A wild elephant in Siliguri | Arijit Mahata
caque in Valparai | Mohan G.
Two yellow-watted lapwings in Gurugram | Anirban Roy Chowdhury
A tiger cub at the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve | Bapat Daksha
Once upon a time, there was a world. It was full of lush forests, azure waters and a perpetually happy sun. And then came humans.
This could be the story of our planet in miniature. According to a 2019 study by Unplastic Collective, India generates 9.46 tonnes of plastic waste annually, most of which chokes landfills and pollutes natural environments. Nature has become a dump yard. It is sad to see our wild animals forced to live amidst this waste. Untouched habitats radiating a riotous beauty are now preserved only in nature magazines and picture calendars. Tiger cubs biting plastic bottles, jackals licking Styrofoam plates, wolves foraging at dump sites…. These are heartbreaking images captured in a new photo project on Instagram called #InOurFilth.
Conceptualised by wildlife conservationists Prachi Galange and Cara Tejpal, the project invites photographers from across the country to send pictures of wild animals grappling with garbage. The two then curate the entries and put up a picture each week on the Instagram handle of the wilderness conservation portal, Sanctuary Nature Foundation, where they both work.
“Our team has always been aware of the plastic and waste management problem in India,” says Galange, who works as a senior consultant photo editor with the foundation. “But seeing it in images really hammered the truth home—that not only are we drowning in our own filth, but we are taking our wildlife down with us.”
As the coordinator of the foundation’s vast digital photo library, Galange began discerning a disturbing theme emerging in the photographs—the intersection of wildlife and waste. That is when she and Tejpal discussed how wildlife in India is always represented as ‘pristine’ and ‘wild’, while that is not always the case. Thus, the campaign was born as an awareness project that they hope “can be translated into further action on waste management and pollution issues in India”.
The plight of our wild animals, as depicted in these stunning images, is an eye-opener. They are forced not only to accommodate the garbage but also to change their habits. For example, the image of a lion-tailed macaque ripping into a curry-filled single-use packet is a dismaying example of how it can no longer depend on its primary diet of fruit. A tiger cub chewing on a plastic gunny bag in the buffer of the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve makes you wonder what happens to these “spillover” tigers who live outside the reserves. There are more questions than answers. When we turn the natural into the unnatural, the certainties of life disappear.