For the sake of wildlife, do not take that next road trip

NEW DELHI: Let me begin with a confession : I haven’t made too many road trips as an adult, but the very few I have were spectacular. Driving slowly through a forest is beautiful beyond words. It is as if you embrace the earth for those few hours.

Eerily, you do embrace the forest, but in ways you wouldn’t want to. I realized this while reading environmentalist Prerna Bindra’s book, The Vanishing, about India’s wildlife crisis. In an early chapter, she describes the death of a snake on a road in Karnataka’s Kudremukh National Park. It had been run over, the 15th snake she counted that day, killed by cars. I read on, although I didn’t have to read on about the range of animals she has seen knocked down by automobiles, to cringe.

I haven’t spent most of my working years driving on roads, but I have seen Nilgai, cows, a fox, deer, cats, dogs, mongoose – all road kill, all from nearby wilderness. You would have some too. Bindra mentions how a deer took 40 minutes to cross a single road, among much nervousness. Ironic-from the point of view of a traveller, a deer crossing one’s path is a singularly beautiful experience.

This is not unusual— globally, automobiles turn wildlife predators, getting menacingly close as roads expand. So reconsider the road trip, and if you must drive, avoid all night driving, because many animals and reptiles come out then. Drive slow and silently. And don’t take the next road trip.

GLOBALLY, VEHICLES HAVE TURNED WILDLIFE PREDATORS, GETTING CLOSE AS ROADS GROW