Showing posts with label NCF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NCF. Show all posts
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.
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>>
How green is tea?
Tea has been on my mind. Mostly because I have spent the last few weeks drinking it guiltily.
Coffee, I am told, is better for our forests than tea. Two NCF researchers I met in Valparai confirm this.
Tea cultivation essentially involves the clearing of large tracts of forest, leaving them bare and devoid of shade trees. Coffee, on the other hand, allows for shade trees and secondary cultivation. Tea offers nothing to grazing animals. It offers some shelter to birds, but nothing they won't find elsewhere. Coffee berries may be eaten by monkeys, civets, some herbivores and even elephants. Since tea picking takes place year round, tea habitats are constantly disturbed. Coffee suffers only seasonal disturbance.
Two weeks ago, I was shocked to see how tea gardens in the High Wavy Hills and Valparai verged upon some of the last stands of inviolate evergreen forest in the Western Ghats. This increases greatly the possibility of human-animal conflict and leaves the environment vulnerable to invasion by exotic plant and animal species.
These are not exactly great times for tea the product, so managements are opening up tea gardens to tourists who, having fooled themselves sufficiently that acres and acres of countryside bejewelled with tea bushes are an authentic imitation of paradise, will pay to stay in a guest house and be pampered with a whiff of colonial nostalgia. Along with a little rum and water in the evenings to wash down any chance feelings of guilt that may have pricked their consciences.
I wonder what my friend God, who until recently lived on a tea estate and worked in a coffee plantation, would have to say about this quandary of the cuppa.
On a lighter note, for those like me who still love their tea, this much has to be said: there are green ways of making it.
Like our guide Devidutt did up at 7500 feet in the Himalaya.
When Wildlife Week became a fortnight
The Green Ogre has been away being more green and less ogre, and thus his stomping grounds have been quiet. 
I have enjoyed the most immersive wildlife and nature experiences over the last few weeks at some exquisite biodiversity sites in southern India.
October 9 through 12, my friends Sahastra, Sandeep and I were at Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Wildlife Sanctuary, best known to most people as BR Hills. Thanks to Dr. Prashanth, who accompanied us on the trip, we experienced the forest like never before. For the first time in three trips, we enjoyed three days of clear weather. Undergrowth was thicker even in the drier areas of the forest, which made viewing difficult. However, we were lucky to see parts of the forest that we had never seen before and get a closer understanding of the Soligas, the tribe that inhabits the forests of the Biligirirangans. Also, we had some very good sightings of the Blue-bearded Bee Eater and Changeable Hawk Eagle. More about this later.
Last week, work took me to a few locations in Tamil Nadu that offered, as a sidelight, some very enriching birding and nature experiences. On October 14 and 15, I was in Meghamalai, a cluster of tea gardens tucked away in the HighWavy hills of Theni district. On our way up into the hills, we came across stands of exquisite moist deciduous and evergreen forest. We heard an elephant snort just a few feet away from the car and caught glimpses of the endangered Nilgiri LaughingThrush and the Painted Bush Quail.
On Friday and Saturday, I visited TopSlip and Valparai in the Anamalais. The northeast monsoon was active in the hills of Tamil Nadu and mist made viewing very difficult, but the few moments of clear light in the jungle offered me memorable glimpses of Yellow-browed Bulbuls, Asian Fairy Bluebirds, White-bellied Treepies and a variety of other birds endemic to the moist-deciduous and evergreen forests.
In Valparai, I was introduced to the Jungle Striped Squirrel. As if not to be ignored, a pair of Malabar Giant Squirrels came up to the car to get a good look at me. Very cute, but also very dangerous for the squirrels. On the 40 hair-pin-bend climb to Valparai, there are tracts of lush forest where the endangered Lion-tailed Macaque and Nilgiri Tahr can be seen. We were unlucky not to see any, mostly due to the bad weather. Tourists often feed the animals, and of late, there have been a number of road casualties including a few Lion-tailed Macaques.
The Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) runs an excellent information centre, one of the best of its kind in the country, at Aiyarpadi just before the road winds onto the Valparai plateau. It is a must-stop for all those who want to learn about the biodiversity of the Anamalais.
Detailed reports will follow.
(For the Gaur photograph, thanks to Nadine)
A leopard, a village and a photographer's conscience
From a respectful distance, I have always admired Kalyan Varma for his gift - the talent to tell stories and unravel mysteries through his wildlife photographs. But his coverage, in March this year, of a leopard trapped in the village of Valparai is sheer testament to the fact that this young man is no mere shutterbug collecting photographic souvenirs in our forests and trading them for awards. He is what wildlife conservation needs with utmost urgency -- a wildlife photojournalist with a conscience.
Not many people I know want to run into a leopard in the wild. So when one comes visiting a village, it is far from welcome. The leopard in this story was not above blame - it was responsible for the death of a young girl. It doesn't take much to anger a village and this killing provided ample tinder to fan a blazing hatred for the cat. A trap was set and the leopard was caught. The dramatis personae - villagers, forest officers, policemen and local press photographers - all played their part. The fallen hero, of course, was the leopard. What struck me about Kalyan's account was the irony of the 'shoot'. A veterinarian tries - first in vain - to bring the cat down, while all the while Kalyan clicks away feverishly, capturing through his trained eye the predicament of a wild animal that is down, but far from out.
In his journal, Kalyan writes: 'A tear rolled down its eye and the leopard slowly went down. I cocooned myself from the whole crowd as the cops were taking care of them and I could not see anything but the face of the leopard through the camera. I just broke down at this point and walked away.'
Read all about it here
Salut, Kalyan Varma. For boldly doing what no wildlife photographer has dared do before - for bringing out in detail the inexorable sadness of human-animal conflict.
Not many people I know want to run into a leopard in the wild. So when one comes visiting a village, it is far from welcome. The leopard in this story was not above blame - it was responsible for the death of a young girl. It doesn't take much to anger a village and this killing provided ample tinder to fan a blazing hatred for the cat. A trap was set and the leopard was caught. The dramatis personae - villagers, forest officers, policemen and local press photographers - all played their part. The fallen hero, of course, was the leopard. What struck me about Kalyan's account was the irony of the 'shoot'. A veterinarian tries - first in vain - to bring the cat down, while all the while Kalyan clicks away feverishly, capturing through his trained eye the predicament of a wild animal that is down, but far from out.
In his journal, Kalyan writes: 'A tear rolled down its eye and the leopard slowly went down. I cocooned myself from the whole crowd as the cops were taking care of them and I could not see anything but the face of the leopard through the camera. I just broke down at this point and walked away.'
Read all about it here
Salut, Kalyan Varma. For boldly doing what no wildlife photographer has dared do before - for bringing out in detail the inexorable sadness of human-animal conflict.
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