's that day of the year when everyone gets excited about their carbon footprint, only to have nothing to do with it when the day is done. So far, the hubbub was restricted to corporates who chose the occasion of World Environment Day to make a grand pretence of atoning for their misdeeds - clever shareholder communication, in other words. But now, our otherwise unapologetic government has also jumped in.

The tone of advertisements issued by government departments in India have always been a half-hearted, halfway effort between bone-numbing pedantry and pedagogic inanity festooned with mugshots of the irascible rascals responsible for siphoning off public money for their private interests. That's a lot of superlatives, yes.

But consider this ad published today in The Times of India by the Karnataka Pollution Control Board:

1. It says 'Don't leave your carbon footprint on the earth'. Ah, how evocative. Now, will they please suggest a list of places where we can leave it? And isn't this whole business about reducing the carbon footprint since it's impossible not to leave behind one at all. It's clear that the gurus at the KPCB are latecomers into the talk. So don't even expect them to walk it.
2. Now, the only recycled material in this ad is the content, which is clearly lifted from any other public service noise that just anyone else in the world is making about 'carbon footprint', viz:

a) Use bicycles/ make cycling a habit: Cute, but the only cycling I get to do is in the gym. Because if I venture out into the real world on a bicycle, there is no guarantee of returning home alive riding it. Are there bicycle lanes anywhere in India? Of course, the KPCB can say that they are not the "concerned department", in more than one sense of the term.

b) Plant and nurture trees: Try telling this to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), which has to date connived with the state Forest Department to rid the city of its green cover under the pretext of development works. And in the place of our banyans and peepals have come fast-growing copper pods, rain trees and gulmohurs - introduced species that are ornamental but otherwise practically useless. And so easily felled by a good gale.

That said, it's a good gesture. Even if the Board's responsibility ends here.

Talking of pollution control, every month the Bangalore Traffic Police embarks on a conscientious mission to enforce discipline among Bangalore's polluting vehicles. They stop vehicles (apparently at random) and demand to see an emission test certificate - you know, the ones issued by those shady little booths attached to fuel stations. It's a High Court Order, they will tell you if you argue, and brandish in your face a faded photostat copy of something Devanagari.

Now, this certification is a mere formality for most Euro II and Euro III vehicles but somehow, something magic happens and turns the attention of our devoted men in uniform from the smoke-belching and utterly un-roadworthy trucks, buses and three-wheeled tempos grunting past you with impunity to your own uncertified but otherwise unpolluting Euro II vehicle. Of course, you don't have to flex your cerebral muscles to deduce that the constables' discretion extends only to drivers of vehicles who look like they are carrying the requisite amount payable as fine.

And yes, in the end everyone is fine with that and nobody raises an alarm. Such good citizens.

As for carbon footprint - I know plenty of enraged drivers who'd like to leave a nice sooty one on the faces of those cops.

It's World Environment Day. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Furious Aila and prescient Amitav

The minutes crept by and the objects flying through the air grew steadily larger. Where first there had been only twigs, leaves and branches there were now whirling coconut palms and spinning tree trunks. Piya knew that the gale had reached full force when she saw something that looked like a whole island hanging suspended above their heads: it was a large clump of mangroves, held together by the trees' intertwined roots.

- Amitav Ghosh
The Hungry Tide

Ghosh makes the spectacle of the whirling wind seem as enchanting as in The Wizard of Oz but infinitely more threatening. His writing is magical - as if he has seen it all.

Or perhaps, as people of the Sunderbans might say, if you have seen one cyclone and lived to tell the tale, you have seen them all. In these parts, do they measure the longevity of their lives by the storms they have survived?

The Sunderbans and their neighbourhood have been battered time and again by the most furious and bloodthirsty of storms. Each cyclone whips up a seemingly unending wave of suffering that generation after generation of people must endure. Their wretched homes torn asunder, their emaciated livestock drowned, and their meagre savings gone to seed, the survivors are perhaps unluckier than the victims. They are faced with the crushing and intimidating prospect of beginning their lives all over again. As if this were not sorrow enough, they are encumbered by the absence of family members who were once their sustenance and stay.

Number-obsessed statisticians are auditing assets gone to waste and counting bodies - human, mostly. Environmentalists are mourning the loss of habitats, which have either wiped out or displaced the region's fauna: dolphins, gharials, tigers... and these are only the charismatic species. How much has been lost forever we can only tell when the hungry tide is satiated.

Of these sinister storms, Cyclone Aila was the most recent. And she certainly won't be the last.

Despite all the technology at our command (and our consequent hubris), we will never be capable of stopping natural disasters in their tracks. Meteorologists can issue warnings. Governments can cry out for aid. Relief workers can mop up the mess. And the media can weep and wail, insinuate and blame, and generally prolong the suffering for as long as public sentiment lasts.

But despite all of that, we cannot predict the weight of nature's wrath. We can only measure its aftermath. And count our dead.

Knights of the Western Ghats - Kalyan Varma's photoessay

Kalyan Varma has relaunched his website, and with it, some very absorbing new features. His photo-essay on the Lion-tailed Macaques (Macaca silenus) of the Western Ghats is beautifully captured and enchantingly told.

Ok, ok, I know I'm going wild with the superlatives, but great photography often does that to me. And by great photography, I don't refer only to images that dazzle with their excellent composition and perfect lighting. You know, the kind that has a congregation of fellow-shutterbugs go 'ooh' and 'aah' and launch into impromptu discourses on F-stops, and finally sign off with the intriguing three-letter acronym (TLA) 'TFS' (fans of India Nature Watch will know what that means).

Kalyan inspires more than that. As I have said in these pages before, I admire his prowess for telling stories with his photographs, to capture interesting and insightful aspects of animal behaviour, and more than ever, to underscore the imperative for conservation.

And finally, because the Lion-Tailed Macaque (or LTM, if you prefer TLAs) is itself a species very dear to me. And because on my visit to Valparai, Divya Mudappa of the NCF told me the heart-rending story of a roadkill involving a pregnant female. And because Kalyan's camera was there, without blinking, to grieve that grisly death, this story must be told.

And no one but Kalyan can tell it like it is.

Kalyan Varma's photoessay>>

Encounter - the Indian Desert Jird

In January, on our visit to Kutch, we drove 300 km from the CEDO camp to Dholaveera, where the remnants of a Harappan archaeological site quietly awaits visitors amid the salty drifting dust of the Great Rann of Kutch. The site is fabulous, and I was miffed that the caretaker did not allow me to videograph it. But photographs were allowed, and our dear shutterbug Sandy lost no opportunity to snap up the excavated ruins.

On our way back, we noticed a warren of little burrows in the loose earth. Like little tricks of light, puffs of dust grew beady black eyes and scurried out of the ground. Everybody else caught sight of the culprit and sighed sighs of discovery. I rubbed my eyes, missed the target, and rubbed my eyes again. I took my glasses off, put them on again, took them off again and rubbed my eyes again. Still, nothing.

And then, as suddenly as I had missed it, I saw it - a little, fawn, rat-like fellow chomping on a green leaf and dragging it into the burrow - the Indian Desert Jird (Meriones hurrianae). This diurnal rodent lives in huge colonies and is a great food source for many predators, including desert cats, jungle cats, jackals, mongooses and many raptors.


Indian Desert Jird (Meriones hurrianae)

All photographs copyright Sandeep Somasekharan. Used with permission.

The Sarus blogger is finally online

IMAGE: SARUS AND NILGAI (FROM K S GOPI SUNDAR'S SARUS SCAPES)

My dear friend Gopi Sundar has finally lifted the veil on his stupendous insight into bird behaviour. His blog 'Sarus Scape' is now online and abuzz. He tags his blog 'Random Observations of a Wandering Naturalist' but that entire line is a euphemism for what he does best. His observations are far from random - they are marked by extraordinary scientific precision. And though he may like to imagine himself as a peripatetic hobo, his journeys are anything but wanderings - well, if you and I marked an entire state into little squares and transected each one to document its birdlife, we wouldn't call that wandering. But my friend has a yen for understatement.

Enough said. Please enjoy Sarus Scape.

Snake

The first time I brought a snake home I was seven. More ignorant than now, and more innocent.

It wasn't the warmest welcome. I gave the folks full points for maximum vocal decibel capacity.

It turned out to be a saw-scaled viper. Didn't hurt me at all. I like to think the snake must have understood that in snake years, I was younger and meant no harm.

Comeback time for the Irrawaddy Dolphin?

The discovery of a new population of Irrawaddy Dolphins has boosted the hopes of conservationists working to protect them, reports The Observer.

Researchers attached to the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society have confirmed that they have found nearly 6,000 Irrawaddy Dolphins in the Sunderbans mangrove habitat of Bangladesh, bordering the Bay of Bengal.

The Observer report said:

Until this new Bangladesh population was found, figures from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimated the Sundarbans population to be around 450.

River dolphins worldwide are threatened due to habitat destruction and trawler fishing in the large rivers of the world. The Irrawaddy Dolphin is listed as 'vulnerable' in the IUCN's Red List of endangered species.

In June 2008, I had an interesting conversation with the author Amitav Ghosh about the possibility of Irrawaddy Dolphins inhabiting the mouths of the Mandovi and Zuari rivers in Goa.

MORE

Technorati Tags: river dolphin, irrawaddy dolphin, conservation, bangladesh, sunderbans

Encounter - Black Francolin

All right, shoot me. I have never had any luck with the Black Francolin. When other birders talked of it as if it were domestic poultry, I would clear my throat and look west until the conversation had drifted past.

Not any more.

Kutch offered me the best-ever sighting of this handsome fowl. The CEDO folks drove us towards the Naliya grassland and all the while we looked for the elusive bustards. This, they told us, was the habitat of the Great Indian Bustard and the MacQueen's Bustard. We combed the grassland but saw none.

But in the early morning light, as we trailed a large flock of Eurasian Griffons, we saw a movement in the shin-high grass. As our driver Mangal cut the engine, the suspect emerged from his cover and lorded over the path ahead of us for a glorious three seconds. Then he obliged us by moving into the light and showing off for a bit, completely unperturbed. Sandy, who was in the passenger seat next to the driver, fired away.

And that's how we got this picture. And that's how when the Black Francolin comes up in conversation, it's my turn to gloat.

Photograph © Sandeep Somasekharan. All rights reserved

Encounter - The Indian Desert Cat

In January, the Banni grassland of Kutch rustles like a tinderbox. The tussocks of grass are dry, the soil is powdery and fine, and mirages turn the horizon into a kaleidoscope of illusions. You can, therefore, be forgiven for seeing things that do not exist here.

It is exactly this illusion that the creatures that inhabit this arid wonderland hope you will succumb to. Rub your eyes and they're gone. And so, while our Tata Sumo cross-countried through the fringes of the Great Rann of Kutch, we saw bustards that were actually common cranes, and wild asses that were anything but. After a while, we learned not to let our hearts stop at the sight of Indian gazelles (chinkaras) loping through the fawn-coloured landscape like motion grabs from Animal Planet.

And while we peeled our eyes for the endemic Desert Fox, another creature crossed our path. Felis silvestris ornatus - the Indian Desert Cat. It melted out of the stippled earth and slunk away towards its burrow, apparently borrowed from an Indian fox.

We gasped. And clicked away.

Photograph © Sandeep Somasekharan. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Unforgetting Exxon Valdez

On the eve of the 20th anniversary of one of the world's great ecological catastrophes - the Exxon Valdez oil spill - The New York Times has carried a telling editorial. Excerpt:

More than $2 billion has been spent on cleanup and recovery. Exxon has paid at least $1 billion in damages. Supertankers have been made safer with double hulls, emergency teams given better equipment. Some fish species, though not all, have recovered.

Yet the Exxon Valdez still sends a powerful cautionary message: oil development, however necessary, is an inherently risky, dirty business — especially so in the forbidding waters of the Arctic.

More here