Under their wing

Anjuli Bhargava on how the Titli Trust is protecting and helping rekindle interest in ‘lesser’ creatures such as butterflies and moths

In August 2018, Goran Dusej, 60, and two of his colleagues from Switzerland made an unusual trip to India. Dusej and Co came from halfway across the world for a rather specific purpose: to visit the Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh to see Bhutanitis ludlowi, aka Ludlow’s Bhutan Glory. If the locals thought making a long and expensive trip to spot a butterfly amusing, they didn’t let on.

The rare butterfly species, endemic to Bhutan and that country’s “national butterfly”, was first spotted in India by Sanjay Sondhi of Dehradunbased Titli Trust. Within months of the discovery and its acknowledgement by scientific journals, birders and butterfly enthusiasts started trickling in from all over the world.

Dusej had first seen the Bhutan Glory in a German book his grandmother had given him on the most beautiful butterflies in the world, and was intent on seeing all the species in the book. The Bhutan Glory was the only one he hadn’t seen. He finally saw the butterfly in Eaglenest and took a stunning photograph that the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) bought; the money from the photograph was donated to the Titli Trust.

Sondhi and a friend are also credited with having spotted another rare butterfly, the Tibetan Brimstone, again in Eaglenest. In the Pakke Tiger Reserve, also in Arunachal, Sondhi “rediscovered” Calinaga aborica, aka Dark Freak, a species discovered in 1915 and not seen again till a century later, when he found it.

Since these exciting finds, Sondhi has been accompanying most of the visitor groups himself. He began to lead these tours because it occurred to him that he could widen the scope of what his trust did — by promising villagers livelihood opportunities and additional income in exchange for conserving and preserving their forests, flora and fauna. A workable formula for wildlife conservation might lie in pulling in locals to save their own environment, felt Sondhi.

The idea bore fruit. Community-based nature tours are now organised to the Pakke and Eaglenest sanctuaries in Arunachal; to the Garo Hills in Meghalaya; to Corbett, Pawalgarh, Devalsari and Nanda Devi in

Uttarakhand. Typically, visitors stay in basic but clean homestays or small guest-houses. Locally grown food is cooked for them and the entire experience is quite novel for city dwellers and those who visit from foreign climes. The tourism helps augment the livelihoods of the locals. In turn, the locals commit to not cutting trees, discouraging poaching, working on the right tree mix and preserving their forest and water resources.

SONDHI PULLED IN LOCALS TO SAVE THEIR OWN ENVIRONMENT TO AID WILDLIFE CONSERVATION

Sondhi’s own journey in conservation is edifying, even inspiring. In 2008, when in his mid-forties, he decided he was done with city life and that he wanted to engage more closely with his first love: butterflies, birds and nature conservation. He wrapped up his two-decade-old corporate career as senior management with Thermax and Honeywell, left his home base of Pune and moved with his wife Anchal to Dehradun in Uttarakhand.

In 2009, Sondhi along with Anchal, herself an environmentalist, and former Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) environmentalist Ravi Chopra, set up the Titli

Trust. As the name indicates, it is dedicated to the preservation of butterflies and moths and to conserving nature and the environment. The trio decided to keep the institution small and focus their energies on projects that help the “lesser” creatures — moths, birds and butterflies — rather than espouse the more fashionable cause of large mammals such as tigers and elephants.

The Trust’s focus is on conservation and preservation of species in the Himalayas, working with local communities to preserve their environment and helping them find livelihood opportunities — nature guides, homestays, nature tourism. The third area of work is better management of the humananimal conflict. “Monkeys, leopards and pigs are making life increasingly difficult for the rural populations and vice versa,” explains Sondhi.

In its 10th year now, the Trust is trying to span the length of the Himalayas and is working in Meghalaya, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Sondhi says that what started as a conservation exercise has turned into social empowerment. In almost every region that the Trust works, the locals become more aware and begin to take a more active interest in their environment. The Trust’s main message becomes the locals as well and this eventually makes their work easier. And the “lesser” creatures they concern themselves with — be it the Bhutan Glory or the Tibetan Brimstone — also survive and thrive in the bargain.