Shot in the wild

It shall be the duty of Every Citizen of India to protect and improve the Natural Environment including forests, rivers, lakes and wildlife and to have compassion for all living creatures.

The Constitution of India, Clause 51- A (g)

For 250 years, a vast majority of Indians had been led to believe that our natural resources were infinite and so their management and harvesting suffered through neglect and complacency. In the 1930s, Lieutenant Colonel R.W. Burton, a third generation serving officer of the Indian Army propagated the theme ‘Forests and Wildlife: India’s Vanishing Assets’. Burton was astute enough to realise that nature conservation could only succeed through a ‘Peoples’ Movement’ and, in 1947, won Mahatma Gandhi’s support for this mission. But the Mahatma was assassinated soon after.

However, Burton persevered and, in October 1952, Prime Minister Nehru constituted The National Board for Wildlife. Subsequently, the first week of October came to be celebrated as the National Wildlife Week (NWW).

Come October, the Government and NGOs will mount yet another annual celebration of the NWW. Is there adequate wildlife and supportive natural habitats left worthy of celebration? If we go by a recent report of Trade Related Analysis of Fauna and Flora in Commerce, (TRAFFIC) a permanent entity of UNO, a fairly large number of India’s birds and animals are on the edge of disaster. For instance, one survey revealed that 80 tiger skins and 3,000 leopard skins from Indian jungles entered Lhasa in 2008 alone, for onward transit to markets in China and the West. Lesser creatures are not spared either.

Tiny butterflies are frozen in crystal and fashioned into brooches; and, 20 to 30 musk deer (males) are hunted down to extract just one ounce of perfume. These are just a few examples of the unrelenting scale of attrition that India’s wildlife species and their associated habitats have suffered for at least the last 50 years.

But are such ground realities projected and deliberated during the NWW? Unfortunately, both the Government and NGOs find it convenient to use school-going children both as captive audience and as manipulative performers of a sham ritual.

We could make a fresh start to sensitise Indians by screening documentaries on the fundamentals of the web of life on Planet Earth. In the 1980s, Rajesh Bedi shot a film on turtle hatchlings at the Chambal. Then there is Mike Pandey’s film The Last Migration on the plight of the Asian Elephants in India. Perhaps the most inspiring story of our times comes from a school boy in Germany in the 1960s.

When Michael Grzimek finished school at age 16, he learnt that, during the world’s largest annual migration of animals in Africa, about half a million travel to and fro between the Ngorongoro Crater Sanctuary and the Serengeti Wildlife Park. However, the route was the home of the Maasai tribes who hunt these animals indiscriminately. Moved by this recurrent massacre, Michael persuaded his father, Dr. Bernhard Grzimek, to join with him and conduct an aerial survey of the precise corridor of land linking the two sanctuaries and thus create a contiguous larger sanctuary.

For about two years, father and son talked to audiences in Europe and the U.S., raised funds to buy an aircraft and over the next two years mapped and filmed the land migration corridor. In the last week of their mission, Michael took off on a solo filming assignment when a vulture struck the propeller. He died in the crash. Bernhard had him buried on the lip of the Ngorongoro Crater where a pyramid of stones marks the lone grave with the inspiring plaque: ‘Michael Grzimek 12-4-1934 to 10-1-1959. He gave all he possessed, including his life, for the wild animals of Africa.’ Hollywood used Michael’s footage to make the stunning film Serengeti Shall Not Die, set to Bernhard’s script.

I believe that these are the kind of episodes, which will enthuse people into taking up the cause of nature conservation.

Are Prime Minister Modi and all the NGOs listening?

http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/shot-in-the-wild/article6407636.ece