In the kingdom of the Lion-tailed Macaque

In Valparai the endangered Lion-tailed Macaque inhabits tracts of dense evergreen forest hemmed in by tea plantations. It lives, literally and alarmingly, on the edge

We were driving down from Valparai along one of the remaining patches of tropical evergreen rainforests, soaking up their sounds and feel. We'd had a very good weekend trip, despite not getting to sight anything special besides a couple of Nilgiri Tahr on our way up. The road leading up to Valparai cuts through critical habitat of the Lion-Tailed Macaque and Great Hornbill. We had seen boards screaming "Lion Tailed Macaque are active here. Please drive carefully" and were discussing Kalyan Varma's roadkill photo that had been etched into our minds. 


Ladder-like bridges between canopy trees had been fashioned to ensure that the arboreal primates move freely without having to get down on the road. The extensive clearing of rainforests in Valparai had been started by the British administrators and kept up zealously by their Indian sucessors. Many of those areas are privately owned tea estates now. What remains of rainforests are islets, isolated but protected fiercely by the Nature Conservation Foundation. 


We stopped at a bend on sighting a female scarlet minivet sallying to catch insects. As we were about to get back in the car, Swaheel spotted a primate standing on a near horizontal tree branch, at eye level, about 15 metres away from the road above the downhill slope. "LTM," someone whispered. The animal stared at us for a second or two and walked unhurriedly into the canopy. We thought that was all, happy for the sighting but then we heard movement. Treetops were swinging and black forms moved in and out of branches. And there materialized LTMs of all sizes, and suddenly the forest came alive with whoops and squeaks. We were in the middle of a huge troop of monkeys. They moved down the road. We parked and followed them, careful not to step off the road.

We reached another clearing and were waiting for the monkeys to emerge from the canopy when suddenly Swaheel hissed in my ear: “There, there!" I looked and saw nothing – the canopy was thick with little light penetrating it. He pointed closer and I saw a huge male on all fours on a broken branch. A finger of light illuminated his white mane. Soon, there were macaques everywhere. They were of all ages and sizes -- babies clinging to mothers, juveniles, large males. I spotted another individual barely 3-4 meters from the ground and we spent a satisfying photographic moment.   Vehicles passed us. We had prior warning from Bijoy who had told us the area was very disturbed and we should refrain from attracting a crowd under any circumstances. So, every time we heard a vehicle approach, we pretended to be taking a leak! 


The monkey on the branch was reasonably well camouflaged. We left him alone. Others were trying to cross a gap between trees. What followed was an amazing display. The LTMs on this side of the gorge climbed to the tip of the outcropping branch one at a time. They would shake the branch to make it sway to provide ample thrust for launch. Then the monkey would leap, sailing through the air and latching onto branches on the other side.


They did this one by one -- the first one missed the branch on the other side, and we could hear a crash as it got a foothold further down. Each one of the others made the jump smoothly, including the last one – a mother with a clinging baby.


At this point a minibus from Chalakudy arrived, blaring music, and stopped to partake of the scene. Its occupants pointed at the LTMs and shouted despite our pleas for silence. That was enough irritation for the monkeys, which retreated further into the forest. 


We drove for another 300 meters from that point when we came to a clearing -- and the very verge of the dense evergreen forest. We were in a tea plantation, and it gave us the impression that these threatened primates were living, literally, on the edge. LTMs seldom cross through these plantations, which means they are boxed into these last stretches of evergreen forest with no way out, hoping that whatever little habitat they have would not run out of space, shelter and food.


Text and photos: Sandeep Somasekharan

Heard the laugh track of the Nilgiris?

While walking in the Nilgiris, listen closely for the guffaw of the Nilgiri Laughingthrush. And treasure it, for you'll hear it nowhere else on earth

When I had first laid my hands on a Sony prosumer camera I found I could photograph birds within reach, and the target of one of my first attempts was a Nilgiri Laughingthrush, otherwise called the Rufous-breasted Laughingthrush or the Black-chinned Laughingthrush (Trochalopteron cachinnans). I first saw the bird on a trip with my parents to Doddabetta, a peak near Ooty. Kannada for 'the large hill', Doddabetta is the second highest peak in south India and the highest point in the Nilgiris.

As we walked about like regular tourists, bracing against the strong chill wind, I saw a unique bird -- with bushy white eyebrows and captivating, red eyes -- hop about on the macadam not far from the tourists. Incredibly, it didn't seem perturbed by the crowd - something you can observe only in Doddabetta.

On the Wing - The Great Hornbill

Nothing can prepare you for the awe-inspiring spectacle of a Great Hornbill, flying wild and free in its ancient forests

The swooshing sound of the Great Hornbills' wingsweeps resonates in the silence of the forest

The Great Hornbill (Buceros bicornis) is found in the Western Ghats and the Himalayan foothills in India as well as in the thick rainforests of Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula and Thailand extending north all the way up to Nagaland in India, as well as Nepal.

These large omnivorous birds do not have many natural predators. However, they are near threatened due to habitat loss from excessive deforestation as well as from poaching (their meat is considered unsuitable for consumption) as their large bills are coveted as trophies. Apart from its huge bill and colorful plumage, the bird is recognizable for its loud and sonorous call, which has earned it the Malayalam name “Malamuzhakki” -- one who makes the hills reverberate. 

 Great Hornbills are known to be monogamous and have a peculiar breeding habit that restricts their ability to proliferate in large numbers. Hornbill pairs partner for life and the death of either partner results in the surviving partner going mate-less for the rest of its life.

Exhibiting great dexterity, a Great Hornbill tosses a berry in the air before swallowing it

While hornbills have a lifespan of around 35 years or more, due to their selective breeding and nesting habits this longevity does not offer a significant advantage for their survival. Females nest in tree hollows while the male helps seal the cavity from outside. The male takes the responsibility of providing food to the incarcerated female. The male makes several daily trips to gather fruits, berries, reptiles and insects for the female. The male stores the fruits in the crop (a sac in its throat) and regurgitates them at the nest, following this regimen until the chick has grown significantly and it is time for the female to emerge from the nest cavity. Since the female has to rely on the male during this time, his death due to hunting or poaching would result in the death of the female and the offspring as well. Great Hornbills are known to return to the same tree cavities year after year and the loss of the tree means the pair would have difficulty in breeding again. There are few trees that satisfy the nesting requirement of hornbills and deforestation has become a major reason for the bird's dwindling numbers. 

Seeing the decline in numbers of the Great Hornbill, several conservation programs have been commenced to protect and revive this intriguing species.

Text: Anand Yegnaswami

Photos: Sandeep Somasekharan

(See Sandy's blog post on his meeting with the Great Hornbill)


These lovely images are best printed with HP Laserjet

Osama is dead, but will the cranes fly again?

Now that Osama bin Laden is dead, will America allow Afghanistan to lick its wounds and restore its natural heritage? 

In India, the wintering Siberian Crane has been missing in action for nearly a decade

Afghanistan has always suffered for its place on the map. For millennia, before traders discovered the Silk Route across the Hindu Kush mountains through the Khyber Pass into the riparian plains of the Punjab, before the armies of invaders from Persia thundered into the Indian subcontinent, and before Russians and Americans overran the land in pursuit of mercenary friends-turned-foes, Siberian Cranes flew unmolested over these vast natural barriers to their wintering grounds in India. Though migrating birds have been traditionally hunted in these parts, the outbreak of relentless war has so disturbed their passage that the critically endangered Siberian Cranes have not visited their ritual haunts in Bharatpur, India since 2002.

Of the migratory crane species, the Siberian Crane (Grus leucogeranus) has the longest travel route. They are known to use three distinct migration flyways to their wintering grounds. Of the three surviving populations, birds in western Siberia that winter in northern Iran use the Western Flyway, and those that winter in India use the Central Flyway. The third route, the Eastern Flyway, is used by a breeding population in northeastern Siberia to migrate to Poyang Lake in China. The Western and Central Flyways intersect in Russia and parts of Kazakhstan.

Birds using the Central Flyway traditionally migrated over a distance of 5,000 km from western Siberia through the Russian Federation, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan to wintering grounds that once spanned most of northern India including parts of Bihar. The Keoladeo Ghana bird sanctuary in Bharatpur, Rajasthan, was a well-documented wintering ground of the cranes. Cranes are sensitive to disturbance and over time, as war games intensified in the territories along the cranes' Western Flyway, the numbers of Siberian Cranes migrating into India dropped alarmingly. The birds were denied opportunity to descend to their traditional resting and feeding grounds en route to their final wintering destination. The last pair was recorded at Bharatpur in 2002.

Heedless of political boundaries, wintering Siberian Cranes flew 5,000 km to their destinations along routes that traversed several nations

The Cold War warmed up in Afghanistan when America armed Mujahideen fighters with nearly $40 billion in weapons, including portable anti-aircraft missile launchers called Stingers, in order to weaken the Soviet Union's hold in the region. After the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of Soviet power centres in the Kremlin, the weapons remained with the mercenary fighters who changed sides at will in the decades of civil war that followed.

The southeastern part of Afghanistan was once covered with lush forests irrigated by monsoon rains. Less than two percent of those forests remain. In recent years, large parts of Afghanistan have been controlled by Taliban militia who, apart from committing humanitarian atrocities, also denuded the land of its forests. While the Taliban-supported timber mafia pillaged most standing forests for the Pakistan market, military bombings have ruined the remaining tracts. Hazardous pollutants from the explosives, including depleted uranium from anti-tank missiles, pose grave threats to the continued survival of humans and wildlife in the region. Fears are even raised of uranium dust being blown into rivers by windstorms. Depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.5 billion years and clearly the problems of war are not about to go away in a hurry.

After 9/11 the US administration, in pursuit of Al Qaeda, bombed Afghanistan without relent. It is ludicrous to imagine that thoughts of the country's wildlife and environment even troubled policymakers during heated discussions in the interest of US national security. With the reported killing of Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in Pakistan on May 2, America has exacted more than its pound of flesh. 

What, now, will become of Afghanistan? Will the bombings continue? A part of me wonders hopefully: Why can't America, as part of its much-publicised rebuilding efforts, take stewardship of Afghanistan's ecology and allow nature to work her rescuscitating magic?

Will the Siberian Cranes arrive in India by the Central Flyway again? I'm just being a foolish optimist, listening for the rush of the wind in wings of hope.

References:

- Siberian Crane Flyway Coordination

- International Crane Foundation

- Project Mkono

Text: Bijoy Venugopal

Photographs: International Crane Foundation photo gallery

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.

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

Researchers teach birds: 'Be afraid, be very afraid'

Do all birds possess an instinct to flee predators? Or is this behaviour a result of conditioning? Research on some island birds has shown their inability to recognise mammalian predators. This may offer an explanation into how native species in island ecosystems that have evolved in the absence of mammalian predators may have hastened their extinction. Case in point: the Dodo on Mauritius. Although the bird was large and ungainly with few escape tricks, it may have also been unfamiliar with danger and this may have made it, figuratively speaking, a sitting duck for the rats and dogs and cats that arrived with the first sailors. The presence of this trait in island birds could adversely impact reintroduction programmes of threatened native bird species. Returning these birds into their predator-infested habitats is fraught with peril at the outset. 'Be afraid, be very afraid' is the survival mantra that researchers are now teaching birds. And how? By attempting to mix birds from predator-free areas with birds who know how to recognise predators in an enclosure. Researchers hope that the fearless birds would learn the fear response from their conditioned friends. PhysOrg has more Technorati Tags: conditioning, bird behaviour, research, fear, predator

Greater Mekong: 10 years, 1068 new species discovered

For over ten years, researchers have toiled away in the Greater Mekong region, uncovering its secrets. A WWF report describes the region as the "richest waterway for biodiversity on the planet, fostering more species per unit area than the Amazon". Quantitatively speaking, in number of species, that's 20,000 plants, 1,200 birds, 800 reptiles and amphibians, 430 mammals and at least 1,300 fish. Of these, the new discoveries include 519 plants, 279 fish, 88 frogs, 88 spiders, 46 lizards, 22 snakes, 15 mammals, 4 birds, 4 turtles, 2 salamanders and a toad. And to imagine that most of them lay unknown to science until a decade ago. This funky chap (above) is the Dragon Millipede (Desmoxytes purpurosea), and it has a bodily function that will greatly interest terrorist groups. Our pink friend secretes cyanide, and if you have the guts to pop one of these bubblegum-coloured critters and chew well, you will soon be history. And this tempting resident of the Garden of Eden (above) is the Gumprecht's green pitviper (Trimeresurus gumprechti). The yellow spots are the eyes, and the dark pits below them are used as heat-sensing devices. Much meaner than meets the eye, the Burmese Spitting Cobra (Naja mandalayensis) (below), discovered in 2000, is another venomous customer. Among the new species of birds is this Naung Mung Scimitar Babbler (Jabouilleia naungmungensis) (above). The Woolly Bat (above), the Laotian Rock Rat (below), and the Annamite Striped Rabbit (bottom) are the most intriguing mammalian finds. The rock rat, believed to have been extinct for millions of years, was found in a local food market! WWF has more

What shall we tell the President?

With environment finally figuring in the US Presidential Election debates, Scientific American has a nice summary of how Obama and McCain, and Biden and Palin stack up in terms of their approach to environmental issues. Listen and read

Encounter: Pop goes the weasel

In spring of 2001, my good friends Bruce Lee Mani and Rajeev Rajagopal (better known as guitar player and drummer, respectively, of Thermal And A Quarter) dragged me to the Himalayas on a trek for which I was quite unprepared. Bass player Rzhude, who had been there and done that before, had charted out our 'itinerary' - which meant heading to some nameless Himachali hamlet and hunting out people he remembered only by first name, then coaxing them to help us find accommodation. All on a budget that resembled my frayed shoestrings. I had spent the last six months in California driving on freeways to every national park within driving distance and getting fat on all the hormone-laden meat and milk and Washington apples I could shop at Safeway. A cardio workout in the Himalayas seemed a perfect way to burn off that ill-gotten tallow, and also to reorient myself among my countrymen. So much for excuses. Without even a pair of proper trekking shoes (I had on a pair of morning-walk-worn Power sneakers) and no backpack to call my own, I was bundled into a train that took the longest possible route to reach Delhi. On the bus to Manali, I got over my jet-lag only by listening to a tribe of multicultural fellow Hindustanis snore away in unison. What a homecoming! We trekked from Manali to Solang, but could not go to Rohtang as the pass was snowed in. No disappointments, though. At the end of our trek, we made our way back through the cobbled, undulating streets of old Manali village hopping goat-like across streams and trying to make polite conversation with the villagers (mostly with the intent of scoring some hash - as luck would have it, every second man turned out to be peddling some). Passing a stone fence in that village, a flash of hot orangey red caught my eye. A ribbon of movement among the piles of boulders, it was about an arm's length away. I had to peek over the wall to see what it was, and that earned me the opportunity to stare into the wrinkled face of an ancient woman with truck-window glasses who was either hard of hearing or irate or both. She hollered at the top of her voice at this outlandish peeping tom (moi) and waved her arms about, while I peered into the cracks of her compound wall. A black-tipped nose emerged, then a pointed white snout. Then a pair of beady, insolent eyes and a mouth that opened to reveal a row of sharp teeth. Here it was - a Himalayan Weasel (Mustela sibrica), that tiny little giant-killer of the foothills. He frowned his carnivore frown and slunk his sinuous body around the rocks and emerged now and then to look us in the eye, not hesitating to bare his fangs lest I found him too cute. Despite his huggability, he was a carnivore all the way - right from the bloodthirsty quivering of his nostrils to the merciless gleam in his eye. But, of course, these are human attempts at personification and what really matters is that this little fellow can bring down prey many times his size - such as hares, pikas, marmots, squirrels and small birds. The Himalayan Weasel is not getting any commoner in the hills, and we were very lucky to see this guy up close. Humankind's war against nature has pushed these little carnivores to the brink. Meeting this fierce little killer in the hills, I was reminded of Strange Meeting, Wilfred Owen's telling poem on the futility of war, especially these three lines from it: I am the enemy you killed, my friend. I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

Diclofenac moves to Africa

Just when you thought the spectre of vulture deaths had taken a breather, here's more shocking news. It's not gone away, just shifted base. A bit of background: Diclofenac, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) used in the veterinary treatment of livestock, has been found to cause gout and renal failure in vultures that ingest it while feeding on the corpses and remains of livestock. In Asia, particularly India, Diclofenac was responsible for decimating vultures of the Gyps genus. Among the affected species include the White-backed, Slender-billed and Griffon vultures. BirdLife reports: "In India, where Diclofenac was in widespread veterinary use, three Gyps species, formerly of Least Concern, have been pushed to Critically Endangered status, losing over 99 percent of their populations in just over a decade." In 2006, governments in India, Nepal and Pakistan banned the manufacture and sale of Diclofenac. However, BirdLife has observed that the veterinary drug is on sale in Africa. This puts other vulture species on the extinction radar: Cape vulture (Gyps coprotheres), Rueppell's Griffon Vulture (Gyps rueppellii), White-backed Vulture (Gyps africanus) and Griffon vulture Gyps fulvus. Further, BirdLife adds that the threat extends to other vulture species and birds of prey, including owls and raptors, as well as cranes and storks. "Gyps vultures are very wide ranging, and exposure to Diclofenac in a single carcass in any one of their range states could prove fatal to whole populations, threatening the more common species as well as the already rare ones," BirdLife said. More