Showing posts with label tea. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tea. 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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)