JOHN MUIR’S WORDS, “And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul,” reverberate in my ear as I sit writing alone in the hollow of an ageing mulberry tree at the edge of a montane forest in Uzbekistan. I am on a trip to Central Asia finding species specialists who will help me save what is left of nature from the ravages of man.
I became the first Asian—the first person from the eastern hemisphere—elected as Chair of the Species Survival Commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature last October. Since then I have been scouring less represented lands and expertise in a group of 11,000 scientists who volunteer their time to save everything from an elephant to a ladybird. All things bright and beautiful. All creatures great and small.
As I travel the globe from Benin to Switzerland, I look back at India whose nature scientists lead at least 10 of 200 specialist groups that comprise the network. Valid for a nation that has had nature conservation beginnings from at least the Gajavanas of Chandragupta Maurya as attested in the Arthasastra 2,500 years ago or animal protection from the time of Asoka’s edicts in Girnar. India also holds 70 per cent of the world’s tigers, 60 per cent of the Asian elephant, 85 per cent of Asian rhinos and 100 per cent of the Asiatic lion. Large animals that need good quality habitats to live, which is at a premium when 1.4 billion people also live on the same land.
The crisis facing India is not poaching, but the paucity of viable habitat. That paucity leads to increased man-animal conflict. Several misconceptions and half-truths float around, such as: there are no forests left; the forests have no food; too many animals; too many human fatalities; too much crop damage.
India loses more than 500 people a year to large mammal conflict alone. It is not a trifling number; not one to be ignored but to be acted on immediately. The base reasons, however, should be examined.
A major reason is human incursion into forested landscapes through subsistence agriculture, linear infrastructure and large-scale conversions for a multitude of human uses. The need for corridors connecting our many protected areas has been highlighted for more than 20 years, with the landmark publication Right of Passage detailing the corridors that are needed for elephants, for example. These are yet to be secured, necessitating animal movement through human dominated areas. It is true that for certain herbivores, palatable food may be declining in many forests because of the rapid invasion of exotic weeds. The battle against invasives must be taken up countrywide.
A third reason, of course, is human behaviour. From a tolerant public, we are turning increasingly hostile to even the news of a wild animal living alongside us. This has been the case all through our history and nothing new is happening here—other than a heightening of public sentiment that demands the capture of the animal.
Capture does not alleviate the situation at all, as animal biology will then kick in and a new individual will take up the territory of the captured one. What is needed is a holistic plan of managing entire landscapes which includes protected areas for our wild denizens and safe passages for them to move between them, and safe areas for human habitation that does not ever ingress into natural strongholds.
India has been protecting its forests and wildlife using strong laws, committed foresters and a strong civil society sector, but is caught in a triangular paradox. India has the highest absolute number of poor people in the world or those who live on less than $100 a month; a crushing reality. Equally, India aims at an 8 or 9 per cent GDP growth; an aspirational reality. Caught in the narrowing angles of these twin pressures, forests and wildlife get squeezed.
The base of the triangle that does not allow the complete decimation of wildlife is a strong ethic and value system in most Indians. This allows for breathing room, preventing the silent forest syndrome of Southeast Asian forests where much of its fauna has been poached out or the massive deforestation of Latin America where 99 per cent of the Atlantic forests have disappeared.
The Indian situation is more nuanced, with several excellent protected areas, great stories of revival of dwindling species (the freshwater crocodile and vulture species are good examples) and stories of hope like the recovery of Manas National Park from being on the Danger List of Unesco’s World Heritage Sites.
The mugger or crocodile revived from an Endangered status on the IUCN Red List to one of Least Concern thanks to 50 years of dedicated conservation led by a clutch of Indian and foreign scientists backed by the government. Names like Harold Bustard, Rom Whitaker and B.C. Choudhary come to mind. Many vulture species that faced a 90 per cent decline or more seem to be recovering thanks to the work of Bombay Natural History Society, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Indian government.
Manas National Park, destroyed by civil strife, had slipped into the World Heritage In Danger list of Unesco in 1992 but was brought back out of it in 2011 thanks to the championing work of the Wildlife Trust of India and the Bodoland Territorial Council among others. Many reasons for hope.
India’s strong conservation successes are also due to two unsung heroes. One is the judiciary, which has often defended nature and its denizens from any exploitative move by government or private interests. The second is a free and vocal media, which on nature conservation issues has highlighted shortfalls and featured successes. There are instances of both having failed, but there are many more instances of their contribution to India’s natural heritage that has bolstered a strong civil society, equally strong academia and a forest service that has, by and large, rendered high quality service to India’s wildlife.
Looking beyond India, I realise an unprecedented challenge to the survival of humanity and its fellow creatures. The world order, which includes nature protection, is crumbling and biodiversity seems to be at the very last rung of global priority in today’s political climate. If it is, it is a pity—not only because millions of living beings depend on our collective wisdom but also because it is only in their survival, and by their actions, that we can reverse a doomsday situation that is closing in on the human civilisation.
We need to communicate this immediately and in a united way, using global communication machinery that is usually used to sell us the products of our age. We need to invest in high tech—even if it is controversial at times like artificial intelligence or synthetic biology—to catalogue, assess and conserve.
Should we not intervene to produce embryos for the last two surviving female northern white rhinos which without our intervention may be endlings of a sub-species? Should we not encourage genetic modifications that allow avian malaria to be wiped out before the remaining bird species of Hawaii fall prey to this catastrophic disease?
Laying ethical boundaries is important, but not dealing with problems would be a mistake. We are losing species every day. The Slender-billed Curlew and the Christmas Island Shrew were both declared extinct last year. The Vaquita and the Javan rhinoceros teeter on the edge. We must, however, derive hope from the story of the Scimitar-horned Oryx in Africa or the Californian condor in the USA, both once extinct in the wild but brought back with the effort of brilliant scientists and conservationists, backed by far-sighted governments.
I am an optimist by nature, but a cautious one. I wept internally as I watched a bunch of Portula snails cling to the cloudy windowpanes of a terrarium at the Zoological Society of London the other day. These species are lost to the wild and the captives in the zoo are the only ones left. Can we bring back the Portula back to where they belong? Can we replicate the doubling of tiger numbers, which India has achieved, for the rarer Caracal or Great Indian Bustard? My karmic view of the world helps: all we can do is to try, try and try again.
—Vivek Menon is chair, IUCN Species Survival Commission, and founder and executive director, Wildlife Trust of India.