Don’t be oblivious of our natural heritage
Last Sunday, along with three friends, I went on a field trip to Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh (UP). In the scorching sun, as we crawled into a cave on a rocky precipice and settled under a precarious cliff edge to soak in the view from the Kaimur Hills, three species of vultures gave us a magnificent fly-past, while the river Son floated like a simmering ribbon in the heat at a distance.
However, an astonishing story lay on the rock face: A series of primitive rock art (almost 4,000 years old, known as Lekhahia paintings). They depict how our ancestors lived, hunted, fought and celebrated life. This was also a way to record life in nature. We tried looking for something that resembled a hyena in the paintings. The previous night, we had seen one, with the help of Kartik Singh, a young, talented naturalist from Mirzapur.
Unlike its portrayal in the television series, Mirzapur is a treasure trove of natural history. One can easily get lost in its terrain with deep gorges and waterfalls, and pockets of dry deciduous forest. Several residents disapproved of the screen infamy the district has acquired. Instead, they talked about Percy Windham, the longestserving collector of Mirzapur (1900-13), and his fondness for hunting big game with his close friend, hunter-turned-conservationist Jim Corbett. This infamous sport remained a popular pastime in Mirzapur until enforcement agencies started clamping down on it in recent times. In 2017, Mirzapur was in the headlines when wildlife authorities seized five caracals from wildlife traders.
We had no luck finding a caracal, but with Singh’s keen tracking skills, we saw a jungle cat on a hunt in one of the fallow fields. It seems Mirzapur is a place for small mammals, especially wild cats. Singh also showed us camera-trap images of the Asiatic wild cat, also known as Indian desert cat (a first for UP), leopard, civet, sloth bear, sambar deer, porcupines, and jackals from a recent survey by Vindhyan Ecology and Natural History Foundation (VENHF), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working towards establishing a conservation reserve in Mirzapur. We also heard about the presence of wolves and how the animal tracks the movement of nomadic pastoral communities.
But, with every passing year, a bit of the wilderness vanishes as new development springs up. Already a sprawling campus of the Banaras Hindu University has nibbled away at the fragmented forest. But fortunately, the construction of a 1,320-megawatt (MW) coal-fired power station has been stopped by VENHF after allegations emerged in the press that information about the presence of endangered wildlife at the project site (on forestland) was concealed by the promoters.
It’s not just Mirzapur. Many such lesser known wild landscapes are disappearing across India. Apart from forest diversions for developmental projects, illegal land grabbing, unsustainable mining practices and converting forests into farmlands are rampant. For example, in central India, 840 acres of the dense Hasdeo forest in Chhattisgarh will be sacrificed for coal mining. India is considered a mega diverse country, with its rich heritage of biological diversity and high endemism. It is unfortunate that the country publishes a wasteland atlas, ignoring the ecology and ecosystems of these places.
Despite the steady loss of “natural forest,” researchers are finding new species. In 2021, India added 557 new species to the faunal list (now 102,718 species) and 267 new botanical species (54,733 species). India is only 2.4% of the world’s total land surface with 18% of the world population, 8.1% of the global species diversity jostling with 535.78 million livestock (2019 livestock census). And on paper, 5.26% of India’s 2.4% total land surface is marked as a “protected area network”. But do species know boundaries drawn by humans? A 2018 study, Biomass Distribution on Earth, revealed that humans and livestock comprise 96% of the earth’s biomass, leaving only 4% for wild animals. Humans represent just 0.01% of all living things, yet our activities have caused a staggering 83% loss of all wild mammals and half of plants (50%) since agricultural expansion.
Today is International Biodiversity Day. If you want to know more about the world’s natural heritage and how humans are destroying it, do look up The Fence , an artwork by the American novelist Daniel Quinn. It is a satire on human civilisation’s unabated expansion, our changing relationship with the natural world, and why we should not remain oblivious of a heritage called biodiversity.