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The Lost world

2006, writes Prerna Singh Bindra, will go down as the year that formally marked the beginning of the end of India's rich natural heritage

It's the season of good cheer, my apologies for injecting a grim note amid all this joy and bonhomie, but 2006 was possibly the worst year for India's wildlife and shall be remembered as the year when the end began. The beginning of the end of India's amazing bio-diversity, of wild animals like the Royal Bengal tiger, the Asian elephant and "lesser" creatures like the hangul, gharial, and the Malabar banded swallowtail - a rare endemic butterfly of the Western Ghats. 2006 will mark the end of India as a nation that leads in the battle of wildlife conservation.

Let me quickly recall the news that filtered in only earlier this month. In Bokulaguri in Assam, a tiger was hacked, yes, hacked to death. One does not know the gory details, but it appears that the tiger had become a "menace" in the surrounding villages. Why had it become one? It's the same old story - its forests have been fragmented, degraded, destroyed to be replaced by agricultural land and human habitation. With decline in the numbers of its natural prey, the tiger in turn invaded human territory and became a victim of man's rage - a classic, tragic case of man-animal conflict, perhaps the most severe problem that confronts wildlife not just in India, but across the world, as humans encroach into forests which shrink till the wilderness becomes a thing of the past.

Then, a second hapless tiger fell to the poacher - the other big threat that has brought many creatures to the brink of extinction - in Kanha, feted as the best reserve of the country in a recent study by the World Conservation Union. This tiger was photographed by a tourist limping in the forest, his leg caught in a steel trap, the trap's jaws cutting, bruising, tearing at his flesh and bone. Does this tragic story ring a bell? In June 2002, a tiger had been filmed limping around in Nagarhole National Park. It was tranquillised, its leg chopped off and the once wild animal now spends time in captivity in Mysore. Great, isn't it, that the poor creature was spared the agony of death and that he wasn't skinned, chopped and sold in the market? Yet, I do not applaud, for what right do we have to condemn a free spirit to a life behind bars?

Another horror story filtered in from Jammu and Kashmir. A Hindi news channel brought into our drawing rooms a horrific tale of a rare Himalayan black bear being burnt alive. A group of villagers crowded around the bear, and stoned and set it on fire. Black bears are critically endangered, protected under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act. It's shocking, our increasing intolerance towards wild creatures and our callous attitude, but as deforestation and consequently man-animal conflict increases, the antipathy can only grow. The battle lines have been drawn between man and beast; need I say who will be the winner?

There are other tragedies that dot the year. We began with Orissa's elephant carnage. Killing elephants for ivory, and for revenge for intruding into human habitation, has hit an all time high in the state. More than 30 elephants were killed from April to November this year. Nine elephants that were poached have been discovered just in October from various parts of the state. Most of these were slaughtered for their tusks, which were dismembered from the body. There is more happening in Orissa when it comes to wildlife and intolerance. The coastal region of Gahirmatha is one of the world's only three nesting sites for the rare Olive Ridley turtle. Lakhs of turtles come to mate and nest along this coast, and thousands meet a brutal end. Well over a hundred thousand have died in the past decade. Already seriously threatened by trawlers, the proposed Dhamra port is another immediate and very serious worry for what is believed to be the largest turtle rookery in the world. Orissa is expanding another 13 ports, including Posco at Paradip, along the rivers and coasts. Reliance's offshore drilling project falls plumb in the middle of the route the turtles take to Gahirmatha.

Simlipal, Orissa's lone tiger reserve, is said to have about a hundred tigers since the past decade. But earlier this year, a team appointed to estimate tiger and prey base numbers came back with distressing preliminary reports which made even 20 to 25 tigers an optimistic guess. Then mining, industry and unplanned development continue to break forest and environmental laws to plunder Orissa's - and neighbouring Jharkhand's - already fragmented forests.

The Great Indian bustard is critically endangered with no more than 500 remaining. So desperate is the situation in Madhya Pradesh - where there has been no report of the sighting of the bird in the Ghatigaon and Karera wildlife sanctuaries for the last one year - that the government even announced rewards of Rs 1,000, Rs 2,000 and Rs 8,000 respectively to anyone who was able to show a bustard, its eggs or its chicks.

Another shocker is the gharial: with numbers estimated at 200, it is among India's most endangered animals today. Initial reports of the Crocodile Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union estimate that areas once occupied by the gharial have shrunk by over 98 per cent. Gharials were once common in the Chambal river; today, you would be hard put to spot a single one. Sand mining to feed the construction boom in cities like Delhi and Agra has destroyed their basking and nesting sites, and there are a lot "accidental" deaths with gharials getting stuck in fishing nets and caught in vicious hooks used to illegally poach freshwater turtles. Lawlessness in the region makes patrolling and protection difficult and of course, the gharial is killed for its skin, coveted in the fashion industry for wallets, purses, coats and shoes. Furthermore, we do not realise that the gharial needs free flowing waters, clean rivers and unfettered sandy banks - in short intact, protected river habitats crucial not only for the survival of gharials, rare freshwater dolphins and turtles, but also for humans, for where would we be without clean rivers and water?

It is the forests that feed our rivers, and forests that form the catchments of a majority of India's great rivers. When we destroy forests, we are not just condemning the creatures that thrive within, but ourselves. This is a simple truth, but apparently very difficult for us to grasp and assimilate, for we are bent upon destroying the forests, and so us.

These are just a few tragedies that took place this year. However, no development of 2006 is more catastrophic for the wildlife world than the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill, 2006, passed in Parliament in mid-December. In my writings, I have described this bill as the most destructive and damaging piece of legislation to have been passed since Independence, and have explained why. The land rights bill will kill India's wild animals, its forests, and us. Future generations will remember this, and not forgive the Manmohan Singh Government for doling out our natural heritage to forest-dwellers to retain their vote banks.

So what has this bill done? It's just come into public domain, but it basically provides for forest land to pass into private ownership. Dwellers occupying forest lands as on December 5, 2005 will be given that land, and the catastrophic impact this redistribution of land will have on the country's ecology surpasses imagination. With private ownership, the goals will shift from conservation to economics - why would a man protect a tree if he can sell the wood for good cash in the market? Why would a forest dweller protect a tiger, which may prey upon his cattle, if he gets good money for its skin, bones and other derivatives? Do we expect people and tigers to live together in the forest? It is a marriage doomed from the start. The tiger is a carnivore and it will attack livestock and, driven by hunger because of depleting prey numbers (thanks to a plundered habitat), it will attack man. There is no example, worldwide, of large carnivores co-existing peacefully with humans. Of course, we need only worry about this eventuality till the time tigers and leopards survive.

So, will we "develop" forests, build roads, schools and hospitals - for this what tribals need - and then construct theatres and shopping complexes? For, good living is what the tribal youth of today aspires. If not, then do we not deny them their basic rights?

Will the tribal benefit? Your guess is as good as mine. History shows that these men and women are exploited and rarely empowered. Furthermore, chances are that the land mafia will move in.

An India shorn of its wilderness, with no tigers, no elephants, no bears and no animals roaming free and wild is not an India I would want to grow old in.

I wonder, too, at the ease with which the bill was passed. I do not hear a murmur of protest. NGOs which scream out loud against Salman Khan's and Pataudi's hunting trips (make no mistake, I am glad they are doing this - those who break the law must be punished), have maintained an eerie silence over a bill which will destroy India's forest in one blow. There are no demonstrations, no protests, no morchas. Why hasn't anybody gone to court challenging this dangerous law?

The end of a year and the beginning of a new one is a time to reflect, and I wonder if those who sit in power realise the import of their actions. We, and future generations, will pay for their greed and folly. It strikes me that it is just as well that we will lose our wildlife, for perhaps we do not deserve such wealth at all.