Understanding our rivers

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! 

Learning from a clue

Sampling locations at Chembarampakkam lake

A pool habitat

Recently I had undergone a basic fish systematic and field sampling techniques training which was informally organized by Care Earth, an environmental NGO and the Southern Regional Zoological Survey of India, Chennai. This training made me to get familiarized with identification of freshwater fishes of this region. Marcus Knight, a friend who has been working on the freshwater fishes of Chennai city for the past two years. He taught me how to catch fishes by using mosquito net and homemade scoop net in the small channels of Chambarabakkam Lake, situated in the southern part of Chennai city. Our first little sampling effort yielded a remarkable catch. We transferred these fishes to a bucket of water subsequently to identify each of them and release back to the water. At the end of the week we counted twenty four species. During this field visit I learned that by mere observation one can easily distinguish males and females of some of the fish species, rather than one having to dissect the fish. For instance, Orange chromide (Etroplus maculatus) males are smaller and yellowish in color than females which are duller in color.

Red chromid (Etroplus maculatus)

Golden  barb (Puntius gelius)

Marcus has reported Puntius gelius, a small barb from this locality. It is a colorful fish that grows up to 5cm. This would be a new range extension for the species from south India. I feel, this is great finding from a Metropolitan city but, unfortunately we do not hear much about this. Why has this not been an interesting story and not known to many of us? Are we paying too much attention to only charismatic animals and neglecting lesser yet beautiful animal life?   

Proeutroiicthys taakree taakree

Pool barb (Puntius sophore)

Spotted snakehead (Channa punctatus)

Finding this fish suggests that despites tumultuous changes in our landscape, such species seems to have adapted to the seasonal changes. It would be interesting to know the detailed ecology of this species and estimate current threats to it if any. Due to inaccessible terrain and ad-hoc nature of record keeping we are still unsure about how many more species are yet to be discovered or rediscovered to science from our country. The pace of ecological research in our science colleges and universities has been slower could be due to lack of funds and the right motivation.  If we want to make a comprehensive inventory, then colleges and universities in India should pay little more attention towards ecological research and encourage students to explore the incredible mega biodiversity of the country. Such inventories should not aim to generate a mere list of plants or animals but it should encompass its pattern of distribution within a landscape along with its current status. For instance, monitoring a small patch of forest or segment of a stream or recording butterflies over long period by college or university students would result in interesting outcomes.

Mozambique tilapia (Oreochromis mossambica)

Asian knife fish (Notopterus notopterus)

We know that many species interact more closely with local environments rather than regional. For instance, many species of frogs and lizards are known to prefer rocks and wood debris. Noting down the habitat requirement (temperature, dimension of wood debris or rock etc) on daily basis by college students will not only build a qualitative data set but also will give further insight to students to carry on such activities in their campuses thus being more involved with the nature rather than attending formal Earth Day or Wildlife Weeks.

At this juncture, networking between such institutions is crucial for future research and the shared ecological information should be made available for interested research groups. Given a chance and direction I think many of us would surely reinvent the wheel like Carl Linnaeus in the species discovery expedition and celebrate the Year of Biodiversity in real sense!