Time To Act

Watching the giant squirrels leaping from branch to branch, often causing exquisite leaf birds to scatter from their quiet green havens; gave me a sense of joy. The call of the squirrels and birdsong accompanied me throughout the day in the fabled forest of Bori in Madhya Pradesh. It is only here that one can see in some of the Neolithic cave paintings, which spoke of the appreciation of things natural by communities that lived here thousands of years ago. I wonder how over the years, we have stopped appreciating ‘all thing bright and wonderful, all creatures big or small’. Wildernesses are fast disappearing but we seem paralyzed into inaction.

The case of Illegal Bondage

Apart from cutting down forests, poachers have been indulging in activities which has proves that without the tacit understanding between corrupt officials and poachers such an alarming increase in such activities cannot take place. The nexus between circuses and the illegal trade in wildlife products has been talked about for some years now, but this is the first time that hard evidence of their skullduggery has turned up. Ms. Maneka Gandhi has been speaking out against circuses for quite some time now and she has often suggested that circus employees and owners use their activities as a front for poaching. The use of wild animals in circuses should be banned. The poor beasts are separated from their natural surroundings and uprooted and held captive against their will.

Act Fast

There is time to save this wilderness, that is fast vanishing and reaching a point of no return, another heaven and another earth would be needed to recreate it's magic. Businessmen conspire to build casinos and hotels in the heart of forests we wished to set aside for tigers. Project Elephant never ever got off the ground. Lacking the leadership that Project Tiger was able to benefit from in the person of Kailash Sankhala, Project Elephant has remained a gray initiative, operating within government confines, bound by government limitations. The key problem is dwindling habitat and broken migratory corridors. To top all this, the latest threat is an emerging market for elephant meat, particularly in tribal areas. Some years ago the Rhesus monkey was threatened, poachers were catching them by the dozen and exporting them to laboratories abroad. Snakes of particular species were threatened too. Prompt action has somewhat reduced poaching activities and animal rights activities all over the world too have raised their voices against such activities.

Strong Will Power

Forest officers, of course, plead either innocence or helplessness. They say that they are ill equipped to deal with this national loss. But they do not deny the fact that such activities have now become virtually commonplace. All it takes is a brief trip to the Bangladesh side of the border to discover that that nation has already wiped out its standing forests. Reliable sources suggest that insurrectionists and terrorists are using timber as a medium of exchange to finance their anti-national activities. If this is true, it makes sense to call the army in to help fight the mafia is such specific areas. The mafia is armed to the teeth with sophisticated weaponry. The forest department on the other hand is ill equipped and motivation-less. Little wonder that our forests are vanishing.

Strong will power is necessary to win this war against the looming ecological disaster. Awareness is there only the people who are the implementing authority should be willing to do perform their duties at the right place at the right time. The laws are there they need only to be enforced. Fortunately, citizen awareness levels are also increasing and they are getting decisions enforced by the judiciary.

Bureaucratic Travails

Forests in our country is in the hands of bureaucrats and forest officers whose indoctrination by World Bank is now so complete that forest management virtually means commercialization, following the dictates of the World Bank. The unfortunate victims of this frightful farce include tiger, elephant and houbara bustard, and many human communities whose cultures evolved in consonance with the wilderness. The country stands to lose its natural heritage and it's water security.

What a far cry from the 1970's when Project Tiger, helped save the dying tiger with support from the late Mrs. Gandhi, Prime Minister of India. Today, for all the above reasons and more the tiger is once again faced with imminent extinction. Short - term gains cannot be arrived at if we star playing with our traditions and heritage. Our cultural and natural heritage has a bond that is there since the earliest days of our civilization. We are intertwined with these majestic creatures of the wild in ways no other society is. Our favorite god is Hanuman (monkey god) and Lord Ganesha (elephant god); and both are threatened. To protect forests and animals all of us have to unite and work towards ecological advancement and prosperity.

By Manju Dubey