After a gap of five long years, I
was back to the field again. I could revive my old field knowledge whenever I came
across a plant, a bird or a butterfly. Sometimes I used to fail miserably in
the identification process. I would
then immediately turn to the pages of my field book, where a tiny note on my earlier
field observations would help me identify the creature in question. This learning
process was difficult but enjoyable and luckily the identification failure
didn’t last long.
The life of field biologists
cannot remain restricted to the air conditioned rooms or desktop computers for a
long time. While I was working on bird conservation programme in the Bombay, I
often used to travel during weekends for watching water birds at estuaries and
mudflats. I realized that waders are
somewhat more difficult to identify than forest birds. I had to make a number
of visits to distinguish a particular wader bird from another, but I never used
to get satisfied until I would identify it by myself. Rivers and estuaries in
Bombay carry pollution load which is beyond one’s imagination. Almost all the
estuarine banks were full of plastic. From a distance this ugly plastic gives
an illusion of shed mangrove fruits! The polluted condition of rivers and
estuaries often used to upset me. I had seen some of the most pristine rivers
in the Himalayas where aquatic life dwell most happily. But here I could not
even visualize the state of aquatic life! I felt that our rivers were in urgent
need of help and attention towards their plight and I decided to pursue my
carrier in river conservation. I quit my office job and moved down to southern
India.
ATREE, Bangalore |
Field Biologists |
Photo: Urbshi Pradhan
Ashoka Trust for Research in
Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) is an independent research institution based
in Bangalore and working on a variety of issues ranging from sociology to
ecology. I joined their PhD programme in Conservation
Science and Sustainability Studies. A
year long coursework was a great learning experience. This enabled me to
interact with experts and colleagues in my field who shared similar interests.
The interactions that followed shaped my ideas for a topic that I would take up
for my Doctoral research. I decided to study river biodiversity and its
associated threats in some of the relatively pristine rivers of the Western
Ghats – now a world’s Biodiversity Hotspot.
Gangadikal peak |
A long, restless waiting for eight
month and one fine day my research permits from Karnataka Forest Department
arrived. I was exhilarated to know that I got permission to carry out my
research in the lush green hills of Kudremukh National Park for two long years!
Next few days, I started browsing internet and some of the books available in
our library to familiarize myself with the park. King cobras, Lion tailed
macaques, Tigers, leopards, Sloth bears and the Indian gaur. I had already
begun visualizing all these animals and their impending encounters with me in
the forest in my overjoyed mind.
Emrald banded skimmer (Cratilla lineata) |
On one fine evening the moment I
had been waiting for all this while arrived. I took the KSRTC night bus from
Kempegowda bus stand Bangalore to Karkala- a small town in the Dakshin Kannada district.
I reached Karkala at 5:30 am. It was pitch dark I could see only the part of
the road where the bus light was falling. With clouds of sleep floating heavy
in my eyes I dragged myself to a nearby shop and tried getting some more of the
sweet sleep. Meanwhile, one tea shop had already opened. I took some tea and
started enquiring about my next travel destination in Hindi to a fellow who was
obviously a Kannadiga. He did not tell anything even after I had finished my
sentence. I felt a bit embarrassed for a moment for my lack of even broken
knowledge of the local language. Luckily, within few minutes another fellow
traveler arrived, understood my problem and gave me directions and told me to
wait till 9 am to catch a bus to Kudremukh town. I thanked him profusely and set out to gather
some local information about the town. I came to know that, this town was
dominated by Brahmin and Jain communities and the old temples in the town and a
big statue of Gomteshwara clearly were a reflection of their presence. The
style of the houses was very much similar to those of Konkan in Maharashtra,
where I had spent four fond years for my graduation. My mind then started weaving
a lifescape of differences and similarities between Konkan and this region. Big
sized coconut trees, Jackfruit trees, tall beetle nut trees, vines of pepper
and patchy banana plantation were similar in almost every house I saw. All
this, gave me immense pleasure to be in the similar environment again.
Singsar village - now relocated from the park |
Agriculture field |
I took 9 o’ clock ‘Mother Earth’-
a private bus to Kudremukh. It was September.
Monsoon was still in its spirit, leaving its green impression on the
land. I crossed many small villages. At every stop I used to peep out of the
window to know if the forested landscape was close by. After a while, from a distance I could see
faded green mountains. It took an hour for the bus to reach near the foothills
of forests. I was glad to notice that it
was moist and a bit foggy, which meant that our bus was already in one of the
hills. The road was very good. At one
point I saw a huge wide valley covered with lush broadleaved evergreen forests.
A long grassland carpet was dotted with
few distinct pockets of forests; this was ‘Shola grassland!’ The sight caused a
rush of nostalgic memories of my earlier trekking experiences in the Shola
grassland in the Tamil Nadu state. I learned that, Kudremukh NP has the largest
shola grassland in the entire Western Ghats range. As our bus was hurtling ahead on the snake
like winding road, I was glad to see rich forest diversity around. In the very
next moment I was thinking, whether the streams and river would also be so rich
in their aquatic life?
Shola grassland |
Shola grassland during summer season |
I reached Kudremukh town at 10:45
am. There was a small bus stand, and I found myself in front of a Kendriya
Vidyalaya- a school with many small pyramid like buildings in an area of one
acre. I enquired about the forest department. I met the local staff and the Range
Forest Officer; they were very down to earth and passionate about the forest. I
found that some people knew Hindi. I was very glad. I stayed at Sahyadri Guest
House which is run by Kudremukh Iron Ore Company (KIOCL).
KIOCL started in 1978 for
extraction of iron ore. It was closed in the year 2006. One research finding suggested
that, iron ore mining had very serious implication on Bhadra river and its
people at downstream. My gaze shifted to the top of the surrounding mountains.
Some of them had been systematically chopped for iron ore extraction. A huge iron ore extraction plant was built on top
of a hill across the Bhadra river. There is a fairly long bridge to transport
crude iron ore from the main plant to another site and then to Mangalore
through a big pipeline. Mangalore is more
than 100 kilometers from this place. From Mangalore, the powdered form of iron is
then shipped to the foreign countries.
KIOCL and Bhadra river |
Next morning, I went to nearby
forest area. I came to know that, the undulating terrain with chain of mountains
had formed a very good stream network in the park. Raghvendra, my guide took me
around and got me oriented with a few streams. We walked through some of the rivers and
streams. Streams were pristine in nature
with relatively dense canopy cover. Every
trail running along streams was full of leaches. They were all over in the
thick layer of semi-decomposed leaf litter. The moment we started to walk
through leaf litter, leeches used to wake up with their long snouts in search
of blood. Leeches are very sensitive to temperature and become active whenever any
animal passes through them. All this while, I was very careful to avoid leech
bites and would check my shoes quite often. But, any chirping of bird or any
alarm call in the forest would disallow me to check out the leeches for some
time, as a result of which I my legs were loaded with leeches after a short
walk. The first sight of a boatful of leeches on my legs frightened me, but slowly
I took off all the leeches and vowed to and avoid the trails as much as
possible.
River Bhadra near Gangamoola |
We then explored Bhadra river and
went up to ‘Gangamoola’- a place situated at 1060m from where two rivers Tunga
and Bhadra river originates. While
getting down from big rocks and boulders I was closely observing each and every
pool for the presence of fish. It was a bit dark. I checked my watch and it was
only 11 am. Darkness was due to the
presence of long standing trees along the river banks. River was meandering lazily through the rocks
and fallen trees. Trees barks were
densely covered with lichens giving out an impression of several Malabar pit
vipers clung on trees. I encountered dropping of small Indian civet - a small
nocturnal carnivorous animal on one big fallen tree in the river. It had eaten fruits of Fishtail palm. Then a gentle movement in the water made me
glad. There were few fishes. At one small shallow pool, I found one bottom
dwelling fish – Bhavania australis
(less than 4 cm). It was new for me. I had never seen this before. I was
delighted and quickly took out my notepad and pencil and drew its sketch. I also made a sketch of another bottom
dwelling fish- Garra species (approx.
7 cm) and decided to identify them once I returned to my base camp. Water was
flowing very gently and all of them were swimming and hiding among the pebbles
with graceful movements. On my return I
checked my field book, but got confused. Many fishes were very similar to each
other, but with the sketch and the associated information on microhabitat I
managed to identify them to the Genus level. Slowly and steadily I got acquainted
with some other fishes. I could identify one small barb which had three-four
horizontal bluish lines along the body – Danio
malbaricum. Sister species of this genus is Zebra fish and countless other
barb species one can find in the aquarium trade. There is no guideline as to
how many and what kind of fish species should be allowed in the trade. Illegal
and excessive trade is posing a serious threat to these native aquarium fishes.
Bhavania australis - a cryptic fish |
Similarly, ecology of rivers in India
is poorly studied. In spite of having a separate ‘River Conservation
Directorate’ we still lack even basic ecological information about our rivers.
To a large extent, current river conservation in the country still follows
conservation measures that are formulated for protecting terrestrial and not
the aquatic biodiversity. How long can this go and how long can the rivers bear
the burden of unplanned development and human greed? I firmly believe that only
due to lack of sound knowledge on rivers, many hydrological dams are raising
their heads in the forested regions of our country. I agree on the idea of
development and progress, but surely not at the cost of irreparable damage to
the river biodiversity!