Jake Parker originally created Inktober in 2009 as a personal challenge, where he would draw something everyday for a month to improve his own drawing skills, while also learning to imbibe good drawing habits. This practice slowly gathered pace until it became the popular worldwide as the Inktober series on Instagram.
With the pandemic coming down hard on general morale, I felt the time was ripe for some wonderful mental engagement by hosting Current Conservation’s version of Inktober for the first time. As a magazine that focuses on science communication, we believed there was no better time than now to creatively interact with our audience by giving them drawing prompts on topics like ecology, conservation, climate change, and species education.
Freedive spearfishing with the Sama-Bajau, a seaborne people from Southeast Asia, who practice subsistence fishing and live off the sea. Rajasee Ray is a Kolkata-based illustrator and co-founder of Ladyfingers Co.
Every day and the collective memory around suburban flowering trees like the sweet-scented chaffa/ plumeria. Vastavikta Bhagat is an architect, educator, and artistPanda caregivers in China disguise themselves in panda costumes, in the hope that when young pandas are reintroduced into the wild they can learn to live free of human interaction. Shrishti Chatterjee is a visual artist and researcher.The Rainbow Agama is a social animal that spends its waking hours basking in the sun, often congregating in small groups on boulders or tree trunks. Antara Raman is a freelance illustrator and graphic designer.
The ethereal gelatinous beauty is a pelagic sea slug known as Clione Limacina (sea Angel), inhabitants of the deep waters of Arctic and North Atlantic ocean. Priyanka Gunjal is a doctorand medical Illustrator.
For most of us, coral feels like an alien species, residing far away at the bottom of the sea, out of sight, and unfortunately out of mind. Might we care for them more if they lived right next door? Karunya Baskar is anillustrator & graphic designer
By picking up seashells for your jar of memories, you’re disturbing the coastal ecosystem, where a lot of animals, like this soft bodied Hermit crab, depend on shells for protection. Sefi George is an illustratorand a social anthropologist.
I was fascinated with Lichen in Denmark, where temperate climatic conditions help them grow abundantly in fascinating forms and colors. Akanksha Apte is a visualdesigner, illustrator anda nature enthusiast.
Which made it incredibly fun for us to curate the prompt list. Some of the most popular ones were: ‘invasive’, ‘waste’, ‘gentle giants’, ‘indigenous lives’, ‘human wildlife interaction’, and ‘home’. Participants were encouraged to look at the prompts through an environmental conservation lens.
Over the course of 31 days, Greta Ann Sam, the Assistant Managing Editor, and I carefully went through every submission to pick out 10 entries that spoke to us most. As a visually centered magazine, we were in perpetual awe of the construction, design intelligence, and thought put behind the entries that poured in.
We are very grateful to everyone who participated. Eagerly looking forward to hosting #CCInktober again. Until then, keep drawing!
Taxidermy is the art and science of preserving a dead animal using stuffing and mounting techniques. The Wildlife Protection Act (1972) defines taxidermy as the means of curing, preparing and preserving or mounting of trophies. Under the Act, hunting and taxidermy of scheduled species is banned. Possession of wildlife trophies and derivatives has to be declared by the owner, and tagged by the Forest Department to receive an ownership certificate.
Currently there is only one licensed wildlife taxidermist in India. Both wild and domesticated animals are curated by taxidermists. Taxidermy has been helpful in preserving extinct species in museums. In parts of western Arunachal Pradesh, indigenous communities practice taxidermy as a skill to display showpieces and trophies as status symbols. These communities are dependent on their forests for food and livelihoods. However, they are not aware of the legalities associated with it. For them, taxidermy is an art form requiring great skill and resolve, traits necessary to work with dead animals.
Stuffed leopard cat kept outside the house as a trophy.
But in these communities, it is practiced only on specific iconic species. Mentioned below are two taxidermic works (red panda and leopard cat) done by the community under very different circumstances.
The red panda used for stuffing was found dead; killed by wild dogs. It was brought to the village by the yak herder family who found it, and then an ex-hunter performed taxidermy on it. Red pandas are shy animals; spotting them in the wild is extremely difficult. The exhunter, wanting to preserve something rare and extraordinary, stuffed the dead animal to be kept as a showpiece in his house. Thanks to taxidermy, the community is now more aware of the presence of such a majestic species in their forests, and is working on protecting the animal’s habitat.
Skin of the chinese pangolin being dried to be sold for cash income
It was a very different situation for the leopard cat. The leopard cat killed a farmer’s poultry, and in retaliation, the farmer killed the leopard cat. The leopard cat was then stuffed and hung outside in the balcony of the house, as a trophy and a reminder to the villagers what a menace the leopard cat was.
The study of taxidermy in the region has highlighted the issue of hunting, and the need for community-based conservation. The red panda found by the community was killed by wild dogs, and they are now aware of the dangers faced by wildlife in their forests. Similar taxidermic evidence from other parts of the state has helped in identifying threats to wildlife. In another incident, a Himalayan griffon was found preserved by the community, having died due to an electric shock from sitting on a utility pole.
Mesh and solar fencing in farms close to forests in western Arunachal Pradesh
On the other hand, hunting of wildlife has indicated unavailability of income opportunities and loss in livelihoods. The two major livelihoods in western Arunachal Pradesh are agriculture and livestock farming. Economic loss in these livelihoods from human-wildlife interaction has fuelled retaliatory killing in the region. The demand for bush meat, cash income from wildlife trade and human-wildlife conflict in agriculture and livestock farming are the main causes of wild animal hunting. Barking deer and serow are mostly hunted for their bush meat; Chinese pangolins, black bears are taken for the cash income in wildlife trade; wild pigs, porcupines and macaques for their role in crop depredation, and wild dogs and smaller cats responsible for livestock loss under retaliatory killing.
Meat of the barking deer being smoked as part of food preservation
These taxidermic examples show us the need for working with the community to conserve local wildlife, and the necessity of addressing human-wildlife interaction. Some communities in this region try to reduce human-wildlife interaction with the use of effective tools like mesh and electric fencing. Solar fencing is a worthwhile option to reduce economic losses in agriculture. Other measures like the construction of strong and robust sheds for livestock can help in reducing retaliatory killing of wildlife.
The community’s relationship with wildlife is directed by the socio- cultural significance of the animals, and the economic dependency of the community on the forests. The practice of taxidermy portrays different facets of the human-wildlife relationship. Some fuelled by anger, others fuelled by dismay. Learning about this artform through the community’s lens has helped unravel the different perspectives on wildlife and conservation issues in the region.
There is no Lost and Found department at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station.
I went looking for a lost thermos. I heard someone yell, “I can’t find my other sock!” We all found ourselves searching for belongings in a place that doesn’t have a Lost and Found department.
Here’s a guide to finding things around the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station:
Roll in the mud, the green, the soil. You have instructions to forget sight, sound and smell. Obey the wind. Your mind will let itself off its leash. You will not find the keys you lost. You will find the sense to be free.
Learn from the lichen. It will teach you endurance from cold winds and from reindeers of life stamping on your quests. You will not find your lost glove. But you may find vision.
Take off your jacket and dig your hands deep into the soil. Right up to your elbow. Maybe all the way up to your shoulder. And then your head. Bury yourself in bacteria and brown. The clay does not have your lost shoe. If you ask them gently, they might teach your nose lessons in paying attention to life in hidden places.
Gaze lightly across the lake. Screen the horizon for nothing in particular. The water is loud. You don’t have to be. The skies approach. They don’t come bearing a lost sweater. They have a message for you from Time.
Climb the Saana with weak knees. Befriend reindeers. Respect their need for distance. Be gentle to their caution. The mountain and the reindeer have outlived human conclusions. They do not have your lost charger. They have sensibilities to offer. Drop your apparatus. Let them test you now.
If you have lost your compass at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station, give up all will to find it. Some things ought to stay lost.
Note: Kilpisjärvi is a village located in Finnish Lapland. The author wrote this while on expedition with Helsinki-based Bioart Society
This is the question Mary Oliver poses at the end of her poem ‘The Summer Day’, which luxuriates in the wonders of nature: the swan, the black bear, the grasshopper, the grass. Anyone who is familiar with Oliver’s oeuvre will know that this is only a small subset of the wonders that Oliver celebrated in her spare but elegant poems and essays —her words inspiring readers not only to value the natural world in its own right, but also to appreciate its ability to help each of us find purpose in our own place in the universe. Her carefully selected words open a door and invite us through, to the new understandings awaiting us on the other side of the threshold.
Profundity is not the exclusive domain of poets, of course, and even the most casual and unrehearsed words can change the course of a life. Another sort of nature interpreter —the sort that guides you through the wilderness on foot rather than through the pages of a book — had this effect on me when I was a young girl. Leading a small group of us through Appalachian woodlands, he translated the song of an ovenbird (Seiurus aurocapilla) into an English-language mnemonic, ‘teacher TEACHER TEACHER’. In hindsight, this was unintentionally poetic in its own right, given that the word applied not only to his actions on the day, but also to what they eventually inspired me to become — someone who could carry on that same tradition of bridging the gap between people and nature, choosing the right words to persuade people to value and conserve the planet’s other inhabitants.
This, then, was my answer to Oliver’s question. Knowing ‘what’, however, doesn’t guarantee an understanding of ‘how’, and I have spent years exploring different methodologies. Throughout that time, I have frequently revisited another element of that fateful day in the Appalachian woodland. Pointing to a sassafras tree (Sassafras albidum), the guide invited us to note the three different types of leaf that can be found intermingled even on a single branch: some that are elliptical, like an eye; others that are two-lobed, like a mitten; and a third variety with three lobes, like the footprint of a large bird. As if this unique foliage pattern weren’t memorable enough, the guide further cemented the sassafras tree in our memories by recounting a captivating Native American tale explaining the origin of the leaves’ diversity.
I have repeatedly come up empty-handed when attempting to verify the authenticity of this legend. I have found several renderings of the story online, but all, like the version I heard, are recounted by white people. Each of these versions has also been noticeably lacking in detail — including any signature elements of genuine Native American legends — and has included certain language or characteristics much more reminiscent of European tales. My suspicion is that the myth is heavily bastardised, at best, and completely fabricated, at worst.
I do not think my guide was intentionally complicit in this; I imagine he was acting in good faith, using his remarkable oratorial skills to share an enjoyable and educational narrative that he himself had been told at some point in the past. The problem is that stories are influential; words have resonance, and power. His forever shaped the way I respond to the sassafras tree. To some extent, they also helped create a (probably false) understanding of how Native Americans perceive the tree, the natural world in general, and the relationship between humans and wildlife.
What might an indigenous guide have said about the sassafras? What stories might have been told, what cultural practices described, what unique native words used to convey characteristics overlooked by English-speaking settlers and their descendants? Might a native guide have focused on a different species altogether? How might those views — the culmination of thousands of years of human-nature interactions pre-dating the arrival of colonists — have changed my understanding of and relationship to that environment?
These are not idle queries. They are the sorts of questions that are increasingly being asked in support of decolonisation — the process of examining, challenging, and ultimately removing the remaining legacies of coloniality. Everyone can engage in decolonisation, but it is particularly important for teachers like me, since we can influence (among other things) whose knowledge is valued; which information is taken as ‘fact’; and how people interpret various aspects of life experiences. An important part of decolonising your teaching practice is understanding when to take the lead on teaching versus when to cede the platform to others; ensuring that when the platform is ceded, this facilitates the amplification of the right voices; and knowing that when those voices are speaking, it is time to listen and learn from them.
As part of my work towards the third goal, I recently attended an event called Nature Writing: Finding Words to Face the Biodiversity Crisis, featuring two authors who are both women of colour: Jessica J. Lee and Amanda Thomson. Though their works differed substantially in both style and content, they converged in one notable way: exploring how language can bring us closer to nature by offering us precise and sometimes poetic terminology for describing the environment and our responses to it.
Lee, born in Canada to immigrant parents, noted the contrast between her own descriptions of her mother’s native Taiwan and those of earlier Western colonists, whose field guides used terms that ‘mingled beauty with fear, with curiosity and exoticism, occasionally with disgust.’ This begs the question: Whose voice is a better advocate for conserving the local ecosystem? Thomson, a native of Scotland, describes the ways in which learning traditional Scottish natural history terms altered her understandings of places, their features, and herself within those spaces. She notes that losing such language from our vocabularies reveals the changing nature of our relationship to the environment. This forces us to ask: How can the preservation and use of such terms — from other dialects and languages as well — provide a more nuanced and impactful connection with nature?
Both authors recognised that some people and cultures will have a particularly strong connection to certain places, forged from long experience and evident in the very language used to contemplate and describe those locations. Their messages highlight how much is to be gained by immersing yourself in the native ways of capturing the spirit of a place, allowing you to explore new ways not only of verbalising, but also of seeing and feeling. Doing so could help upend colonial hierarchies, requiring the outsider to approach as a learner and receiver, rather than a teacher. This could foster respect and cognitive empathy for the indigenous keepers of knowledge, and provide greater impetus for supporting the preservation of native languages.
Such efforts could lead to multilingual dialogues comprising the multitude of descriptions we humans have devised over the centuries to accurately describe nature’s intricacies. Not only could this facilitate conservation, but it could also help us better understand and appreciate what we have conserved. This seems a laudable goal for our wild and precious lives, and one that Mary Oliver would surely have commended.
Over the last 50 years, the area of ocean under protection has expanded by more than 30 percent, but biodiversity continues to decline. Human activities like fishing and shipping are key drivers of marine biodiversity loss. Protected areas are designed to work in a specific location to prevent or limit activities that damage biodiversity. However, establishing protected areas in places with a lot of human activity can be tricky because people rely on these areas for income, food and culture. Often, governments need to compromise nature protection to accommodate people’s interests and livelihoods, which can lead to marine protected areas (MPAs) being established in places with minimal or no human intervention. We do not currently know how often and under what circumstances, government decisions to establish MPAs lead to these compromises. For example, are such compromises commonplace for high value areas like commercial tuna fishing grounds, or are they also considered for less lucrative uses like recreational fishing? If locations for protection are compromised too often in favour of economic or recreational gains, biodiversity in these areas will continue to be at risk.
We wanted to understand if some human activities are likelier to discourage marine protection than others. We were also interested in establishing whether allowing some human activity within an area of high economic value (rather than strict prohibition) improves its chances of MPA designation. To answer these questions, we compared the locations of over 3,000 MPAs worldwide with data on 15 types of human activity, and determined whether there was a relationship between the intensity of activity and protection status of an MPA.
It appears that MPA site selection is often influenced by social and political considerations rather than by environmental concerns. We found that MPAs are rarely established in the same locations as the most damaging drivers of biodiversity loss, including commercial fishing of mobile pelagic species. We also found that allowing limited human activity does not help improve the likelihood of designating an area as protected.
Unsurprisingly, we see that some human activities are a hindrance for biodiversity protection. If we are to reduce their impact on nature, we need to consider alternative management strategies, such as ecosystem-based fisheries management, in addition to improving MPA establishment in high-use locations. The fundamental aim of conservation must be to improve outcomes by selecting the best strategy for biodiversity protection.
Further Reading
Stevenson, S.L., Woolley, S.N.C., Barnett, J., Dunstan, P. 2020. Testing the presence of marine protected areas against their ability to reduce pressures on biodiversity. Conservation Biology 34: 622-631.
Over the past 1000 years, New Zealand has lost approximately half of its bird species, with the majority of extinctions attributed to predation by introduced mammals. Populations of many surviving forest bird species continue to be preyed upon by mammals, especially rats, possums, and stoats. Conservationists have pioneered many developments in large-scale control of introduced mammals in New Zealand forests over the last fifty years, which presents a unique opportunity to assess responses of birds to this broadscale replicated management experiment.
We recently conducted a meta-analysis of 247 population-level responses of forest birds to different levels of mammal control, recorded across the breadth of New Zealand. Analysing data from 32 uniquely treated sites and 20 different bird species, they compared responses to three intensities of invasive mammal control — zero, low and high intensity control. The high intensity treatments included eradication of invasive mammals from fenced sanctuaries and mainland islands, while many of the low intensity treatments involved periodic, but widespread suppression of mammals via aerially-sown toxin.
We examined the average response of each species according to key life history attributes such as body size and degree of endemism. Deep endemics are believed to have a long evolutionary association with New Zealand, potentially stretching back millions of years, and therefore, to have lost adaptations that enable them to co-habit with predatory mammals. For example, five of the eight deeply endemic species nest in cavities, a trait associated with population declines of forest bird species in New Zealand.
Large-bodied endemic species, such as the Kākā (a cavity-nesting forest parrot) and the Kererū (New Zealand Pigeon), regularly showed positive population-level responses to mammal control. The researchers also identified two small species of shallow endemism – Pīwakawaka (Fantail) and Riroriro (Grey warbler), and four non-endemic species – the Blackbird, Chaffinch, Dunnock and Pihipihi (Silvereye) that arrived in New Zealand in the last 200 years, that tended to decline in detections after mammal control. Their study suggests that large, deeply endemic forest birds, especially those that nest in cavities, are the species most at risk of further decline in the absence of mammal control. But equally, these are the species that stand to gain the most when populations of mammals are reduced. Conversely, there are two shallow endemic and four non-endemic species whose evolutionary history allows them to apparently tolerate the presence of introduced mammals, but perhaps makes them less able in facing competition from recovering populations of larger endemic birds.
Further reading
Doherty, T. S., A. S. Glen, D. G. Nimmo, E.G. Ritchie and C. R. Dickman. 2016. Invasive predators and global biodiversity loss.
Fea N., W. Linklater and S. Hartley. 2020. Responses of New Zealand forest birds to management of introduced mammals. Conservation Biology. doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13456.
Bears, elk, lynx, and other wildlife roam to find food, reproduce, or adapt to a changing environment. It is increasingly difficult for wildlife to move between protected areas, such as National parks, because the landscape is highly divided by differences in habitat condition, as well as the legal authority to change it. Conservation planners rely on maps of habitat and land ownership to identify the best locations for conserving corridors for wildlife movement. Researchers have recently devised a way to highlight practical opportunities to build wildlife corridors by mapping different types of legal authority.
Demonstrating the new approach in Okanogan County, Washington, northwestern USA, this study shows how local decisions affecting habitats along streams can provide options for wildlife to move between the Cascade Range and the Rocky Mountains. Along rivers and streams, numerous authorities and small conservation projects aim to improve river health, reduce flood or erosion hazards, and protect fish and wildlife habitat by planting trees, shrubs, or grasses. If individual projects (such as tree planting events) were viewed within the larger picture of rebuilding corridors, these efforts could be coordinated to achieve added benefits to wildlife.
With locally customized maps showing habitat and legal authority along river networks, government agencies or conservation organizations can coordinate individual projects to achieve larger goals. For example, they can prioritize areas where small habitat improvements could contribute to an emerging wildlife corridor, or areas where the high-quality habitat needs only additional protection to ensure it will be maintained. Viewers can identify areas where small land acquisitions or conservation easements would fill gaps along a possible corridor without any new laws. Key areas of overlapping authority may also highlight opportunities to leverage river restoration dollars for wildlife. Future work will include mapping larger areas and exploring related data sources to deepen our understanding of both social and natural dimensions of conservation.
Further Reading Stahl, A. T., A. K. Fremier and B. A. Cosens. 2020. Mapping legal authority for terrestrial conservation corridors along streams. Conservation Biology 34: 943-955.
Outside, beyond the frosted windows, things are swathed in darkness. Within the warmth of the research station, all is silent but for the heater purring at your feet, and the rasp of pages being turned idly—your crew member, reading a book that details the patterns in which bird feathers grow. You check your watch. 1:30 AM.
“It’s time,” you say, and you both get to your feet. A quick zip of the jacket and you head wordlessly into the night, hooked wooden pole in hand and satchel slung over the shoulder.
Instantly, as if waiting impatiently just beyond the barrier of the door, a new sound punctures the air—an insistent too-too-too call, each note fast, even, and shrill. The sound of owls.
As you head for the noise, you leave a trail of breath in your wake, illuminated by the silver moonlight shining weakly through venous treetops. Beneath your feet is the crunch of unseen leaves that have long since forsaken their lonely branches. As one, the two of you switch on your headlamps. The call is louder now, as you wend through the paths that tunnel between towering oak trees. At a split in this trail, you and your partner peel off, and foray deeper into the woods alone.
You are very close to your destination now. You slow down, picking your way carefully, attempting consummate silence. The tip of a wide mesh suddenly materializes into view: a mist net, stretching long and tall between two poles, almost too fine to see. Though it’s out of sight, you know that a speaker lies just beyond the net playing owl calls on loop; it is this that you’ve been hearing. This is your setup as an ornithologist, rigorously trained to study and capture wild birds. With the speaker playing a male owl’s mating call, you can lure in curious females and pugnacious rivals alike. The net, constructed of tiers of baggy pockets, will catch the owls within. It’s important to check the net at frequent intervals, to ensure that all birds are promptly extracted.
With the focused beam of the headlamp you scan the net . . . there! A thrill of excitement shivers through you. Up high is a small shape, suspended in midair via the net. An owl! A Northern Saw-Whet, to be precise.
You lower the pockets of the net to a height that you can reach using your hooked staff, and hastily shift your headlamp to red light. Though owls have incredible night vision—this is thanks in part to light receptors known as “rods” in their eyes, of which owls have a million per square millimeter—they lack almost all color-sensitive “cones”, thus allowing you to approach the owl without dazzling it. The large yellow eyes spear you now, peering up from a mottled brown and white head. Its eyes are not “eyeballs” in the true sense of the word, for they are stationary and the owl can only adjust its vision by moving its head—which it now demonstrates, tracking your movement warily. If it chose to, this owl could rotate its head 270° left-to-right, or 90° up-and-down.
With deft fingers, you begin to work the saw-whet free from the net. You’re careful to take hold of the feathered legs first—though saw-whets are small, maybe 20 cm in size, they are still fierce little owls, and their claws are their most dangerous asset. With the claws freed, you can then tug the net gently over what approximates as the owl’s shoulder, the crook between the humerus and coracoid bones. The saw-whet clacks its beak menacingly at you, a classic intimidation tactic, but you are undeterred. You procure a cloth bag from your satchel and tuck the owl within, knotting the drawstring tight and looping it around your wrist. With this, you will carry the owl back to your banding station, where you and your partner will quickly determine its age and sex, and fit its leg with a numbered bracelet, or “bird band”, which will help you re-identify birds and keep track of those you may have already caught. This is especially important now, during the fall migration season, when owls move in huge and stealthy swaths at night.
Many, though not all, saw-whets migrate. On a fairly good night, the birds come thick and fast, and a banding station can catch hundreds of owls. But numbers are often at the mercy of the weather—wind direction, temperature, cloud cover, and precipitation can all sway the totals—and there are deeper ecological gears at work too. Saw-whet populations fluctuate in response to those of small rodents, their prey, which in turn spike in years when boreal trees have especially abundant cone crops. As such, saw-whet migrations are cyclical, and every few years, a veritable torrent of owls will sweep through North America like a feathery flood.
By dint of banding birds, you therefore can gauge population trends much more easily. Without a way to identify one bird from another, you would have no way of knowing whether that sixth owl of the night was the same owl caught six times, or six different owls! It is also especially helpful to keep track of how many young birds you capture, to get an idea of how well the species is faring. Low numbers of juveniles could spell trouble for the future of those birds—that likely means very few owlets fledged or survived to migrate, which may in turn lead to fewer owlets in the following seasons. Comparing the numbers each year can give you a stronger sense of what is typical—or worrisome.
In this sense, bird banding stations are an essential line of defense in conservation efforts. After cross-examining banding data across many stations, scientists determined that, in the last 50 years, North American bird populations have declined by roughly 30 percent. That equates to over 3 billion birds lost, or over one out of every four. These numbers are incredibly saddening, and very alarming. Without monitoring programs, our understanding of how perilous the world has become for birds—and indeed, all animals—would be hearsay at best. But now we know better.
With awareness comes the responsibility to act. There are many simple actions that can help birds immediately—turning off your lights at night, which otherwise disorient migrating birds; adding window decals to alert birds of glass surfaces and circumvent collisions; keeping domestic cats indoors; planting native species and avoiding pesticide use in your yard, if you have one; recycling your plastics; and simply watching birds, and reporting what you see! Just as bird banding is a critical piece in the conservation puzzle, so are citizen science initiatives, such as globally-renowned eBird.
Birds are beautiful, alluring animals, ones that we must strive to keep safe. Among these, sawwhets still remain somewhat enigmatic, but our knowledge of their movement and behavior is growing.
With the saw-whet in hand, having completed a swift examination and banding, you step once more into the frigid air. You gently place her, standing, on a flat surface nearby and retreat to watch her. For a moment, she’s entirely still, letting her eyes adjust. Then she unfolds her graceful wings, and, without a sound, she flies away into the night, off to continue her mysterious journey.
Further Reading
All About Birds. 2019. Northern Saw-Whet Owl. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northern_Saw-whet_Owl/ lifehistory. Accessed on September 18, 2020.
National Geographic. 2020. Bird’s Eye View. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/media/birds-eye-view-wbt/. Accessed on September 18, 2020.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology. 2020. Nearly 3 Billion Birds Gone. https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bringbirds- back/. Accessed on September 18, 2020.
I request the old man sitting next to me in the Ladakhi rebo (traditional yak hair tent) as I sip on the delicious butter tea to soothe my rumbling stomach.
“I recall a story about a wolf and three goats,” he says. “A lone wolf encounters the first goat and asks her, ‘What is on top of your head?’ The goat answers, ‘These are my horns.’
Then the wolf asks, ‘What is it that covers your body?’
‘My wool’
‘What is it on your feet?
‘My hooves.’
Unsatisfied with the answers, the wolf eats the goat. He moves to the second goat, who answers similarly. She, too, meets the same fate. Finally, the wolf faces the last and youngest goat. Readying for his third meal, the wolf asks the youngest goat, ‘What is on top of your head?’
‘A knife to kill you,’ she says. ‘What covers your body?’ ‘A rope to tie you.’ ‘What covers your feet?’ ‘My hooves to kick you.’
And with that, the goat pierces her horns into the wolf, binds him with her wool, and kicks him with her hooves, which eventually leads to his death,” concludes the old man.
I am not sure how to respond to this story, but I accept the laughter that pervades the room, smiling tenuously. The anthropologist in me is fighting the conservationist. I am here to record folklore around wildlife for my doctoral research. Folk stories, some argue, are a way for people to make sense of their world by transferring moral qualities to the animal or the ‘more-than-human’ world, as some anthropologists refer to it. Anthropomorphising, that is assigning human emotions to animals, serves as a tool to affirm social norms and behaviours.
I find the wolf story insightful in that it demonstrates how the predator is perceived by the Ladakhi people. I wonder if it is a parable about how some humans conceptualise power, and its subversion by the underdogs (‘undergoats’ in this case). Perhaps it is an example about the thin line between justice and revenge.
When I first encountered the cold deserts of Ladakh in 2013, I questioned my concept of space, mountains, and time. I had previously worked in rainforests, grasslands, agricultural, and urban spaces, but never had I ventured into a landscape so stark and naked, as though the cloak of vegetation had been stripped off abruptly. One must really like nothingness to be able to appreciate a place like this.
High altitudes, that is areas above 3,500 metres in the Western Himalaya, are a world of their own. They are not as remote and disconnected as one would imagine faraway places to be. Instead, they are alive and interconnected through networks — both ecologically and culturally —difficult even for the technologically-savvy to imagine.
Ladakh, for instance, played an important role in the days of the Silk Route trade, which provided people an opportunity to barter for essential as well as luxury items from Central Asia, Tibet, and Mongolia. Even today, it is a place where unpredictability is complemented with ingenuity; the harshness of the landscape is complemented with cooperation, and challenges are complemented with resilience. There are no guarantees about the weather, the high passes, the road, or the mode of transport, but there is usually a way around these even at the most hopeless of times.
Over the six years that I did my research here, I learnt how to work on faith, rely on instinct, and most importantly, memorise a few basic rules — sometimes the hard way. No car? Hitch a ride. No ride? Walk. Snowing? Keep walking. If indoors, have cha (as the Ladakhis called chai). Roads closed?
Have more cha. Cannot leave? Make conversation. What did my research involve? Conversations. My world revolved around cha accompanied by endless chats.
Our conversations touched upon a range of topics from local inventions, such as the potential for agriculture at impossible altitudes, or ice stupas to conserve water, to communal and caste politics; to the state of education in government schools, to wildlife, to culture, to agents of social change. Cha being the sole constant. Cups of cha eventually gave way to endless glasses of chaang (fermented barley) as conversations deepened or lightened up, depending on how one looks at inebriation. They would last for hours, during which time long-forgotten folk songs and gory tales of adventure, hunts and battles were narrated animatedly. Like the conversation I had with mémé lé in the summer of 2016.
Or the lines that an apo from Kargil (apo=grandfather), who was very dear to me, recites while his wife showcases a handmade vintage hookah made of argali horns. The song is about the transitory nature of life, conveyed through references to two predominant carnivores, the snow leopard, and the wolf:
“You are a sly creature, you hide between the rocks to kill your prey, But when you grow old, your cleverness will be of no use. The top of the mountain is inhabited by an arrogant wolf, But when it grows old it will not be able to kill a single lamb.”
During the research, we managed to unearth and record many stories, songs, anecdotes, and proverbs, revolving around wild animals from choughs to gazelles to snow leopards. The work involved hundreds of conversations/ interviews, countless visits to libraries, relentless pursuit of suitable (and interested) transcribers who could help us translate the stories from Ladakhi to Hindi/English. Naturally, our efforts were punctuated frequently with solja — an honorific reference to tea in Ladakhi.
What is the relevance of such an exercise to conservation, one may ask? The logic is simple — one cannot expect to ‘conserve’ without a clear understanding of the values, motivations, and perceptions of the local inhabitants, people and wildlife included. Indeed, conservation is as much about people as it is about wild animals.
Over another cup of cha and some more cajoling, a reticent api lé (api=grandmother), a proud Shamma (inhabitant of western part of Leh), sings a beautiful folk song about the ibex’s ‘magnificent brown horns, teeth shining white like a conch’. And another about how the horns of a blue sheep when seen from atop a mountain ‘make all carnivores happy’. I remind myself that I need to be a neutral observer, but this delicate, nuanced observation overwhelms me. I can picture these wild ungulates peacefully munching on grass as evening descends and a young snow leopard stalking its prey, heart in its mouth.
I look around api lé’s summer shack. There are yarns of sheep wool hanging on nails, an assortment of brass ladles and the claw of a bird of prey, most likely an eagle. I am told it is a good luck charm. “So, some wild animals bring luck?”, I ask naïvely. “Yes, sighting a fox at the start of the journey is considered good luck by many,” says api lé. “By extension, some others bring bad luck then?” “Yes,” she says, “In many villages in Kargil, people believe that if blue sheep and ibex come down to the village from the mountains, then one can expect a natural catastrophe, for example, floods. It happened in 2013. Have some more butter tea, nomo lé.” (nomo=daughter)
“Calamities in the village…. happen when the lha is upset?” I remember asking ajhang lé (ajhang=uncle), a local schoolteacher, about a week before. “Yes,” he said, “when the village or an individual angers the deities, especially the temperamental ones, they can take the form of wild animals like the snow leopard or wolf, and attack livestock.” “How does one rectify it?” I ask. “Pray. Ask for forgiveness. Make a peace offering.” Things that people are expected to do to placate those they may have hurt. I ponder over the complexities of our relationship with what we call the ‘wild’. Do we anthropomorphise animals or animalise humans? Perhaps the dichotomy is arbitrary or even superficial. In a world where animals can have ‘human-like qualities’ and humans can have ‘animallike qualities’, this question is moot. Take for instance, Kinnara and Kinnari —half-human and halfbird deities in Tibetan Buddhism, one of the two predominant religions in Ladakh (with the other being Islam) — that are believed to protect humans.
The worldview we share about wild animals and wild spaces affects their existence and survival (and ours). For instance, a wolf is typically associated with qualities like greed, slyness, stupidity, and trouble. Such cultural biases against the carnivore can fuel much resentment and sometimes retaliation, especially when they prey on people’s livestock. How then, must one frame conservation messages that resonate with people, whilst also enabling them to minimise their losses?
To me, the answer can be arrived at by listening to and appreciating all the divergent perspectives on animals and their potential/ preferred fate. We have innumerable ways of responding to the untenable question of what makes us human and what separates us from the rest of nature (if at all such a thing exists). We can weave a tapestry of imagination out of nothingness. Our stories need to be heard as much as they need to be told.
As I sip my cha several thousand kilometres away from Ladakh, I think about life in the cold desert. I realise that Ladakhi people’s resilience and ingenuity is mirrored in their culture. I think about what got me interested in this seemingly barren landscape. Nothingness. It was nothingness. Once the initial discomfort faded, it offered me the rare privilege to understand that what I perceived as ‘nothingness’ was akin to béyul (mythical and magical hidden land), which was pulsating with stories, imaginations and experiences that were waiting to be unpacked.
The journey is still ongoing, with documentation being the first step. Moving forward, I hope that the stories can be incorporated not only into conservation, but also reach the youth, who are the ultimate torchbearers for this landscape.
Meanwhile, locked down in Bombay, I reminisce about the savoury butter tea, almost feeling the soupy flavour on my tongue. I go into the kitchen to make a strong cup of adrak chai, a close second to solja khante (butter tea).
Weekend getaways to refresh oneself in the lap of nature have become an increasingly common occurrence. However, what if one were told that cities are, in fact, teeming with diverse life forms if we ever stopped to notice? What if the simple act of growing edible food in small pockets around the city could become tiny hotspots of wilderness? Rather than seeing nature as something separate from human habitation, what does it mean to understand and appreciate the ecosystems existing in cities? We reflect on these questions through our own experience of urban farming and attentive walks around the city of Mumbai.
If you look at it long enough, there is a strangely hypnotic quality to a spider’s web. We have spent countless moments mesmerised by the poise of a signature spider, as if deep in meditation. Its uniquely patterned web glistens in the sunlight like fine threads of silver. The trance is broken soon enough by the emphatic alarm call of the tailorbird that is fiercely guarding its nest in a nearby balcony. Tailorbirds, though tiny, produce loud calls that are heard all over the city. We were amused to see something that small being so loud. And there are many others like the tailor bird, who may be small and “insignificant”-looking, but their presence is felt through the many signs they leave for us in the form of songs, feathers and nests.
Contrary to popular belief, cities nurture much more than human life, and can do even better with a little participation from our side. Often, the simplest way to make space for nature in cities is by observing it. This has proven to be true in several ways during the lockdown period, as people find themselves paying attention to spaces that often go unnoticed. The black kite that usually soars up high in the skies is seen relishing an assortment of prey with each passing day, ranging from rats to lizards, birds and fish! With all kinds of wilderness encounters across different cities featuring in the news, the promise and possibilities of urban biodiversity hide in plain sight.
Right before the lockdown, we were caught off-guard at the sight of a young jackal foraging near some trees in suburban Mumbai. It was difficult to say who was getting more attention, us or the jackal, for both spent several minutes following the other, until the jackal finally decided to disappear amongst the thickets. Our non-human companions give us company, even if we do not notice them most of the time; like the rose-ringed parakeet who secretly munches on all the guava fruits on our institute campus on the hottest of afternoons.
One of our favourite evening walk routes goes through a now largely abandoned residential area in the city. Apart from a group of wild pigs and dogs, the area is home to coppersmith barbets, Tickells’ blue flycatchers, Indian silverbills, common ioras, scaly breasted munias, ashy and plain prinias! Once, we spotted a spectacled cobra lazily cross a road and enter a garbage dump, perhaps having made a quick meal of another snake or a rat. In fact, once your senses are attuned to picking up signs in the environment, it is incredible how much a simple morning or evening walk can reveal!
Not just a concrete jungle
Apart from passive observations, it brings us no small measure of joy to witness things growing. Growing edible plants is a uniquely rewarding activity as one gets to experience various connections involved in the journey of food. Pay close attention, and the soil comes alive with hundreds of critters engaged in constant action. A million more are not even visible to the naked eye. We never knew how beautiful okra flowers look, or how the Amaranth plant yields thousands of small, round, shiny black seeds. Digging for tubers felt no less exciting than a treasure hunt, and the resilience of an ash gourd vine that had endured the trauma of being trampled upon as a sapling surprised us no end. It eventually bore over 10 ash gourds weighing between seven and 18 kg!
As the plants have grown in a tiny corner of the academic campus, relationships have become more apparent too. Ants can be seen stroking the underbellies of aphids to stimulate the secretion of plant sap that the aphids feed on. Plants are not silent spectators either. We always wondered how ladybirds would invariably be seen on plants that had too many aphids on them. Numerous studies now show that plants release volatile compounds that attract predators of the pest, and can also warn neighbouring plants! There is much that goes on beyond our sensory perception, but close attention can allow us to appreciate things that we would otherwise miss.
Termites seem busy at work, decomposing layers of organic mulch almost as fast as we can add it. We often spot the common Mormon butterfly hovering around the curry leaf plant to lay eggs.
A wasp quickly catches a leaf miner and flies away, before it becomes a meal itself for the ever-watchful bee-eater. The orb-spider patiently waits for a grub to get caught in its web. A family of mongoose stick their heads out of a burrow, perhaps as curious about us as we are about them. We play a staring game with them being absolutely still and rejoicing quietly when we win. Winning here essentially means the mongoose are no longer wary of our presence and go about their daily activities ignoring us. We make peace with the monkeys who have developed a taste for our brinjals and cabbages. We are thankful that they usually leave our beloved tomatoes alone! After all, we are newer occupants of the land that they had inhabitied long before us. We rarely encounter snakes on the farm, but they let us know of their presence through several feet of (shed) snakeskin lying close to the rough surface of the building wall. The web of relations continues to grow.
Rewilding our cities
There is an old mango tree in our neighbourhood. Apart from its majestic canopy, it is well known as the roosting site of hundreds of black-headed ibis, night herons, glossy ibis, and cattle egrets! The timing of the ibis is impeccable. They arrive in flocks of 10—15 from nearby wetlands and circle around their favourite tree. They soon settle on the tree, occasionally fighting off crows or black kites. It is a mystery how and why they choose those particular trees. Some explanation might exist somewhere, but it won’t do justice to the sheer experience of watching these beautiful birds gathering around the tree at dusk, as if it were calling them to rest for the night.
There is no dearth of life even in what we may consider the filthiest of habitats in the city. Amidst the murky waters of the sewers and gutters we find between railway tracks, we see tiny frogs popping their heads out. In garbage dumps, we find the opportunistic cattle egrets scavenging along with the crows. And in wetlands that are greasy with oil and cluttered with trash, we find waders filtering the food from the rubbish. Some of these areas are invariably flecked with pink as they become the wintering grounds for many lesser and greater flamingos. The migrant populations of birds visiting the city time and again give us hope that we can, perhaps, share this space with them. Even in the darkest corner of a building, an owlet moth mesmerize us with its psychedelic patterns.
However, we must recognise that we can’t take their companionship for granted. As in any relationship, this needs some work from our side. We can actively create habitats that allow diverse species to flourish, even as our hearts and minds expand through such efforts. From balcony gardens to terrace farms, river banks to wetlands, every ecological niche makes a difference. Distant hills and forests are undoubtedly alluring places, but cities need not be bereft of wonder either. In rewilding the spaces in our city, we might find the humanity that is often missing in it.
Anapantham is a name familiar to those who have done the trek from Parambikulam National Park in Kerala, India, down into the western valley following the historic Cochin Tramway, an engineering marvel built during the British times. Historically, these forests along the western face of the Anamalais were called Cochin State Forests and were heavily exploited for timber. The indigenous Kadar people, for whom these forests and rivers are part of the ancestral domain, were in fact hired by the British for a range of plantation and other developmental activities in the region, the Tramway construction being one of them.
Following a landslide in 2002, the Kadar folk of Anapantham were rehabilitated to a settlement called Shastampoovam on the edge of a degraded forest. Life in the upper catchment of Karuvannur river, for the Kadar, is sustained by the forest they were born into. Men, women and children in this new settlement go in search of honey, resin, medicinal plants and wild food. In the olden days, they may have traded and bartered with people in the plains for forest produce. All of the summer months are spent traversing the mountains, and most honey and resin is harvested before the monsoon intensifies. The produce is sold to the Forest Development Agency based on fair prices and a profit sharing mechanism.
It is a cloudy morning in early July. Chandrika and Shaju are headed into a patch of forest close to their home to gather fruits of the Eendh tree, called Queen Sago in English and Cycas circinalis in Latin. I am out with them on a photo documentation of non-conventional nontimber forest products (NTFPs), as part of the community enterprise building carried out by the Conservation and Livelihoods Team of River Research Centre in Kerala. Their two dogs zig zag across the trail, run back and forth, making sure they keep an eye out for anything dangerous. I remark on how the path is overgrown and looks unused, and Chandrika quips, “No terrain in the wild is unfamiliar for us; we wouldn’t get lost even in the dark.”
The Cycad is a gymnosperm from Jurassic times, and is endemic to the Western Ghats. The trunk bears permanent leaf scars, and the leaves resemble palm leaves. Across the Western Ghats the species is subject to heavy harvest pressures from exploitative commercial trade of seeds, male cone, leaf and pith. The fruits are toxic to wildlife, so the natives of Anapantham know there are no competitors and always plenty for people. Queen Sago is a staple food in the traditional diet of indigenous communities, quite a favourite delicacy among the Kadar people, often favoured over rice.
Apparently it is only the fruits that are not sought after by wild creatures! The leaves of Cycas cirinalis are host to the mellow looking Plains Cupid butterfly. The larvae secrete a sugary liquid with amino acids. Ants living on the Cycad feed off this secretion, and in turn protect the larvae from predators. One is intrigued how ancient this association might be…were the Plains Cupid butterflies in search of this Cycad even during the Jurassic times?! For now, Chandrika and Shaju are out to find an adult Cycad, and we have crossed two perennial streams. Once we get to an adult with profuse fruiting, the harvest is rather quick. Shaju climbs on the crocodile-like scaly bark of the trunk and plucks off bunches of fruits. The collection is bundled up in a dhoti (a large piece of cloth – like a sarong – traditionally worn by men) and carried back to their home on the edge of the forest.
Preparing Eendh to eat is labour intensive. After removing the fruit’s hard shell, the seeds are halved and left to dry over a woodstove for a couple of days. They are then tied in a jute sack and immersed in flowing water in a stream for 5-7 days to get rid of the toxin, cycacin. For this leaching process one must choose a stream that is not populated with crabs for they can come and nibble on the seeds right through the sack.
One final step of drying over the woodstove, and then the seeds are ready to be cooked and eaten with meat. Well dried, smoked seeds can be saved for more than three years. Sometimes they are stored in powder form to make a porridge, or a jaggery and coconut based delicacy!
Today, Queen Sago it is eaten far less than in earlier times, either because it is considered less sophisticated than mainstream food or because harvest and treatment is an arduous task. By reviving some of these food ways and finding niche markets for wild food it might be possible to not only secure indigenous livelihoods but also keep alive the knowledge of local resources and their ecology and distribution. Through establishing a relationship with harvesters, the effort is to inculcate sustainable harvest protocol for NTFPs and practices
that help protect species such as Cycas circinalis in the long run. The project hopes to demonstrate that it is possible for native communities to take on conservation stewardship roles and use forest rights in meaningful ways, alongside conserving ethnobotanical knowledge.
Further reading:
Krishnamurthy V., L. Mandle, T. Ticktin, R. Ganesan, C.S. Saneesh and A. Varghese. 2013. Conservation status and effects of harvest on an endemic multi-purpose cycad, Cycas circinalis L., Western Ghats, India. Tropical Ecology 54(3): 309-320.
L.W. Wu. 2010. Elucidating origins of the Cycad Blue (Chilades pandava): a threat to cycad plants worldwide, with a discussion on the evolution of Cycas feeding behavior. PhD thesis. National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Ramakrishnan, V. 2020. Conservation through private initiative: A case study in the Western Ghats, India. https://www.iucn.org/news/ commission-environmental-economic-and-social-policy/202003/ conservation-through-private-initiative-a-case-study-westernghats-india.
When a natural resource is severely depleted, in order to allow it to recover, we sometimes act to protect it by creating rules and regulations that limit our ability to access the resource. However, these interventions that limit use and access often result in short-term economic losses for the communities that depend on the resource for their livelihood. For example, if you’re a fisher, it’s harder to turn a profit or feed your family if you need to fish, less. In the long-term, these communities nearly always experience improved economic conditions. However, this temporary period of loss due to management intervention may motivate users to slip back into detrimental resource extraction practices when they fail to see immediate financial gains.
The Fish Forever program, with founding partners Rare, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), implemented a potential remedy to this behavioural challenge in small fishing communities throughout Indonesia, the Philippines, and coastal Brazil. The proposed solution was a community-led program made up of two components: the implementation of new fishery management plans, and social marketing campaigns focused on fostering community support for the new management measures.
At the core of Fish Forever is the implementation of TURF-reserves, a spatial management intervention that combines territorial use rights for fishing coupled with no-take marine reserves. TURF-reserves are a community-based management approach in which local fishers are given exclusive fishing access to a specific area of the ocean. By having this right, fishers are incentivized to be stewards of their local resources. Along with this right, fishers are also given certain responsibilities such as following specific regulations within the TURF and not fishing in a designated no-take marine reserve. The marine reserve can help both to conserve biodiversity, and can also be a beneficial source of fish that can spill over into the adjacent fished area. While in theory TURF-reserves can have both ecological benefits and socio-economic benefits for the local fishing community, they do require significant behaviour changes by local fishers in order to succeed.
Social marketing is a tool meant to influence specific behavior changes by using marketing techniques, and in this instance, was implemented by local partners through TV ads, radio spots, and even parades to help build support for the new fisheries management plans.
Villagers in the Philippines with representatives from UCSB, EDF, and Rare gathered around “Rabita the Rabbitfish,” a mascot designed as a part of the Fish Forever social marketing campaign. Photo credit: Roquelito Mancao.
Impact
Researchers found that support for the fisheries management plans was positive in the fishing communities of all three countries following the social marketing campaigns – despite the fact that they may have been experiencing short-term economic losses. This suggests that behavioural interventions like the Fish Forever social marketing campaign can help in building support for fisheries management interventions, even before the expected financial gains have materialized, and could help make sustainable fishing practices the social norm in these communities. When we think about the long-term success of sustainable resource management, it’s important to consider how we engage with community perception and behaviour in order to create lasting ecological, economic, and social benefits for people and nature.
Further Reading:
McDonald, G., Wilson, M., Veríssimo, D., Twohey, R., Clemence, M., Apistar, D., Box, S., Butler, P., Cadiz, F.C., Campbell, S.J., Cox, C., Effron, M., Gaines, S., Jakub, R., Mancao, R.H., Rojas, P.T., Tirona, R.S. and Vianna, G. (2020), Catalyzing sustainable fisheries management though behavior change interventions. Conservation Biology. Accepted Author Manuscript. doi:10.1111/cobi.13475
from feeding grounds, to the phenomenal nesting rookery
from a long way afar
to the beach right here, in Rushikulya*
looking for the perfect spot
not too cold, not too hot
a tropical beach to pitch in
not one to rest or give in
she strove with all her might
a nest had to be dug alright
ploughing the earth with flippers at the back
and absolutely no room for slack
One foot and some more she dug
a cone of a hollow deep and snug
big enough to lay 100 plus eggs, may be a li’l less
all set for a nesting fest
they call it the ‘arribada’ you bet!
its Spanish for ‘arriving by sea’, could you guess
she nearly went into a trance henceforth
spawn set, a thumping dance was in accord
next was all about tossing some mud around
to ward off nosey predators that abound
safe and secure the eggs had to be
for 45 or 50 days in the least
leaving us in our cosy hideaway
she headed back to the waters right away
one, two, three, four, almost eight weeks went by
we grew inside – my siblings and I
and then it was time
breaking shells open, out we climb
biding, waiting, and on cue from cooler night-time
we jostle to the moon-lit waves, led by their sparkle and shine
once afoot, there isn’t a moment to waste
many precious lives get saved in that haste
for dangers lurk in the dash toward the sea
crabs, dogs, jackals could creep upon us gingerly
many of us made it through the blast
into the waters – safety at last
ocean currents would now be the compass
as we dip, spin and swim in the vastness
onward and beyond, we plunge
miles and miles onto the ocean we’re flung
‘lost years’ and many lost mates later
we return to the waters long farther…
* Rushikulya river mouth, along the coast of Odisha in India, is a mass nesting site for olive ridley turtles – one of the largest such sites in the world. Categorized ‘vulnerable’ on the IUCN Red list, olive ridleys feed in the Gulf of Mannar, along the Sri Lankan coast, and elsewhere in the Bay of Bengal, and make annual migrations to the Odisha coast to nest.
We have often argued against locking Nature away from people. But we must recant. Nature needs to be locked up, for her own good. Nature is dangerous, and we need to protect her from herself.
Let us explain. Judging by our previous writing, you will have guessed that we are somewhat sceptical about the Half-Earth movement, which seeks to set aside half of the planet for Nature. Our doubts arise because it is not clear how these areas will be set aside or what levels of protection they will afford. It is not clear who will need to move, and who should restrict their livelihoods. It is not clear whose version and vision for Nature is getting the designated half. It is not at all clear that this will deal with the root of the problem that has driven the degradation and despoliation of Nature – namely economies governed by greed.
And one could argue that actually these are merely quibbles. We have a more fundamental point of agreement with Half-Earthers, namely a desire for less despoliation of Nature. Our disagreement is largely about means. In fact, we would all welcome many of the same general ends.
But that very agreement may, in fact, have been our most serious mistake. We are assuming that Nature can be trusted. That if you leave things to Nature, if you allow the wild to flourish, then that will be a good thing. And now it appears that our faith and optimism was hopelessly naïve.
Some philosophers argue that anyone who delights in seeing wild animals flourishing must be appalled by the death, destruction and sheer misery that is deliberately built into so many creatures’ reproduction strategies. Simply put, many species (so called ‘r-strategists’) deliberately have gazillions of children fully expecting most to die after short miserable lives. For example, Oscar Horta has estimated that the breeding population of cod in the Gulf of Maine creates over 6300 years of suffering in doomed codlings every breeding cycle.
For some, this suffering is unacceptable. We need to find ways to intervene, to separate predators from prey and to stop prey species from being so incredibly fecund. This will be quite far-reaching, because it requires setting up a new Nature Zoo, in which the wild is carefully segregated away from itself. Specifically, it would entail separating predators from prey, providing dietary alternatives for predators based on non-sentient species like plants, and mass sterilisation or gene therapy for r-strategists so that they produce far fewer young. And gene therapy could also be used to modify plants so that they are fit for consumption by carnivores.
Philosophers insist that we take this vision seriously. As Horta writes: “it would be strange not to think about ways in which we could act to improve the situation of animals in the wild once we are aware of the immense amount of suffering present in it.” We must admit that it is a stimulating vision which prompts a large number of reactions but we will restrict ourselves to two observations at this point.
First, it should be plainly obvious that allowing Nature to unleash herself on herself in this wanton fashion all over the planet is grossly irresponsible. The suffering and death of the wild are intolerable. Nature needs half? Poppycock! Until Atlantic cod, ridley turtles and others learn to control their frankly disgusting breeding impulse, they do not deserve anything. Evicting all life forms from the Gulfs of Maine to Mexico until they can treat each other kindly is a moral priority. Nature cannot be trusted to look after herself humanely.
It’s worth pointing out that Nature has previous convictions in this respect. After all, r-strategies evolved from somewhere. And it is hardly necessary to remind readers that we are now entering, with the Anthropocene, the sixth mass extinction. This one’s on us, but the previous five were all Nature’s fault. At the end of the Permian (a bad hair era), she knocked off over 90 percent of species, and at the K-T boundary, all dinosaurs barring birds. Nature seems to revel in death and extinction.
It is purely logical therefore to insist that Nature only be given space when it has been properly segregated into different domains that permit more dignified and wholesome inter-species interaction which exclude predation, parasitism, infestation, competition, aggression, minor nibbling and any other form of harassment.
Second, we must also recognise its inevitability. This is coming down the pipe, folks. Just look at the speed made in scientific progress towards mapping and editing genes. It’s exponential. Indeed, given the accelerating progress being made in gene mapping and modification, we predict that the arrival of the means to establish new humane nature zoos will be achieved by Monday 4th of July 2024.
Nature, do not fear, we will nurture you back to life!
Have you ever wondered if there still are creatures in the world that we haven’t found yet? Perhaps in places that have yet to be discovered? Hidden in the jungles of Southeast Asia is a cat that most people in the world have never seen. Even though it was first reported to the western world 200 years ago by a naturalist named Edward Griffith, this cat has stayed as mysterious and hidden as its name suggests. The clouded leopard has the scientific name Neofelis nebulosa, which actually means ‘new cat, cloud’! It is medium-sized, lives in trees, and is named for the large cloud-shaped patterns on its fur. This creature is less than three feet long and weighs between 25 and 50 pounds, which is quite small compared to larger cats like South American jaguars (200 pounds), African lions (400 pounds), and Asian tigers (up to 600 pounds). For this reason, the clouded leopard is known as “the smallest big cat”. Like its cousin, the snow leopard, the clouded leopard does not roar, and has many other unusual and unique characteristics.
Even though people have known about these beautiful creatures for a long time, there is still a lot of mystery surrounding them. In 2006, scientists discovered that the clouded leopard species we knew about were actually two different species – the clouded leopard on the mainland continent of Asia called the mainland clouded leopard, and another species isolated on two islands, Borneo and Sumatra in the country of Indonesia. They named this the Sunda clouded leopard. They may look the same at a glance, but under close inspection, there are many differences between these two cats, from the size and shape of their teeth to small pattern differences in their fur. The surest way to tell them apart came from DNA testing. By comparing the DNA of clouded leopards from mainland Asia and the DNA of those from the island of Borneo, a team of researchers found that these two species of clouded leopard are as different as lions and jaguars.
Many traits make the clouded leopard special in the larger world of cats as well. They have a unique pattern to their fur, unlike any other of its kind. Their ankles can rotate backward like a squirrel’s, allowing them to climb down tree trunks head-first! They also have incredibly long teeth. When compared to the overall size of their bodies or the tooth-to-body ratio, both species of clouded leopards have the largest canines of any living cat. The newest species — the Sunda clouded leopard — has canines that are longer and thinner than even their cousins on the mainland. However, if you look at one, you won’t see their front teeth hanging out of their mouths like the sabre-toothed cats we see in movies. Their teeth are just short enough to stay tucked under their lips, hidden most of the time.
In pop culture, the words sabre-toothed cat might make one think of Diego from the move Ice Age. While Diego and his kind did exist, their name comes from (you guessed it) their sabre-shaped canines. A saber is a sword that is long and slightly curved, like those of pirates we see in regular pop culture. Like most swords, the blade is flat, which is important when we are comparing them to teeth. Cats today have coneshaped teeth, which allow them to attack and hold onto their struggling prey for elongated long. Flat teeth are no good here because they are weaker in one direction. If you push against the flat side of a blade, it is likelier to break than if you push against the thick edge. Think of trying to break a wooden board in karate. If you hit the flat side it might crack, but if you tried to break the edge, it would only hurt you! Sabretoothed cats’ sabre teeth were flatter and less cone shaped. If a sabre-toothed cat were to attack an animal and that animal struggled, there was a good chance his teeth might actually crack like the wooden board.
Sabre-toothed cats of old
There are many extinct species that represent what we might think of when we hear of “sabre-toothed cats”. Although there were others, two of these groups were especially dominant at different times. As early as 35 million years ago, an early group called Nimravids (Nim-ra-vids) roamed the plains of North America, Europe and Asia. Although they were not related to true sabrecats at all, these creatures were shaped like later sabre-toothed cats, bulky, with big forelimbs and thick necks. A long time later, only 2.5 million years ago, a group of true sabrecats, called Smilodons (Smile-o-dons) arose. They too had thick limbs and strong necks, and hunted all over — not just the plains, but in the forests and mountains as well. Along with them were other large predators hunting the ancient versions of deer and buffalo. In fact, there were so many different animals competing for food that scientists believe they were forced to focus on only one or two kinds of prey. This kind of focus is called “specialization”.
When an animal specializes, it often leads to exaggerated features like brighter colors, larger eyes, or longer fangs. In the case of sabrecats, specializing made their canine teeth longer and thinner over time. With such amazing canines, attacking prey could put their teeth in jeopardy. Scientists aren’t sure about how they actually hunted yet, but there are some excellent ideas. One common theory suggests that they would surprise their meal and attack them with a single kill bite, holding them still with their strong forelimbs rather than their teeth. After they killed their prey, they would have faced another problem. In order to be able to fit anything in their mouths, their jaws would also need to open extremely wide to clear those long teeth. And that is what researchers found — that Smilodons and other sabre-toothed cats could open their mouths extremely wide, a measurement in science called the “gape angle”. It was this large gape angle that clued one researcher to the similarities between these incredible extinct cats, and the modern-day clouded leopard.
Comparison to the modern clouded leopard
Per Christiansen, a Norwegian paleontologist who studies prehistoric cats, noticed that clouded leopards have the amazing ability to open their mouths wider than any other living cat — to a staggering 100 degrees or more! In comparison, a human has a gape angle that averages 75 degrees. This got him thinking about their teeth, and the reason for those wide mouths. He found that along with their incredible gape angle, their canine teeth were somewhat sabre-shaped, just like the cats he studied. First, he measured the width and length of the canines from many different clouded leopards, as well as lions, leopards, tigers, and other living cats. Then he compared them to the canines of many different extinct sabre-toothed cats. He found that the canines of the clouded leopard are more like the massive canines of those prehistoric cats than they are to any other living cats today! And the similarities don’t stop there.
Clouded leopards live in the dense jungles of Southeast Asia, where they spend most of their time high in the trees. There, they do everything from eating to sleeping. They even hunt monkeys high in the trees! Being in the trees so much, they have incredibly strong front legs, which they use to climb up, down, sideways, and even on the underside of tree branches! Remember how the Smilodons and the Nimravids have strong front legs to capture prey and hold them down? Clouded leopards do the same thing. It makes sense, too. Clouded leopards feed on many different types of animals, from porcupines and monkeys to pigs and deer on the forest floor. Some of their prey are even bigger than the clouded leopards are! Since the leopard’s teeth are long and narrow, attacking such large prey will increase the risk of breaking those long teeth. Their powerful front legs allow them to hold down prey while they use a strong killing bite. Scientists have also discovered that just as strong front legs make the clouded leopard good at both climbing trees and catching prey, many of the ancient sabrecats were good at climbing trees too.
Clouded leopards, and especially the Sunda clouded leopards in Borneo, are still much of a mystery because of their remote locations and hidden, solitary nature. There is still much to learn about the way they hunt and how they use their long fangs. However, we do know that the Sunda clouded leopard is the largest predator in the jungles it calls home. This means that there is less competition for prey, and less need for specialization. But if another animal comes along that hunts the same prey as the Sunda clouded leopard, there is a chance that their teeth would need to grow even longer and thinner for more specialized hunting, and they would end up looking just like the extinct sabrecats’ teeth!
Right now, Sunda clouded leopards hold the record for having the longest and most sabre-like teeth for their body size in the cat world today, crowning them the new sabre-toothed cats of the animal kingdom! The massive canine teeth, along with other incredible and beautiful features, make this animal one of the most interesting creatures there is still so much to learn about. How amazing is it that there are still extant sabre-toothed cats living among us today?
Millions of 10-cm-long yellow insects emerge from the river and scramble onto the water surface to mate. Then, these little beauties fly ‘en masse’ upriver for several kilometres to lay eggs, all in a span of 2-3 hours on a calm early-summer evening. To people fortunate to catch it, this will always be a wondrous, peculiar phenomenon. This is the spectacular swarming of the long-tailed mayfly (Palingenia longicauda), a species in the insect order Ephemeroptera.
In the past, the long-tailed mayfly was common in middle sections of lowland rivers all over Europe. The species is now confined to the catchment (an area of water collection and drainage) of the river Tisza in eastern Hungary, the Rába river in western Hungary, the Prut river in Moldova, and some other rivers in Ukraine.
Somewhere, this confinement is a tragedy. What happened to this spectacular mayfly, whose swarming was first documented as early as 1634 in north-west Europe? Recent studies show that the species has lost more than 95 percent of its geographical range in a few centuries. It went extinct in France in 1922, Germany in 1953, and disappeared from Danube, the largest river in central Europe, in 1974.
Causes of loss
The most likely reasons for this loss are river regulation, riverbank modifications such as riprap stone structures, and water pollution. The larvae of this species live in burrows that are dug in eroding clay riverbanks underwater. They undergo 20 moults (the process of shedding skin, feather etc.) during their three-year development period. They come above the water surface to become imagoes — sexually mature adult insects post metamorphosis — in a final moult, reproduce and die, all within a few hours.
Eroding clay riverbanks typically form on the outer arches of river bends, and the progression of erosion often threatens densely populated human settlements or agricultural areas in Europe. As a result, structures to prevent erosion were built by water management agencies. But this led to the disappearance of the classic habitat of Palingenia mayflies in many river systems. The larvae feed by filtering organic matter and algae from the water moving through their burrow and serve as an important food base for a variety of fish. Water pollution further exacerbates the effect of habitat loss, and the decline of this larvae also threatens higher trophic levels along the food web.
New threats
The mayflies, however, had found their fortune in traditionally “unfortunate” countries in Eastern Europe, where rivers were more or less left alone. However, new developments threaten even the remaining range of the species. The unpredictability of water supply and long periods of drought increasing with frequency under climate change are resulting in an absence of the spring and early-summer floods that once rejuvenated the eroding clay riverbanks. As a result, sediment was deposited in the outer arches of riverbanks. This prevented the larvae from digging their burrows in the riverbank.
Another recent threat is that swarming often occurs now over several days, rather than on one “big day”. When there are fewer individuals swarming over several days, predators can catch more of them proportionally than they would during one big, swooping swarming. If predators are able to take, say, 50,000 individual mayflies per day, a swarming of 1 million mayflies distributed over 10 days will leave half a million mayflies to reproduce. But if the swarming occurs on one day, this number will be 950,000. This is a huge difference in the number of individual mayflies reproducing in the population. These processes may explain recent observations that the number of individual mayfly swarming has declined in many sections of the Tisza.
A chance for the mayflies
While the mayfly swarming has long been a celebrated local event along the rivers where it is still found, large-scale conservation attention has evaded this species. For example, the species is not listed in the Habitats Directive, the cornerstone of non-bird species conservation in the European Union. However, the recent listing of the mayflies and their spectacular swarming as a “hungaricum” (worthy of distinction unique to the country of Hungary), may change this. We expect increased attention to the species and its declining conservation status.
There is reason to hope that water management interventions that damage classic habitats will not be implemented. In areas where this is possible, restoration of the mayflies’ habitats by removing riprap and other stone structures will also become necessary. However, larger-scale thinking and coordination are necessary to ensure the long-term persistence of the species. We need to preserve or restore natural and semi-natural habitats, mainly forests, in the upstream areas of the catchment to reduce the unpredictability in water discharge. All this requires trans-boundary cooperation between the countries sharing the Tisza catchment area. Such cooperation has proven successful in alleviating the effects of river pollution recently. We need similar, consistent efforts of cooperation to address the threats to the mayfly – the hidden beauty of many meandering rivers.
Chokalingam was a very special character. Interestingly, his facial features somewhat resembled Australian Aborigine features. Like many Indian tribes, the Irula have become quite diluted as a particular racial type and in many, you have to look hard to see evidence of their Indian aboriginal ancestry. “Chocky” was one of the Irula instrumental in setting up the Irula Snake-Catchers’ Industrial Cooperative Society (ISCICS). Based on the Irulas’ superb knowledge of snakes, the Society would provide a livelihood for its members. But first, we needed to get them together. Chocky was one of my go-betweens. He also attended the early meetings with the Tamil Nadu Government’s Industry and Forest Departments. Chocky’s younger son, Kali, is the same age as my younger son, Samir, and the sometimes deadly mischief they got up to is a story for another time.
In those days, I was out with the Irula three or four days a week, learning what I could about their techniques in finding and catching rodents, snakes and other creatures of the farmlands and scrub jungle. When the Irula are walking along, they notice things that completely elude even weather worn and trained researchers: the smelly fresh scat of a monitor lizard, the smooth track of a snake on the edge of a rat hole (going in, or coming out?), a freshly shed skin hidden under the grass (a species we want?), fresh tracks, wisps of hair and live lice at the mouth of a rat hole, and of course, so much more in the way of edible and medicinal plants.
One day Chocky showed me a freshly repaired circular patch on a large termite mound. “Udumbu kudu” he said – a monitor lizard had dug a nest hole in the side of a termite mound, gone in, laid her eggs and departed and now, the termites had sealed up the hole thus securing the eggs from predation. Chocky explained that the monitors especially like to use the mound of the ‘black termites’ for nesting because these soldier termites are so aggressive that predators know not to mess around. Sure enough we found 10 long, leathery eggs which we collected and incubated. The eggs hatched a long 5 months later and we released the brilliantly marked young.
Walking along the densely vegetated bund of a small tank, Chocky suddenly stopped and pointed to something in a neem tree. “Pacha wona”, said Chocky. “A chameleon.” I expected to take a long time to find this wizard of camouflage, but there it was, in brilliant purple and yellow. It did not blend in with the surroundings at all! We both felt that there must have been another chameleon somewhere close by since this was the typical colour of a chameleon who had been fighting with a rival male. I’m pretty colour blind (reds and greens), so I never trust colours. But my eyes and brain seem to have developed a good ‘shape discerning ability’. Sometimes, when there’s a group of people with us on a reptile hunt and a chameleon is located, we’d tell everyone to turn around for a few minutes, and release the chameleon in a small tree. They would then have to find it again. The reptile’s ability to ‘disappear’ makes some of our guests take me seriously when I say, “It has turned into a big leaf on the tree”.
Some years ago, the ISCICS received an order for five grams of scorpion venom for a pilot project to produce scorpion anti venom. Apparently, the death rate amongst small children from scorpion sting is very high in some parts of India – the main culprit being the oddly-named Hottentoti tamulus, the common red scorpion known to all of us. Well, it was going to take about a 1000 scorpions to produce each gram of venom. How the hell were we going to find them? Chokalingam said, “No problem, if we put out a reward of Rs.5 per scorpion, the Irula will get 5000 within two months”. While some scorpions, like the large black ones, are tunnel diggers, the red scorpion seems to prefer hiding under rocks, plant debris and unfortunately, between the tiles on people’s roofs. Soon, the scorpions started coming into the ISCICS quarters by the bagful. We worked out a simple system of holding the wriggly little scorpions with a pair of forceps, tail-tip over the side of a petri dish. Then, by delivering a mild electric shock to the scorpion’s tail, a drop or two of whitish venom emerged from the sharp, curved tip of the stinger. The process was agonizingly slow but Chockalingam’s concentration and extreme patience formed just the right combination to make this venom extraction work really well. Within three months of receiving the scorpion venom order, the Irula had the five grams to send to the anti venom lab where it hopefully helped save children’s lives.
Chokalingam was an Irula medicine man as well and I once watched him treat a serious saw-scaled viper bite. An Irula girl had been bitten on the finger by a large one and her hand was badly swollen. I asked if we should take her to a hospital, but Chokalingam was adamant that he knew how to treat her. Wrapping a cord around her forearm, he made tiny slices in the webbing between her fingers with a bit of broken glass. By increasing the pressure of the cord around her arm, drops of blood and clear serum exuded from these little cuts. After that, he wrapped her entire arm in a cloth filled with a poultice of black turmeric leaves, which was to stay on for three days. After the poultice was removed, the swelling had all but disappeared and there was no doubt that the wound at the site of the bite was healing well. The wealth of Irula tribal medicine got a considerable fillip when the Irula Tribal Women’s Welfare Society (ITWWS) was started at Thandarai at the instance of Zai Whitaker, and we still have plenty to learn from these amazing people.
A bonus from knowing the land, its plants and creatures were the edible titbits that came our way while walking the countryside with tribesmen like Chokalingam. The yam the Irulas call Velli-kodi kizhangu is, they say, what they used to survive on before rice became the staple. Finding a vine with typical heart-shaped leaves, Chocky would carefully dig until the fat root was exposed. He would cut the main root off and bury the top of the root to which the vine was attached. “The root will grow again,” said Chocky. All I could think of was, “Am I looking at one of those first instances of agriculture? Is this perhaps how agriculture began?” We collected berries like the syrupy sweet gunja-pazham, savoured the sharp tartness of small black thorny berries called sura-pazham, the carrot stick refreshment of gnawing on a bit of ‘sappathi kalli’ (a type of spineless cactus flower) and it was all good. But these pale in comparison to the ‘honey experience’.
Often, on a long tiring walk, Chokalingam would keep his eyes tuned to finding some ‘kutchi-then’ (stick honey). These particular bees make their small honey comb on a straight stick conveniently at eye level, not way up in a tree nor in a hole. They sting like most other bees, but by gently blowing on the hive the bees are persuaded to fly away. Chokalingam cut both ends of the stick with his aruval (a curved machete) and brought out a turkey drumstick-sized honeycomb…ooof! Under the honey-packed wax cells of the comb, there are often bee larvae, one in each cell and especially prized by Irula children. If we were hot, sweaty, and hungry after half a day of walking, biting into that honeycomb and letting the honey drip down from your lips all the way over your fingers was heaven. I was tempted to slurp like a child. “No, don’t do that”, warned Chokalingam. “If you slurp the honey like that, you can choke.”. That’s what happened to me one day and it was fixed by a good slap on the back and a sip of water.
I was and am still amazed at the Irulas’ ability to find and capture rodents. For a tribe that made its name in conservation for their scientific love affair with snakes, their knowledge of every other species that they interacted with always astounded me. I was sure they could do a better and safer job of rodent control than the pesticide people that most of us are keen to constantly hire. When Chokalingam and I were invited to the Central Food Technology Research Institute in Mysore, Karnataka, he displayed his skill and understanding of rodent behaviour and caught a batch of 28 lesser bandicoots plus several gerbils in just one afternoon of digging up burrows. After a few more field trials, we received a grant from the Department of Science and Technology for a serious rat project. During the year-long rat hunt, the Irula caught a quarter of a million rats and recovered close to five tonnes of stored grain from rat burrows. We dug out entire rat burrow systems, mapped each one of them and learned a lot about the habits of the four main species affecting crops in our area of Tamil Nadu. The next phase was to set up a bio-control company owned and operated by Irulas, but it never happened. I thought that we had proved the effectiveness of hands-on rodent control without having to use dangerous pesticides, but I guess there is big money in the pesticides industry and our enthusiasm just died without support for the idea of applying the Irulas’ tribal technology to a problem that may account for the loss of a quarter of all the grain we produce in India. Is there anybody out there interested in our idea of promoting the Irula Pest Busters?
Reading conservation papers these days is like exploring a new galaxy. We are not just discovering new worlds, we are being forced completely to re-imagine what life constitutes, and what self and identity actually mean.
And nowhere is this truer than with plants. Lively ontologies rumbunctiously jostle the fertile imaginaries of more-than-plant personhood. They playfully imbricate otherness into rhyzomatic structures, joining cosmologies within and through connection. Variegated subjectivities intersperse across and within species boundaries, defying traditional taxonomies. These are networks, if you will, that are not just animate, but plantimate.
These interests have a distinguished pedigree. Jagdish Chandra Bose, a doyen of early 20th century science, strapped vegetables to machines to measure their electrical impulses, demonstrating that carrots winced as they were sliced and convulsing cabbages gasped in boiling water. He even showed that they grew better when they listened to good music. Bose argued that plants felt both pleasure and pain.
Nearly a century later, it turns out he was onto something. Plants do emit ultrasonic sounds when cut1. They respond to the buzzing of bees. They might well ask:
‘How are we not like you?, If you cut us, do we not scream2?, If you tickle us, do we not giggle?, If you introduce us to sport pitches, do we not scream with joy when trodden on by famous cricketers?’
Thus has emerged the campaign to confer personhood upon plants. Now this creates a conundrum for a certain section of society. Currently at the top of Mount Morality are those who believe that no animal shall serve any human purpose whatsoever. Every animal is a person, has a right, and must not be used or abused in any way.
But, if adoration of animals comes, can passion for plants be far behind? After all, if plants have personhood too, then we must go the whole hog (or potato). We must democratise trophic webs and introduce participatory decision making into food chains down to the last blade of grass.
But before we embrace our new brethren, before we dare to welcome them to our domain, we need to take a long hard look at ourselves in the mirror. There is an ugly shadow of patriarchal and imperial domination looming over this beautiful garden of exploration. Our quest is for others be like ourselves, be recognisable to us, controlled by us. We are the original, they the facsimile. But who are we to say that plants should share our exalted status?
The personhood of plants? Indeed not! Why would any right thinking plant want to become a person? Do plants want to share our history of despoilation? Are we trying to make the trees responsible for Amazonian deforestation? Petunias for the conquest of the Americas? Should grasses and flowers take the blame for feudalism, patriarchy and the horrors of modernity?
We must reverse this thinking. It is time we dignified the adventurous transgressive multi-species project by recognising the planthood of persons. At one time, it was choice abuse to accuse a person of having the IQ of a plant. Now it should appear to be an honour. And let us be generous with this distinction. Let us seek to confer planthood upon every person. Perhaps we all, if we try hard, deserve to be recognised as plants. We can share their rootedness, their longevity, their fecundity, their seasonality. Their ability to stay in one place all the time and wave around in the wind.
In fact, we would go further. It is only be recognising the innate vegetal state of particularly visible sections of human society that we can characterise its true condition. The corporate elite is plainly a strangling fig. Old cabbages, fungal growth and mould dominate our political leadership. You are fortunate indeed if you can look at your President without instantly reaching for the salad dressing.
But, my friends, these are more-than-metaphors. These are actual physical conditions. Real chlorophyll surges through our politicians’ veins. It is only when we see our leaders as needing a gentle watering twice a day, and a very thorough dose of manure, that we can properly appreciate our place in the cosmos.
1Khait, O. et al. (2020) Plants emit informative airborne sounds under stress bioRxiv 507590; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/507590 2For incontrovertible evidence, see The Very Things (1984) The bushes scream while my daddy prunes. Reflex Records.
‘A river is a natural landscape element where due to gravity-driven flow, water connects the river’s highest point with the lowest one.’
Even though this definition sounds complicated, it is not difficult to imagine such a structure.
But the simplest and the shortest definition I have ever heard was that of a student’s response to an exam question, “What is a river?” One of my students replied, “A river is an area of flowing water whose length is greater than its width.” This short and simple response covered all the concepts necessary to imagine this landscape element. By considering this definition from the lens of how water systems actually work, we can see how this natural element presents an immense potential for use. All this is possible due to the energy produced by gravity-driven water flow, commonly known as ‘the water current’. The greater the current velocity, the higher the energy that may be harvested from the river.
But utilizing high-speed water currents is not always profitable. If it was, rushing mountain streams would have been massively used for this purpose. What matters is also the amount of water, or the ‘flow discharge’. Therefore, humans more often use the energy of larger rivers, rather than small mountain streams.
Rivers constantly generate energy. Hence, for millennia, humans have used rivers as inland waterways for carrying goods on vessels, and for transporting goods straight to the water surface, e.g. by timber floating. Lower water tables ensured that water is transferred via aqueducts to rich mineral grounds. Here, the extra amount of water ensures a good crop. In the past, such practices were implemented in areas adjacent to the Nile, the Tigris-Euphrates river system, and more recently, in the Volga basin in Russia. Finally, electric energy harvested from the water current has been used for centuries to power structures and devices that facilitate the production of various goods, such as watermills, fishponds, forges, and today, modern hydroelectric power stations.
Without doubt, the river current is one of the cleanest unconventional energy sources. Given current declarations and actions taken by key energy production units, and the fact that coal is the largest energy source worldwide, it seems unlikely that other unconventional energy sources might be used more widely than coal in global energy production.
Contrary to other unconventional energy sources, such as solar and wind power stations and biogas plants, water is a constant resource whose power depends on the aforementioned water flow. The more water there is in the riverbed, the greater the flow. To keep the water at a level sufficient enough to fulfill power requirements, humans apply water lifting methods and create dams in riverbeds. Falling from a certain height at high speed, water strikes the turbines and propels them. Then the energy produced by the generator flows into a power network.
The energy harvested from shifting river current speed is a crucial aspect of the economy.
The question is whether environmental losses caused by the harvesting of this pro-ecological energy can be offset by the profits. Given all this, shouldn’t this energy harvesting practice not stir controversy? It appears, it does. River ecologists believe that any changes to the riverbed, such as river damming, leads to a transformation in the habitats of plants and animals. This, in my opinion, is not even the most detrimental consequence of all. A river is a type of an ecological corridor where active and passive organisms swim or drift in search for food, and seasonal or reproductive habitats. Organisms like fish and tiny invertebrates cannot migrate when dams are constructed. One of the greatest and most well-known impacts of dams is on the population of migratory fish.
Migratory fish travel from seawater to freshwater, or the other way around, for spawning (release of sperm and eggs into the water for reproduction). Among these, we can distinguish anadromous and catadromous fish. Anadromous (from ana – ‘up’ and dromos – ‘running’ in Greek) fish, such as salmonids, migrate from the sea to shallow rivers and streams for spawning. Whereas catadromous (from cata – ‘down’ and dromos – ‘running’ in Greek) fish, such as the eel, migrate from freshwater to seawater for spawning. Anadromous fish face the most difficulties in their spawning migrations. Dams pose a grave danger to these fish, because if they cannot swim upstream to their spawning grounds, they will not be able to reproduce. The fish will not have the chance to propagate the species, and in nature, this leads to the weakening of one link of the food chain. This creates irreversible alterations in the entire ecosystem.
The situation of migratory fish, especially anadromous fish, wherever river dams have been constructed is alarming. In numerous countries, the population of these fish is critically endangered, and their existence depends solely on human activity. Poorly constructed dams that do not allow for fish migration to spawning grounds are the main cause of this situation. The survival of the species in its environment primarily depends on whether they reproduce in the natural habitat. Today, in numerous countries, the existence of anadromous fish depends on anthropic activity because humans literally obtain the fish by artificial spawning. The situation of the eel is far less dramatic because the species cannot be produced by artificial spawning.
Today, it is crucial for dams to be equipped with fishpasses that allow fish to successfully reach the upstream to spawn. A fishpass functions like a corridor that allows fish to bypass a river dam. Currently, regulations in several developed countries prevent the construction of impoundments for energy harvesting without a fishpass in riverbeds with migration. Fishpasses are not a new solution and have been incorporated into dam construction over the last few decades. Nevertheless, it should be noted that these passes do not guarantee that all fish migrating upstream reach their destination.
Some consider dam reservoirs to positively impact rivers. This is true on one hand, because river dams may increase water retention. However, this also means that a larger quantity of water evaporates than it reaches downstream. Sure, dam reservoirs allow for the river to be used for energy harvesting. But without a doubt, they negatively affect the river’s natural state. Not only do they present migration obstacles, but also increase the amount of suspension in the water. Sediments of drifting organic matter accumulate in dam reservoirs and annually increase in amount. Consequently, dead organic matter releases biogenic compounds that change the trophic state of water. If river damming was a beneficial process, then nature would have already created a mechanism allowing for creation of such conditions.
Water retention in dams and reservoirs is not even the slightest bit as effective as retention in soil or marshlands. In addition, the costs of constructing enormous structures for this purpose are remarkably high. Nevertheless, efficient water retention in soil is not possible today due to extensive drainage and construction on land. We can achieve water retention for navigability by restoring the natural state of the riverbeds (renaturalization). Straightening and deepening of channels, and regulation of catchment areas pose further problems for rivers.
Such maintenance practices are performed either to reduce flood risks or to improve transport conditions. But in reality, they achieve the opposite. Certain maintenance practices that change the natural state of rivers directly or indirectly impact previous renaturalization efforts. We could say that these contrary practices are performed in the same areas, which seems irrational. First, vast sums are invested into naturalization, and then considerable financial resources are invested in destroying it.
The potential of the rivers should be utilised. However, this should not be done everywhere and at all times, and especially not using the means that depend on human convenience. Nature is not our partner. It is us, humans, who are part of nature and not the other way around. Even though human brains are more developed than those of other animals, this does not give us the right to make decisions for them. And most certainly humans should not make decisions in the name of natural processes that take place in well-functioning ecosystems. It is as if someone tried to make healthy humans happy by imposing on them unnecessary experimental treatments. While humans can refuse such treatment, animals cannot. Of course, public consultations and talks with objectors of various investment projects are being held. And at some point, both parties of the dispute reach a consensus through compromise. But at the end of the day, even those parties are deciding for nature. But this is merely a compromise between both parties of the dispute, and not the investment supporters or the natural state of things. Nature never agrees to compromise with humans. At the very most, nature compromises with itself.
Even the slightest alterations to the natural environment are still alterations. If an alteration changes the river, nature, as the unconsulted party, will surely show its strength. Currently, we are witnessing the revenge of rivers. Draining and land melioration leads to low levels of water in rivers during the year, and sharp rises during periods of rainfall. Regulation, straightening, and laying concrete in numerous sections of rivers increase the speed of water currents. This leads to the destruction of existing structures, such as bridges at narrower parts of the river. Talk about digging your own grave.
But probably the worst thing is that supporters of such negative undertakings try their best to fool the world of their actions’ deadly consequences on nature.. According to numerous articles quoted by the supporters of river transformations, barges and dams increase biodiversity. Even if this is true, it is still a fraudulent manipulation. This is because typical riverine species are replaced with more ubiquist species, i.e. species that tolerate transformation. This is artificial manipulation.
Any experienced aquatic ecologist or aquatic environmental engineer can easily make changes that will lead to an increase in biodiversity. Even a vehicle tire left at the bottom of a stream has an impact on the number of animal species found in that section. It is plain and simple. The bigger the number of habitats and niches, the more the species present. A tire is an example of such a niche. Pondings, meanders, overdeepenings, and rapids caused by renaturalization are other examples of niches.
Naturally, climate change significantly affects rivers. Our role is to convince people that humans also have an impact on these changes. However, current climate and energy policies make speaking to laypersons challenging. Even if we succeed in convincing a large number of people, the majority remain skeptical about this issue.
We should ask the question whether humans are allowed to change nature entirely, and just like certain animal species, can they freely and consciously, or maybe even unintentionally, modify its current state. The beaver is a species that changes and adapts the environment to its needs. Humans are also a part of nature, and evolution gave us the abilities and skills to completely dominate other species and landscape elements. However, in the process of evolution, we also developed reasoning and questioning minds that have the ability to innovate for non-survival purposes. In the light of the current anthropic changes in the environment, the command to ‘subdue the Earth’ is no longer valid for at least a 100 years, or maybe even abused. It would seem that the Earth will not subdue any more.
It is necessary to conduct thorough studies to analyse environmental conditions, prior to the construction of hydroelectric power stations and the deepening of riverbeds to develop inland navigation. This would allow us to provide solutions that minimize human impact on the natural environment. It would seem that this clean, pro-ecological river energy would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but without doubt, it would also decrease the environmental value of river ecosystems. It is crucial that scientists, administrative staff, business representatives, and ecologists agree that humans have a negative impact on rivers. Even though reaching a compromise poses a challenge, there is little doubt that we have no option but to achieve this. If making up for the damage we’ve caused is too cumbersome, well, cry me a river.
From the parking lot, there is nothing special about this isolated patch of greenery on the outskirts of Mysore, three kilometres from the quaint temple town of Srirangapatna. But a closer look reveals a quiet riparian wetland, comprising six islands and six islets on the banks of the mighty Kaveri River.
The Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary, sprawling over 67 hectares of protected land, is the oldest bird sanctuary in Karnataka and one of India’s first sanctuaries. The islets of Ranganathittu formed when an embankment was built over the Kaveri river between the years 1645 and 1648. The wetland was declared a protected area (PA) in 1940 by the King of Mysore under the insistence of esteemed ornithologist Salim Ali, who noticed that high numbers of birds arrived at Ranganathittu to nest on the islets. In 2017, an eco-sensitive zone of 28.04 sq. km. was declared around the PA, disallowing commercial activities without government permission.
When we last visited Ranganathittu, in February 2018, the islets were densely packed with nesting birds, so thickly crowded together that we could not sight the trees upon which the birds had built their nests. Their mingled cries filled the air, deafening us and forcing us to shout to be heard above the cacophony. Mugger (marsh) crocodiles basked on the sunny rocks protruding from the water, their young clambering clumsily onto their scaly backs as tourist boats drew nearer for prime photo opportunities. The avian life was particularly thrilling; we spotted painted storks, Asian openbill storks, Eurasian spoonbills, Oriental darters (snake bird), spot-billed pelicans, black-crowned night herons, black-headed ibises, cormorants, brilliantly-coloured kingfishers, and even river terns, which nest in Ranganathittu during peak winter season.
The main island is also a birder’s paradise; we spotted the Tickell’s blue flycatcher, the Indian grey hornbill, the Asian paradise flycatcher, and a spot-breasted fantail that danced about like a little peacock spreading its wings and tail. In 2007, birders sighted a lesser frigate bird nesting in Ranganathittu, a rare event indeed! At home over the ocean, frigate birds are swept over India’s coasts during storm events or gusty monsoon winds. Over 40,000 birds spanning nearly 222 species were recorded at this sanctuary during the winter months (December through February) over the past decade, so our visit coincided neatly with that of migratory birds from different corners of the globe. Signage at the park informed us that certain species migrated from as far as Siberia and Latin America!
Ranganathittu is classified as a riparian zone in the Indomalaya ecozone, a result of its unique blend of land and water. Despite its location along the majestic Kaveri, the sanctuary has faced occasional drought events due to an erratic monsoon, leading to a dip in bird populations in the PA. During the monsoon, the PA receives heavy flooding as water is released from the Krishnaraja Sagar Dam, 8 km upstream on the Kaveri River. Portions of the islets are permanently damaged due to repeated flooding, yet remain valuable habitat for birds and wildlife. According to the eBird database, there are records of sighting threatened species such as the Indian spotted eagle, the tawny eagle and even the endangered Egyptian vulture here. The islets are home to multiple colonies of flying foxes, bonnet macaques, palm civets, grey mongoose, and even smooth-coated otters. The islets are home to diverse flora; Terminalia arjuna (the Arjun tree), Syzigium cumini (the Jamun tree), bamboo, and various broadleaf species make their home here. The banks are coated in riverine reed beds, which create habitats for fish, molluscs, and invertebrates, as well as for ground-nesting birds. The soil along the river is soft and loamy, ideal for aquatic insects. The sanctuary is also surrounded by vast stretches of irrigated agricultural fields where aquatic insects are available in plenty. An abundance of these insects attracts numerous birds to the sanctuary.
Given its location on the Bangalore-Mysore highway, only 18 km away from Mysore, this sanctuary attracts more than 100,000 visitors annually. Most tourism packages in Mysore include Ranganathittu, and it is the most-visited sanctuary (without charismatic species) in India. On average, the sanctuary used to receive about 700 tourists in a day, both domestic and foreign. It is also open year-round unless a crisis such as monsoonal flooding, and now, the pandemic, occurs. During our visit, we each paid Rs. 70 as entry fee (foreign nationals will have to pay five times this price) and Rs.100 for our DSLR cameras. There is an interpretation centre inside the sanctuary with informative games and trivia on the bird species found at the sanctuary, for children and adults alike.
While increasing tourism has a positive impact on the economy, it is yet to be studied whether there are resultory ecological impacts on the birds and river ecosystem. After a long hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the monsoon, the sanctuary opened to tourists on September 1, 2020. While tourist numbers are still low, people are increasingly venturing outdoors to escape the city and tourism will likely rise rapidly. This riparian sanctuary gives hope for the takeoff of bird watching-based tourism in other areas given that it is comparatively cheap and easily accessible to tourists. Additionally, efforts are ongoing to list this site as a RAMSAR wetland; the RAMSAR convention decrees that a wetland must meet one of nine criteria to be listed and Ranganathittu meets three. With its avifauna and protected riparian habitat, Ranganathittu remains a birder’s paradise and a gem in Karnataka’s crown of natural wonders. We hope to hear of its uplisting to RAMSAR in the near future.
The quiet wet evening was rattled by a disgusted cry from the kitchen. I had put down the saucepan into the sink only ten minutes ago. I was about to wash the pan, and put on another two cups of tea when I noticed the blasted critter stuck to the bottom! A slimy little slug!
A graphic image akin to those of the toilet cleaning agent advertisements conjured the idea of a slug-paved plumbing! Repulsed, I flicked out the slug with a cane and swirled the pan twice with soap, scrubbed it clean and rinsed again with boiling water and some lethal common salt. Down the drain I sloshed the hot salt-water, melting all the other ones I imagined to be stuck inside the pipe.
Moments later, a pang of pity struck me. My departed slug had metamorphosed in my mind – it grew glowing wings and a halo each over its weird antenna eyes. In an unkind busy world, it is the slow ones that get kicked and elbowed – or in this case, killed by salty hell. They do make a frequent case of annoyance, inconvenience and sometimes disgust – but these are ideas from the drain-pipes of my conditioning. In any case there is no sympathy for slowness- whether a slug or human being.
I hurried to wash the tea cups. Pity had reddened to guilt. I had recently watched a TED talk on civility in the workplace, which spoke of good allyship leading to good business. ‘Listen to the person when he or she is talking to you, put away your phone when someone addresses you, gift a smile when you cross them in the hallway…’ Daily passive and active aggression and verbal abuse creates slugs out of the worker. It hits their productivity in the stomach and choke-slams their esteem into oblivion. Eventually the ‘slug’ quits. Whoa, I was not going to castigate these poor slugs and snails. Whether an Ambigolimax or an Achinata whicheverata, I was going to advocate. Every snail must be worth his salt, pardon the pun.
While the slugs and snails might be out in the wet mud, in ditches and on walls or in the plumbing, their human advocate is spending her wee hours looking for their purpose in life. Now, there is the Ambigolimax, the ones without the shell, and then the Achatina fulica, the ones who have them and quite a few others like them. The one who suffered my cruelty (wince!) was a Tropical Leatherleaf. After quite some scrolling I found science and media were generally unkind to these legless blobs of flesh and shell as an invasive species. The truth ought to lie somewhere between the sensationalism and the myths, so my search continued.
Their superpowers included an unbeatable sexuality (they are hermaphrodites who can lay up to 1500 eggs at a time and get away with it) and a hearty appetite for anything from plastered walls (to build calcium homes of their own) to food crops painstakingly grown by Homo sapiens. In Kerala, their proliferation is indebted to a certain Homo sapien, a scientist by the name P.N. Radhakrishnan, who introduced the Achatina fulica, or more simply known as the Giant African snail. In 1955, he brought them to Palakkad in Kerala from Singapore as his lab subjects, till things got out of hand. A couple of them were slung into the municipality by some other Homo sapiens. Today they’ve settled into 12 of the 14 districts in Kerala.
But science was not the first to marginalize the snails for who they are. In fact, they were literally and profusely pushed to the margins of the illustrated medieval manuscripts of Europe, leaving even modern experts perplexed. They were pictured in combat with a knight in shining armor, astride a winged dragon or a white steed – supposedly some form of medieval humour where we are supposed to laugh at the knight for trying to fight something as silly and frail as a snail. In other versions, the snail appears more sinister and menacing, pushing its pronged eyes toward the knight. ‘Like a snail that melteth away into slime, they shall be taken away, like a dead-born child, they shall not see the sun’ is the warning of Psalm 58. Maybe the snail was a Biblical allegory for inevitable death and man’s futile attempt to fight it. But the shelled monsters were everywhere, not just the corners of the Bible. This leads to the third assumption that they depicted the Lombards, who were at the time despised as an unruly, monopolizing, sinful lot. In any case, snails made good for satire.
The burgeoning number of this slimy lot in our backyards is not because some witty chap threw them into every corner of our life. It is also one of those environmental imbalances that we propagate. Apparently, due to the excessive light pollution in recent years, there has been a decline of population in the firefly kingdom. Snail larvae are the usual night time snack for fireflies, and with them gone, all 1500 snail eggs are free to hatch and flourish into squirmy slimy progeny – all potential carriers of a deadly nematode capable of causing meningitis in human beings. Talk about karma. For me, this outweighs internet trivia of how Thai women find it beneficial to use snail mucus for cosmetic treatments.
My metamorphosed slug puppied its eyes, sensing an unsavoury verdict. No, that’s it! Out went the haloes and the firefly wings. If these critters could fly, my new found sympathy would be taken with a pinch of salt.
We are pretty sure that your first thought on hearing the word ‘parasite’ is unpleasant. But that’s no reason to dismiss parasites, and particularly not their usefulness. Sure, they are small and hideous and do bad things to other lifeforms. But like most creations of nature, parasites can be beneficial too.
Let’s take the example of chytrid algal parasites. To understand them, we need to understand how pelagic food webs work.
First, the open water of lakes and oceans is called the pelagic region, which contains highly diverse microscopic organisms living in suspension, called plankton. Planktic organisms able to photosynthesize are functionally similar to plants and are called phytoplankton. Phytoplankton produces as much as half of the oxygen on the planet. They are at the very base and foundation of the food web in lakes and oceans, while they themselves get eaten by microscopic consumers called zooplankton. The phytoplankton-zooplankton interface has a direct bearing on the entire pelagic food web. An efficient dietary energy transfer from phytoplankton to zooplankton is central for organisms at higher trophic levels such as fish.
The high diversity of so far poorly characterised pelagic microscopic organisms also includes aquatic fungi. Recent progress highlighted the importance of alternative trophic pathways in pelagic food webs with chytrid algal parasites as key elements. But what are chytrids, really?Chytrids are fungi, and most of them act as parasites infecting a wide variety of phytoplankton species. One peculiar thing about them is that they are rather host-specific. This means, one chytrid species infects one or a few phytoplankton species.
So chytrids infect phytoplankton, while zooplankton can feed on both phytoplankton and their chytrid algal parasites. Therefore, chytrids make the pelagic food web a bit more complex, and we should be very much pleased about that. Primarily, when zooplankton can only feed on a few phytoplankton species due to the massive dominance of few species caused by human impacts like anthropogenic eutrophication (that is, the release of large amounts of nutrients to the water due to agriculture or inefficient wastewater treatments).
Eutrophication and global warming enhance the mass occurrence of algae, also known as “algal blooms”, or “harmful algal blooms”. They are called harmful since some bloom-forming species can produce toxins. When the toxic algae accumulate on the surface, they form a layer. Some of them, like layers of cyanobacteria (prokaryotic algal group) or dinoflagellates (one eukaryotic algal group), can even kill a dog!
Another problem with bloom-forming algae is that they are often too large to become food for zooplankton, choking up energy transfer. This means when algae that are too large in size cannot be harnessed by zooplankton, the energy stays blocked and stored in the algal mass. This energy is lost after the algae dies.
But all’s not bad news. Chytrid parasites live attached to the algal host (called sporangium) and produce large numbers of small-sized free-swimming zoospores to disperse and reproduce. Zooplankton can feed on the chytrid zoospores; therefore, chytrids can convey dietary energy from inedible algal hosts to zooplankton. But chytrids can do even more! They can improve the low-quality cyanobacteria food to high-quality organic compounds and synthesize essential molecules de novo. One example is omega-3 fatty acids, which are critical for zooplankton growth, reproduction, and survival.
So, chytrid algal parasites are out there to help nature function. They support pelagic food webs by recycling algal biomass and making essential dietary molecules available for other consumers. They can constitute a fundamental resource in case of harmful algal blooms. Humans, hopefully, are now much more aware of the negative impacts of eutrophication and global warming on aquatic ecosystems than before. As for the chytrids, there might be much more to do, especially to realise and understand their quantitative importance in pelagic food webs.
While in the past we asked: “why chytrid algal parasites are there”, “what do they do?”, we are now after a new question: “are there enough chytrid algal parasites to support pelagic food webs?”.
It started like any other day. By 8 am, we were in a field in a community forest near Mandal, a sleepy little village at the base of a steep valley of the Garhwal Himalayas, India. The rays of the sun had only just begun kissing the hill tops. But my Central Himalayan Langur troops were deprived of their warmth.
To stay warm, the langurs my fellow researchers and I were studying, huddled together, sharing body heat on the forest floor. We made note of this kleptothermy – a behavioral adaptation to fight the chilling temperature — in our data sheets.
The Central Himalayan langur (Semnopithecus schistaceus) was a relatively unknown species even amid primate research. In India, langurs can be found in high Himalayan elevations (1,500-4,000 m) from Jammu & Kashmir to the peaks of Sikkim. A langur is primarily greyish in appearance with a whitish head and tail tip, with a relatively larger body size (an average of 70cm) than langurs found in other regions. In addition, female langurs are generally smaller than males. In this species, multiple males share dominion. Dominion, as we know, is usually a distinguishing variable of behavioural study in most ape and primate groups. The langur group we were following was a large one, with five adult males, 12 adult females, seven sub-adults, eight juveniles, and few infants. To observe such a large group this early into our field study was quite a privilege.
Our motive was to better understand the langurs’ behavioural ecology. This required following the troop throughout the day – from morning (when they were still resting and not active enough to study well) till the evening (when they were moving towards their resting/sleeping site for the night).
This particular morning, as the clock ticked forward and sunrays reached treetops, all our huddling langurs started moving towards the hilltop for a nice little sun bath. I don’t blame them. The cold in these parts gets bad enough to warrant a nice hike up the hill to soak up some warmth. So what if you’ve to invite the whole family? Speaking of family, some langurs in this particular troop who wished to stay in bed, stayed behind. Some others were busy feeding their young.
We had been following the langurs for a month and were fairly acquainted with their behavior. We anticipated that they would move on to some other location after having ‘breakfast’. They didn’t disappoint. As was expected, they soon started to move towards the village. Their intention was clear: to feed on the crops!
The troop travelled along the upper edge of the hill. There were hardly any houses over there. Even the villagers didn’t frequent that place often. The terrain was somewhat steep and had denser tree cover. At around 10 a.m., part of the langur troop climbed down the cliff and settled themselves in the crop field. The field provided them a cool place, a short distance from the village, helping them munch on fresh green mustard and wheat leaves. Other langurs were on their way to join in. Quite a party.
The raid
All was well in this party until, quite suddenly, a few langurs ran away. They frantically began looking for cover in high tree branches. We knew this scurrying commotion must have been a reaction to the dogs ‘employed’ by the villagers to keep the langurs at bay. Dogs generally raid silently: you’d never really see or hear them. The only way you’d know they were there would be through the frantic running of langurs in this region..
But what happened next will shock your data sheets (and socks).
Two or three dogs invaded the troop, scattering langur. They also managed to trap a few langurs in an area near the cliff. At one point, over a dozen infants and juveniles with just one or two adult females were isolated on the cliff, cornered by a dog that was determined to prevent them from moving into the crop field.
Whenever they feel threatened or isolated, non-adult langurs make a certain prolonged low pitched ‘keeee-ke-kee-ke-ke’ sounding call for rescue, and scan their immediate surroundings intensely for signs of help. Being primarily composed of younglings, the group of trapped langurs started to vocalize, shouting for help!
Almost as though straight out of a thriller, an adult male langur suddenly sprang into view. He was sitting on a high tree branch on the other side of the crop field, facing the sub-group left behind, with a second dog at his tail. He was scanning the landscape, worried, looking for a chance to join the rest of the troop, wanting to fall behind safety in numbers. Could he initiate a rescue mission?
Rescue mission – phase A
The adult male was only about a 100 meters from the cliff – not much of a distance, but with two dogs lined up in between, the langurs would need to come up with a good plan.
A second adult male appeared within a minute or so, positioning himself on a high branch of another tree to the left of the first male monkey who jumped into the picture, maintaining a little distance in between. A few other langurs were also scattered around here, where a third dog was on duty.
Back where the action was unpacking, one langur moved towards a lower branch, within possible reach of the dogs, but at a sufficient distance to maintain safety. He acted as a distraction to get the dogs away from the first langur, and to make room for an opportunity for himself – to run to the cliff like there’s no tomorrow. Without wasting another moment, langur number 1 climbed down and sprinted. He avoided the dogs brilliantly and arrived at the cliff, where other members of his family were waiting for help.
Rescue mission – phase B
Outsmarted and confused, the two dogs were now scurrying around to reconvene. But it appeared the second langur had more moves left in his master plan. He provoked the dogs again, tricking them into chasing him, eventually moving further away and out of sight. The dogs took the bait, followed him, but all we could hear, at this point, was a little bit of barking.
The first male langur, now sitting with his family, appeared quite relaxed. Indeed, he looked like he was having the time of his life. The dog that was assigned to his case, not so much. Most of the langurs in the troop were reunited. They could now wait out any threat without hurry. They kept an eye on the horizon for another opportunity to retreat under cover. For almost five minutes, nothing happened. Finally, after a couple more minutes, one of the dogs couldn’t resist the possibility of more action, and ran away towards the point where one langur was still waiting out the threat alone. This gave the troop the opportunity to run away. With a mixture of caution and speed, they sprinted towards a safe exit, and kept moving on to a much safer location. Possibly somewhere without dogs. Dogs were not the langurs’ best friends.
It’s a commonly acknowledged fact that pollinators such as bees and butterflies are vital for food crops and ultimately, our health and well-being. But, pollinators are declining. As most conservation problems are created by humans, the solution to protecting pollinators lies in changing human behaviour. However, most behaviour change interventions for conservation often lack grounding in psychology.
In an article in Conservation Biology, Marselle et al (2020) examined EU national policies for pollinator conservation, and showed that these policies overly rely on behaviour change interventions that are known to be ineffective, and under use interventions known to be effective for changing human behaviour. This may impair the effectiveness of the policies and our ability to conserve pollinators.
Researchers found that the most frequent behaviour change intervention for pollinator conservation was
a) education (23 percent; providing information to increase knowledge or understanding). However, education is not very effective at changing people’s conservation behaviour, as information in itself does not always guarantee action. This is because behaviour is also influenced by other factors, such as social pressure, physical opportunity, or motivation to do a behaviour.
The least frequent interventions found in the pollinator conservation actions were
b) modelling (4 percent; providing an example for people to imitate, like a role model), c) incentivization (3 percent; creating an expectation of reward), or restriction (2 percent; using rules to reduce opportunity to engage in the favourable behaviour or the behaviour that is being targeted to achieve), and d) coercion— designing interventions to create an expectation of punishment or increased cost to discourage behaviour – was not mentioned in any of the pollinator policies.
However, these three types of interventions have been found to be highly effective for changing people’s conservation behaviour.
Importantly, 41 percent of all pollinator conservation actions failed to identify who needed to change their behaviour! This lack of detail is likely to weaken the actionability of behaviour change interventions.
This study points to the importance of considering psychology when designing conservation policies in order to be more effective—otherwise, we will continue to lose our bees and butterflies.
Freshwater ecosystems have two important features. First, they are surrounded by land and very strongly embedded in terrestrial ecosystems. Second, they generally face strong human interaction, stronger than the high seas. These mean that we can utilize them in many ways. It also means that they are important for the rest of the biosphere in many ways. Being socio-ecological systems that interconnect distant areas and offer multiple ecosystem services, the conservation of freshwater bodies is full of compromise.
A lake, a river or a pond has clear borders. In a sense, these are island-like locations, isolated in terrestrial landscapes. Yet, in a functional sense, the ecological processes in freshwater communities quite strongly link them to the surrounding terrestrial systems. In fact, the size proportion of coastal areas is much larger than in the sea and these riparian habitats host a huge diversity of organisms.
Instead of creating better and more accurate definitions, and trying to conceptually separate freshwater bodies from the terrestrial world (see the traditions of limnology or hydrobiology), it would be wiser to explicitly study their soft borders and recognize the importance of the cross-disciplinary grey zones between water and land.
Freshwater ecosystems and their networks
Whenever several components are linked and we wish to understand the consequences of these connections, network analysis is a good first step.
Freshwater ecosystems are parts of two kinds of networks: a) The habitat network, where water bodies are linked to each other across landscape ecology. b) The food web, containing clearly aquatic, clearly terrestrial and shared components (either living organisms or nutrient flows).
The freshwater habitat network, at the first glance, is a continuous system of wet habitats, creeks turning to rivers and lakes. The continuity is not absolutely necessary (e.g. tarns). But materials and organisms can also jump between wet locations. For example, transported by water birds, travelling either on their legs or in their guts. This is one reason why rivers should not be regarded as perfectly directed systems. Organisms clearly travel in both directions, either in the air or in the water. Moreover, clearly, several aquatic organisms can survive on land. So they are simply able to move across the dry matrix (i.e. amphibians, snakes). In order to better understand the conservation challenges for freshwater ecosystems and aquatic organisms, it is crucial to better monitor, model and really assess these processes and spatial aspects. It does make a big difference to be really isolated or just embedded in a heterogeneous and mixed landscape.
Freshwater ecosystems, just like any other, have no clear borders. The fish and the mole have really poorly overlapping habitats, but even they can be indirectly interacting across a chain of other organisms. Several studies have shown surprisingly strong interactions between aquatic and terrestrial species. These are cascading and, after all, the aquatic food web and the terrestrial one are just two compartments of the big one. In fact, this recognition was one of the motivations for creating landscape ecology. Apart from the geographical one, this was its functional raison d’être. Researchers have shown how trophic cascades across the water-land boundary: predatory fish reduced the amount of dragonfly larvae, less adult dragonflies consumed less pollinator insects, and terrestrial plants were less pollen-limited and flourished. The myriads of cascades like these connect the two officially totally different habitats and, given the diversity of riparian communities, this is more the rule than the exception.
For people interested in categorical thinking and classification, landscape ecology and all processes inter-connecting different systems are disturbing. For people who prefer to think functionally, this is ecology – and not surprising at all.
Positive and negative, as well as strong and weak effects are spreading in these interconnected networks. Perturbations (e.g. invasion, pollution) generate point-like or system-wise effects. In order to monitor, assess or predict these, one can perform modelling efforts. Better understanding their complementary nature will only help to make ecosystem models really predictive and applicable.
Extinction and invasion are often considered as two major symptoms of climate change, two major dangers for natural ecosystems. Global extinction is clearly a tragic loss. Local extinction and invasion are mechanisms of compositional shifts in any ecosystem and, ultimately, these are the ways in which ecosystems adapt to altered conditions. In a sense, these are not the problem, but the solution.
As a key ecosystem service from a human perspective, the healthy functioning of the whole, spatially and functionally interconnected system is crucial for water quality. The cycling of nitrogen and phosphorus strongly influences algal production and the composition of the aquatic microbiome is strongly sensitive to water chemistry and affects several higher-level organisms. Overall, the whole food web (or trophic network) is a stage where key players act, either facing the challenges or buffering and balancing external effects. But, after all this, what is external. This is the question.
So, one Sunday afternoon, I go to the bull-fight and they put me in the bullring. The bull comes out. I look at the bull and the bull, he look at me. He look at me, and I look at the bull. And you know what, the bull was better looking than me.’ -Juan Cervantes, Mind Your Language, 1978.
We’ve been mulling over our recent posts with a seed of doubt in our minds. We cannot help but notice that our writings may have aggravated animal rights activists, castigated compassionate conservationists, and berated vegans and plant lovers. To our critics, we clearly voice irrational arguments and cross-eyed views of the world.
So we’ve tried a thought experiment. We have simply asked: ‘What if they are right?’
Well, then, every animal must be given its due. Each one is a product of hundreds of millions of years of evolution on Earth. The history that each individual carries in its DNA, the carefully selected genes of the blind watchmaker, the memories of each moment of its personal journey must be celebrated, revered, venerated.
But what, practically, must follow from such sentiments? Perhaps the most important point is that it means that we must respect each animal not from our narrow anthropomorphic, anthropocentric perspective, but from the view of animal itself, of nature herself, of the watchmaker her/himself. And this in turn means that we must dig deeper into our engagements with the animal world, and rip out the very roots of these abusive relationships. This leads to a few inescapable conclusions, a trilogy of four to be precise.
First, no wildlife watching. Quite simply, wild animals don’t like to be looked at. For most vertebrates, direct eye contact is a sign of aggression. Their motto is ‘Don’t be looking at me that way. In fact, don’t look at me at all’. And even in the absence of actual eye contact, being closely observed by a human (or worse, a flock of them) is almost a clear signal of predatory intent. Thus begins the physiological domino. It starts so simply, each line of the programme creating a new effect, just like poetry. First, a rush… heat… her heart flutters.1 And as the cocktail of chemicals floods the system, lion or lizard, fish or flamingo, she runs. All this stress from one little self-indulgent, greedy glance.
So, unless one is planning a romantic moonlight dinner, people should not look at wild animals at all. No more wildlife voyeurism, no bird-watching, not a single dive to scare sleeping parrotfish.
Second, no more domestic animals (with the exception of cats, who quietly decided that the comforts of domestication were suited to them). After all, they did not exactly ask to be domesticated. Of course, the only one who truly embraced the consequences of domestication was the cow at the restaurant at the end of the universe, which approached Zaphod Beeblebrox’s table ‘a large fat meaty quadruped of the bovine type with large watery eyes, small horns and what might almost have been an ingratiating smile on its lips.’
“Good evening,” it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, “I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in the parts of my body?”’
Chickens get no evolutionary love from laying unfertilized eggs, nor can cows fatten their calves with dairy products. We should release them all into the wild, and allow them the unbridled joy of the wild’s consequences.
And no domestic animals also means, by the way, no pets. No self-respecting animal wants to be reduced to an emotional appendage. Caged and cuddled alike, every animal aspires to be master of its own destiny. As brief and bloody as it might be. Set them free, we say. Let cats run wild and decimate bird and lizard populations around the world, even more than they do now. Let packs of dogs roam our streets and pick off the cats, and the occasional child. Let hamsters….
Finally, why stop at animals? We must also free plants. Gardens are basically glorified factories, exploiting sentient life forms for their colour, scent and form. Plants are pruned mercilessly without the remotest jot of participation, or prior-informed consent. No gardener has ever, not ever, used the word ‘holiday’ to her geraniums. Enough, we say, enough.
Fifth and mostly harmless, alien life forms. We wish to leave no stone unturned in our efforts to minimize human impact on life everywhere. Should there be an invasion by universe conquering computer geeks , every carbon-based multicellular life form must be received with the same respect and treated with dignity, regardless of their intentions. We do have to draw the line somewhere. Unicellular organisms and life forms based on other elements – Silicon’s campaign notwithstanding – simply do not cut it.
Woolly took off towards the woods, and in the golden evening light, he found them, fluttering around the trees and calling to each other.
“I’ve seen you! I’ve found you all!” laughed one moth in the middle.
“Ooh, who are you?” she asked as she caught sight of Woolly.
“Hello! My name’s Woolly. It’s my first day as a moth, and I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do. What are you up to?”
“We’re just playing hide and seek here until it gets dark enough to go out. Do you want to play too?”
Of course, Woolly wanted to play. Maybe his troubles were over, now that he’d found this little group of moths.
“I’ll be the seeker this time,” he decided and closed his eyes to let the others hide.
They were all sorts of patterns, speckled or striped, in a multitude of shades of brown and grey and white. Once they landed on the trees and bushes, they just disappeared, and it took Woolly an awfully long time to find them again. Yet when it was his turn to hide, he was always the first to be spotted.
Copying the other moths, he hid on tree bark and in the long grass. He hid behind stones and under leaves, but still, they had no trouble finding him.
“You’re all so good at this,” he sighed. “I’m useless!”
“You’re quite hard to see from far away,” they tried to console him. “But close up, those little red patches on your face always give you away. Maybe this isn’t the right game for you.”
They were trying to be nice, but Woolly could tell they didn’t want to play with him anymore. It really was hard to make friends out here.
He fluttered away from the other moths and settled on a fallen leaf. What should he do next? Where should he go?
These are just a few pages from a longer story, which can be found at the following link https://issuu.com/universityofexeter/docs/woollybook_29thjune.compressed
The first streaks of dawn would usher in our “hunt” – to walk through grasslands to spot the Montagu’s and Pallid harriers – migratory birds of prey. By September, the summer home of the harriers, in Kazakhstan and Central Asia turns bitterly cold and gets covered with snow, leaving them with few options for finding food, such as voles, insects, and small birds. Thus, they begin an arduous migration, which will take them skimming over lofty mountains in Central Asia, over sandy and deserted dunes in Afghanistan, and into many parts of India. They arrive between September and November, to find food amidst the lush green grass and crops.
Each morning during the months that the harriers are in India, Ganesh and I walk the trails, trying to spot and count the harriers. This is like running through the attendance register at school: we want to know how many harriers have turned up, each day, and across the season. A reduction in their number can tell us if something may have changed in the grasslands, such as the availability of their food.
A gliding, elegant blue-grey harrier makes a beautiful sight and is more refreshing than our morning cups of coffee! Many harriers sport red-brown feathers, meaning they are young birds. Imagine a 4-month old bird flying over the mountains and deserts to meet you and me here in India!
Once here, the harriers fly low over the ground, barely a few feet above the grass, unlike eagles that scan for prey from high above. We watch them eagerly, as they perform various acrobatic flights to corner their prey, finally pouncing on a large grasshopper or small bird. Having caught a meal, the harrier then flies to a small open patch on the ground to prevent its prey from escaping, and dissects it carefully, consuming only the most nutritious parts. We also take a keen interest in their prey, noting down how many of each type are available in the grasslands, as this will tell us whether the harriers’ food has dwindled, changed, or increased. Remember, these harriers come from thousands of kilometers away in search of food, in these fast-disappearing grasslands in India. And the grasslands and savannahs are not only important for the harriers. They are also home to various wild grasses, wolves, foxes, and unique birds, and provide pasture to goats, sheep, and cattle.
An afternoon nap for the harriers in the shade suggests that we take one too since the grasslands are located in extremely hot and dry areas of the country: around the deserts of Rajasthan, in the grasslands of Gujarat, and on the Deccan plateau all the way into Southern Tamil Nadu. After lunch and a cup of tea, we head off to the grassland once again to a small patch called a harrier roost. A roost is an interesting place – a patch of tall grass, which the harriers hustle into each evening to make their bed. They trample the soft grass into a cup and form a cozy bed just like you and I wrap ourselves in blankets. This is a safe haven for them each night, to guard themselves against large owls, foxes, and jungle cats that might prey on them. Here, they spit out small pellets. These pellets contain undigested feathers, hair, bones, and insect body parts from their food, which are a precious resource for us. We collect them to observe under the microscope later, to find out what they have eaten. Pellets can tell us more about how these harriers survive in harsh weather, and how they change their diet as the grass starts to dry out and the grasshoppers become fewer in number!
From the gliding and feeding frenzy through the morning and afternoon, it has been a long day for the harriers. It is time to rest, and just like a crowd gathering in a cafe of an evening, the harriers can be seen flocking at their favourite mound or in a bare patch close to their roost. They perch silently, sometimes inviting others flying by with a shriek, sometimes fighting for a place, and preen their ruffled feathers before sleep. They also offer other harriers a clue to the site of their ‘camp,’ by flying in short circles over their roost. As the sun sets, they drop into the grass ever so quietly but remain alert enough to fly off on sensing danger. It’s a day’s story that recurs throughout the winter months, weaving the pattern of the seasons. As the green grass takes on golden brown hues with the onset of summer in March, the harriers start to turn back, to resume their migratory journey beyond the mountains and deserts.
Fun facts
There are 16 species of harriers belonging to the genus Circus distributed worldwide, out of which 6 species visit India each winter. These are the Montagu’s harrier (Circus pygargus), Pallid harrier (Circus macrourus), Eurasian Marsh harrier (Circus aeruginosus), Pied Harrier (Circus melanoleucos), Hen harrier (Circus cyaneus) and the Eastern Marsh harrier (Circus spilonotus).
Etymology – The name “harrier” may have come from an old English term “hergian” meaning to harass by hostile attacks. The scientific name “Circus” may have come from the Greek work “kirkos” meaning to fly around in circles.
Bright and cryptic colors – The males of most harriers are a bright grey in colour, while the females and young harriers sport a subtler mix of brown, white, and red-brown plumage.
Habitat – The Montagu’s, Pallid, and Hen harriers inhabit dry grasslands and savannahs in arid and semi-arid areas, while Marsh harriers inhabit wetlands and marshes. Harriers need grass – Harriers, unlike other large birds of prey, nest and roost on the ground in tall and dense grass.
Migration – Harriers migrate over a distance of 5000 km each winter, from Central Asia into India, or from parts of Europe into Africa! They may follow one route to reach their destination and another to fly back to their breeding grounds.
A spectacle – Harrier roosts in Gujarat (in the Blackbuck National Park, in Velavadhar) can contain an astounding 1200 birds by September-October each year! They can be seen flying around in circles in unison in the late evenings.
Swoop-snatch – Harriers are adept at snatching their prey in mid-air after they flush them with their swooping flight.
Voracious appetite – From a brief survey of harriers in Velavadhar (Gujarat), the flock of harriers in Velavadhar alone was estimated to consume between 2 and 2.5 million locusts during a single winter in India.
A varied menu – Harriers consume a wide variety of prey, including grasshoppers, small birds, small lizards (Sitana species), and small rodents.
Living together – Harriers form communal roosts that include more than one species of harrier. Roosting is preceded by spurts of flying around in circles before diving into the grass.
A web of life – Harriers share the grasslands with other unique and endemic fauna, such as the blackbuck, the wolf, the florican, and the critically endangered Indian bustard.
Ornaments – Scientists have used small numbered metal rings, placed on the legs of individual harriers, to track their movement patterns. You can learn more about some of the birds we have ringed here: https://harrierwatch.com/wp/index.php/report-your-sightings/
Invertebrates amaze me. Animals without a backbone make up the majority of species on earth. Mostly we humans will admire the pretty ones, try to get rid of the annoying or dangerous ones, and hardly notice the rest. But once you start looking at them, especially under a microscope, the beauty and diversity is delightful. That’s when you start looking for them.
The first invertebrates I encountered as a child were the dead cockroaches I would collect off the kitchen floor after my parents had put poison down, the ants I would tease by directing where they could walk and the snails I would make houses for in the garden. Then came my big revelation. A trip to the woods with the “Museum Club” showed me that invertebrates, and all of nature, could be studied.
I became a community ecologist so I could understand why species occur where they do and how they interact with each other. Invertebrates are the perfect study animals for this. I can examine interactions between predators and prey, between animals that help each other, or those that compete against each other, all in a handful of leaf litter. I have been doing just that in my current research project to understand what speeds up the decomposition (or breakdown) of leaf litter and the release of nutrients for plant growth.
A few years ago I set up a litter bag experiment at two forest sites in New Zealand: Hauturu-oToi, an offshore island, and the Waitakere Ranges on the mainland. Litterbags are the method I use to understand how invertebrates influence leaf litter decomposition. I simply put a net bag containing a certain amount of leaf litter out in the forest. Several months later I collect the bag. Back at the lab, I measure how much the leaves have decomposed and then count the invertebrates which have found their way into the bags. These are the invertebrates that have influenced decomposition, directly or indirectly.
Days in the field are wonderful. My litter bags are located randomly through the bush and are usually reached by ‘bush-bashing’ or off-track navigation using a GPS.
I love picking my way through the dense tangle of trees, shrubs, climbers, and grasses, scrambling up and down steep slopes, wading across streams, and emerging into an occasional clearing or high point to feel the breeze and hear the not-so-distant sea. On Hauturu, birds and their song are an enchanting distraction. Near one of my plots, there is a tall Kauri tree that emerges above the forest canopy and my collections and measurements there are often accompanied by the haunting “Ko-ka-ko” call of the Kokako bird. Not so in the Waitakere Ranges though, where the unnerving silence of the bush is a reminder of the damage done to New Zealand’s native birds by invasive rats.
Time back in the lab can be just as exciting. The quality and diversity of the leaf litter itself impact how fast leaves decompose and the community of invertebrates that live in it. Identifying the hundreds of species of invertebrates from the litter bags has shown that a diverse community of invertebrates is more important for decomposition than any one species or group (even though some groups, such as amphipods, can really eat through the litter). I’m now using lab techniques to look at the feeding and genetic relationships between invertebrate species in the litterbags. I hope this can tell me how it is that diverse communities decompose litter faster, and what keeps those communities diverse.
Fun facts
A handful of leaf litter may look like just a collection of dead leaves with the occasional millipede, centipede, woodlouse, or earthworm visible, but hidden from view at a micro-level is an astonishing diversity of tiny invertebrates. Here are some fun facts about just a few of them. All of the species shown here are under 2 mm.
Springtails (Collembola) are so-called because they possess a spring or forked structure on the underside of their bodies used for jumping when the animal senses danger. It is usually held against the body, but if a predator is detected nearby, the spring is released sending the springtail flying out of harm’s way. These animals are very abundant in leaf litter and soil. They eat dead leaves and the bacteria and fungi that live in the leaf litter. Their poo provides food for micro-organisms that do most of the decomposition and springtails are also an important prey item for lots of litter invertebrates.
Mites (Acari)
Mites are the most numerous invertebrates living in the leaf litter and among the smallest. There are many groups that perform different roles in the food web. Here are just three of them:
The Oribatid mites are distinctive because most adults are very smooth, with a hard exoskeleton or outer body surface, making them difficult for predators to catch and eat. This is just as well since they are also slow-moving creatures, with slow development. They can take up to seven years to grow from eggs and larvae to nymphs and adults. Oribatid mites mostly feed on decaying leaves and fungi and are important decomposers.
In contrast, the Mesostigmatid mites are active predators, searching through the leaves and soil pores to find small invertebrates including Collembolans, softer-bodied mites, and mite nymphs. Rather than eating their prey whole, they inject digestive fluids into their prey and then suck up the dissolved tissues.
Prostigmatid mites are more likely to be an ambush or sit-and-wait predators. Some have developed ingenious ways to catch their prey. For example, the Bellidae or Snout mites produce strands of sticky silk from glands in their mouth to entangle their prey and stop them from escaping.
Beetles (Coleoptera) Hidden in the leaf litter are a diverse subfamily of tiny beetles called the Pselaphinae, pronounced sel-a-feen-eh. These specialised predators eat mostly collembolans and mites. Living in the leaf litter, they are not visual hunters but use the hundreds of hairs on the tip of their antennae to detect prey using smell and touch. Their touch can be so delicate they do not trigger the escape response in Collembola. Many species will grab hold of their prey using sticky structures on their maxillary palps (one of several mouthparts) and a sticky substance they produce.
