The story of wildlife conservation in India isn’t just about battling an overbearing, merciless and amoral system of governance but additionally about overcoming ignorance and public apathy. That’s the reason on World Animal Welfare Day, it feels pertinent to focus on the contributions of sure people in our previous who not solely challenged the established order but additionally raised public consciousness and impressed motion towards the unbelievable cruelty met to our treasured wildlife. To maintain alive the reminiscence of their work is to recollect what it means to protect our wildlife. (Above photographs of Kailash Sankhala, J Vijaya & Rinchen Wangchuk)
1. Rinchen Wangchuk: What it means to co-exist with snow leopards
Regardless of having a well-known father in Colonel Chewang Rinchen, a adorned Ladakhi soldier, Rinchen Wangchuk solid his personal path. As a wildlife researcher from Ladakh, he framed a query that will tackle the basic problem of snow leopard conservation.
How do you reconcile the notion of snow leopard conservation with the wants of native communities who lose their livestock, notably sheep and goats, to those elusive creatures? To reply this query, he established the Snow Leopard Conservancy-India Belief (SLC-IT) in 2000 to advertise native efforts in direction of community-based conservation efforts.
In addition to taking a wide range of steps to assist native farmers and nomads shield their livestock from snow leopards, thus stopping man-animal conflicts, he additionally pioneered one of many earliest fashions of eco-tourism with conservation-linked homestays situated in important snow leopard habitats and alongside fashionable trekking routes. These profitable fashions of community-based tourism within the Hemis Nationwide Park, the Sham area, and Zanskar nonetheless stand at present.
He tragically handed away on the age of simply 42 in 2011 attributable to a deteriorating neurological situation however not earlier than abandoning a stellar legacy.
2. Fateh Singh Rathore: The forest officer who confirmed India learn how to shield tigers
Identified for his trademark lengthy handlebar moustache, olive-coloured safari hat and dashing darkish glasses, the late Fateh Singh Rathore stays the principal architect behind the success story that’s the Ranthambhore Nationwide Park. As a ranger, warden, and subject director at one among India’s best-known tiger preserves, Fateh’s work emphasised three issues — pure regeneration of the habitat, fixed engagement with native communities residing in its neighborhood that went means past consultations, and an abiding love for the creatures who inhabited this forest.
It grew to become the blueprint for what a profitable tiger conservation technique appears like.
Fateh’s method to conservation was marked by his unbelievable information of the terrain inside Ranthambore’s core space and the depth of his engagement with the local people — whether or not it was relocating 16 villages inhabited within the core space of the Nationwide Park and guaranteeing that the village economic system thrived regardless of this resettlement and a crackdown on poaching. He practically died for his efforts.
Additionally, as a forest officer, his loyalties solely lay with the forests and never politicians or superior officers — a function of his work that will come at an awesome private value.
3. Jamal Ara: The primary ‘Birdwoman’ of India
In an period when the sphere of ornithology was dominated by males, Jamal Ara stood out as a pioneer. It was the legendary ornithologist Salim Ali who known as her the primary ‘Birdwoman’ of India.
From present-day Jharkhand, her work on the ornithology of the Chota Nagpur plateau “stays the one complete examine of birds within the area until date” in keeping with an essay by wildlife historian Raza Kazmi titled The First Woman of Indian Ornithology — printed in a latest assortment of essays titled Ladies within the Wild edited by Anita Mani.
Regardless of solely finding out until Class 10, she was a prolific author as regards to birds. In line with Kazmi, from 1949 to 1988, she contributed to greater than 60 papers and printed articles to journals together with the Bombay Pure Historical past Society and Bengal Pure Historical past Society, and the E-newsletter for Birdwatchers, a publication learn by beginner {and professional} ornithologists.
What’s extra, she additionally wrote a small booklet for kids titled Watching Birds printed by the Nationwide E book Belief (NBT). The ebook is at the moment in its thirteenth version and it continues to teach kids on the birds of India in a number of languages until today.
Past her prolific writing, she additionally raised consciousness among the many plenty by her programmes in All India Radio (AIR) and in addition dabbled in journalism for mainstream publication. “Extra importantly, in these days, she was the one spokesperson for Bihar’s imperilled wilderness,” which went past simply advocating for birds, in keeping with Raza. Her prescriptions and suggestions would lay loads of the groundwork for contemporary conservation in India.
4. Kailash Sankhala: The unsung hero who modified the future of tigers
Kailash Sankhala, the primary director of Mission Tiger, performed a basic function in turning the tide for wildlife conservation in India, notably of tigers. A pioneering subject officer, he did actual subject analysis work to know the secretive lives of tigers from their behaviour, inhabitants dynamics to day by day actions.
However all this work was triggered by an incident within the early Fifties when he killed a tiger. Riddled by guilt, it reworked him from a forest officer simply issuing looking permits to spending the rest of his life defending the tiger and its habitat.
By gathering public help on the problem of tiger conservation within the nationwide and worldwide media, he first persuaded the Authorities of India to ban the export of tiger, leopard, and panther skins or the merchandise constructed from them in 1970 and ban the looking of tigers altogether in 1972.
A couple of months later in April 1973, prime minister Gandhi established Mission Tiger to “shield and restore pure habitats of tigers and to trace and shield the remaining wild tigers in India” and handpicked Sankhala as its first director.
5. S P Shahi: The guardian of India’s wolves
Mahuadanr Wolf Sanctuary in Jharkhand — the one sanctuary in India devoted to wolf preservation — owes its existence to S P Shahi, a pioneering conservationist and forest officer. Again within the Sixties, he paid shut consideration to how wolves had been hurtling in direction of extinction.
Wildlife historian Raza Kazmi famous how not like most forest officers of his period, Shahi recognised the significance of what we now name ‘Open Pure Ecosystems’ for wolves. These ecosystems include a variety of non-forested habitats from savanna grasslands to deserts, which host a excessive density of “massive mammalian fauna”. What’s notably attention-grabbing about these ecosystems is that not like wildlife sanctuaries and different protected areas the place limits are set on human habitation, they help the lives and livelihoods of pastoralists and their livestock.
Because of this, like Fateh Singh Rathore, Shahi additionally understood the function of native communities (on this case pastoralists) in facilitating conservation. Past wolves, Shahi’s work in Palamau and his meticulous documentation of its wildlife was a really key purpose that this forest was declared as tiger reserves in 1973, in keeping with P Okay Sen, former director of Mission Tiger.
6. J Vijaya: The defender of India’s turtles
On 18 April 1987, the bodily stays of J Vijaya, the nation’s first feminine herpetologist and turtle subject biologist, had been present in Guindy Nationwide Park, Tamil Nadu. Solely 28, the reason for her dying stays unknown to today however what stays plain is the legacy she left behind.
Beginning off as a volunteer at Madras Snake Park in 1975 as a school pupil, Vijaya (identified to her pals as ‘Viji’) would go on to not solely change into one of many foremost researchers of turtles but additionally play a pivotal function in its conservation. To grasp the scope of turtle commerce and the exploitation it entailed, she would journey the size and breadth of this nation from the ‘badlands’ of the Chambal (ravines) to the meat markets of Kolkata.
In line with a tribute penned by freelance journalist Janaki Lenin in Ecologise, “The black and white photos she took of the gory Ridley sea turtle slaughter on Digha seashore and within the meat markets of Calcutta, shook the general public when India At present journal ran them within the early Eighties. This was the primary media expose ever performed on the free-for-all commerce in sea turtles and highlights the distinction one particular person could make for conservation.”
Because of her expose, the Authorities of India instantly took motion towards the exploitation of sea turtles.
7. Anne Wright: India’s adopted daughter and pioneer of wildlife conservation
On 4 October, 2023, India mourned the lack of Anne Wright, a pioneering conservationist who devoted over 5 a long time to defending India’s wildlife. This daughter of a British civil servant determined to undertake India as ‘her nation’ and labored tirelessly to guard its fauna.
Anne was a real changemaker, breaking gender limitations in wildlife conservation, taking part in a key function in drafting the Wildlife (Safety) Act of 1972, and driving the creation of quite a few Protected Areas, together with Palamau Tiger Reserve and Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary. She labored intently with native communities and bureaucracies to make lasting adjustments.
Past working in direction of these important causes, in 1970, she additionally wrote an article printed in The Statesman, which describes in harrowing element the unlawful sale of tiger and leopard skins in Kolkata. The article was republished in The New York Instances (NYT), inflicting a worldwide storm.
As wildlife historian Raza Kazmi notes, “The article was debated closely within the Indian Parliament, and it isn’t an exaggeration to say that this text, together with the damning pictures on the dimensions of tiger looking particularly for pores and skin commerce, satisfied the then prime minister Indira Gandhi to ban tiger looking the exact same yr (1970). That was the ability of her pen.”
8. Saroj Raj Choudhury: A father or mother to the tigress Khairi
On 5 October, 1974, a feminine tiger cub was dropped at Saroj Raj Choudhury, the founder Area Director of the Similipal Tiger Reserve within the Mayurbhanj district of Odisha. Discovered unattended by individuals of the Kharia tribal group, Saroj would identify her ‘Khairi’.
For the subsequent seven years, Khairi would change into a ‘free-living member of the family’ at Choudhury’s official bungalow in Jashipur. She was fed with mutton and milk powder, slept on their beds and sometimes performed with them. Saroj intently noticed her to check the assorted behavioural points of tigers, particularly using pheromones, their mating behaviour and territoriality, amongst others.
However lengthy earlier than Saroj Raj Choudhury took over because the Simlipal Tiger Reserve’s first Area Director and met Khairi, he had already established himself as a pioneer of wildlife conservation, notably of tigers, in India.
From creating the pugmark monitoring approach — which was the bedrock of organising tiger censuses in India until 2004 and the inspiration of India’s a lot vaunted Mission Tiger initiative — to mentoring generations of forest officers within the finer nuances of wildlife conservation, Choudhury stays a legendary conservationist.
(Edited by Pranita Bhat; Pictures courtesy Wikimedia Commons/Fateh Singh Rathore, X/Sanctuary Asia, Amit Sankhala, SLC-IT, Raza Kazmi, X/Ramesh Pandey IFS)
