Fading flora, vanishing fauna

The history of wildlife in the country has been one of declining ranges, degrading habitats and dwindling numbers. This perilous downslide continues even today. M.D. MADHUSUDHAN looks at colonial and independent India to find out why.

BAASOOR lies a few kilometres off the Kadur-Birur highway in Karnataka. Beyond the village, a dusty earthen track gradually gives way to a vast expanse of grassland, sprinkled sparsely with bushes of Zizyphus and Acacia. A grey shrike perches motionless on its lookout and a Montagu's harrier skims low over the meadows. Hidden bush-larks trill softly and the wind whistles in the grass. This is Baasoor kaaval (pasture). Search the kaaval for a few hours, and count yourself lucky if you glimpse a blackbuck or two disappearing into the shimmering horizon like spirits in a dream.

Would Baasoor kaaval have been this way always? Quite unlikely. A century ago, Baasoor kaaval might have been the archetypal Indian savannah. Presumably, there were nilgai, chinkara, blackbuck, and towards the nearby dry forests of Yemme Doddi, chousingha too. Preying upon them would be large predators - the cheetah and the wolf. In addition, there would be the Indian fox, the great Indian bustard and, perhaps, even the Jerdon's courser. The early decades of this century saw the nilgai disappear completely from the southern plains. Later, even as the country celebrated its independence, the last cheetah had already walked the Indian plains. The chinkara too was on a decline in the south. Nonetheless, even a decade ago, the blackbuck could be found in large herds in the kaaval. The wolf and the shy Indian fox were still not uncommon, nor was the great Indian bustard. Not so, today - fewer blackbuck forage in the kaaval than ever before; the bustard and wolf have not been seen for some time now.

From elsewhere in the country too, similar dismal stories can be recounted. Forest, grassland, and wetland alike have been lost all over. The distribution range and population of scores of species - prominently the Indian rhinoceros, hangul, tiger, Asiatic lion, barasingha, wild buffalo, sangai and Nilgiri tahr - have plunged dramatically, confined to mere shreds of habitat. Even if particulars of such tales are moot, the message is clear: nation-wide, forests and wildlife have been in precipitous decline.

When did such a decline begin? What caused it? What drives the current trends? How can the decline be arrested? These are some questions I raise and attempt to answer in the following account.

Pre-colonial India

The scales of forest and wildlife declines are believed to be relatively recent, with the most glaring transformations, occurring over the last two centuries. Ecologist Madhav Gadgil and historian Romila Thapar have argued that the landscape, until some 4,000 years ago, was dominated by subsistence food gatherers, who were in equilibrium with their resources. Even during the time of such hunter-gatherers in the terminal Pleistocene epoch (c. 10,000 years BP), species such as the baboon and the hippopotamus went extinct from the subcontinent. While rapid climatic changes, typical of that epoch, might ultimately have set off these extinctions, proximate over-hunting by hunter-gatherer communities is thought to have hastened the process.

Soon, however, pastoralism and agriculture emerged as dominant modes of subsistence. With this, the carrying capacity of the land was raised, triggering increases in population. Accompanying these increases were agricultural expansions into the river valleys of the Peninsula. The fertile valleys became a monopolisable resource and surplusage was generated on them, opening opportunities for trade. Erstwhile small kingdoms soon made way for the great empires of the Mauryas and Chalukyas. With changes in modes of production, and with associated increases in population, people on the subcontinent evidently pushed into many forested areas. Still, the exact consequences of these early agricultural expansions on the country's forests and wildlife are not very well known.

From the Fourth Century, however, the great empires went into decline as rising populations quickly drew level with the carrying capacities set down by agricultural production. Such recession continued into the 10th Century, when the arrival of technological improvements and political changes advanced human carrying capacities even further. Following this, there was a renewed establishment of empires such as Vijayanagar and those of the Mughals. Reports emerge, at this time, of the disappearance of elephants from Saurashtra and Punjab. The rhinoceros was hunted near the Indus river even into the 16th Century, after which it appears to have gone extinct there. The Mughal era saw hunting on an unprecedented scale - Akbar alone is reputed to have procured some 9,000 cheetahs for use in sport-hunting; Jehangir is recorded as having personally hunted some 28,350 animals over a 38-year period. However, the relatively small people-to-land ratio, and the subsistence character of most land- use conceivably moderated human impact on wildlife and their habitats. Significantly, with the birth of large empires, a significant new dimension - of commerce - was added to the subsistence character of natural resource exploitation hitherto.

Colonial India

With the establishment of colonial hegemony, major changes ensued in the social, economic, political, and cultural spheres of Indian life. These changes resulted primarily from technological interventions in transforming and transporting natural resources. Ecological changes thus, followed relentlessly.

The British primarily endeavoured on a theme of unbridled commercial exploitation of non-cultivated land, mostly forests. Teak, deodhar and sal were removed extensively from natural forests for shipbuilding and to make railway sleepers - this catalysed further forest exploitation. In the five decades between 1860 and 1910, the railway network in India recorded a forty-fold growth, with its annual requirements of sleepers in the 1870s put at well over a million! The British had laboured hard and consequently, when supplies of commercially valuable timber from natural forests withered, they set about the task of replacing natural forests with plantations of commercially valuable species, mostly teak. In the 1860s, they set up the Imperial Forest Department to oversee this enterprise, and also to exclude local subsistence uses of these forests. The British also encouraged the felling of huge tracts of forest, and subsidised their conversions into commercial plantations of tea, coffee and spices. In the forests that remained, they hunted wildlife vigorously. Unrelated to the land, unrestrained by tradition, but armed with the newest firearms, the colonial hunter was lethal. Besides shikaar or sport hunting, the British also undertook a methodical extermination of wildlife. Based on archival records of money paid to hunters, social historian Mahesh Rangarajan concluded that between 1875 and 1925, in the Central Provinces alone, over 50,000 tigers were shot under programmes of State-sponsored bounty hunting. Similar bounties were placed on the killing of most other large carnivores, notably the wolf and the wild dog. Apart from such direct persecution, the numbers of these predators also dwindled because of rampant overhunting of their prey by the colonialists.

The role of natives in the decline of forests and wildlife was certainly less dramatic than the colonialists, but perhaps just as pervasive. The population rose considerably under colonial rule. Despite famines and epidemics that claimed the lives of millions, the population increased from 200 million in the 1870s to some 300 million in the 1920s, the rise becoming even steeper thereafter. Earlier, British industry had successfully marginalised the Indian artisan, driving more Indians than ever before to rely directly upon agricultural production for subsistence. The new exclusionist forest laws also banned local subsistence use of forests, generating an even greater dependence by local communities on agriculture. Further agricultural expansions followed. Grasslands and scrub forests, which held little value to the timber-thirsty colonialists, were increasingly transferred to agricultural uses by local communities. Further, improved technological means of conquering the hinterland ensured that previously untouched regions like the sub-Himalayan malarial forests and the terai were also brought under the plough. Although admittedly the result of grossly iniquitous colonial policies of natural-resource management, intensified local subsistence pressures began to assume a significant role in wildlife and habitat losses of the colonial times.

After Independence

Following the exit of the British, the new Indian Government energetically set about the task of jump-starting the resource- sapped economy. It placed a major emphasis on industrialisation and food production. A number of State-subsidised heavy industries, large irrigation and hydroelectric projects were started. Many huge dams were built, inundating forested tracts. Mining and quarrying leases were granted within forested lands. The road and railway network was also extended, often by cutting down forests. They, in turn, opened access to remote areas, facilitating further colonisation and exploitation. As for the legal guardians of the forests - the forest department - timber production remained their overwhelming priority within the forest reserves. Natural forests were thus logged over relentlessly, and later replaced with plantations. Forest-based industries (i.e. plywood, paper) mushroomed all over, imposing commercial demands on forest products.

With advances in medicine and improvements in transport and communication, calamitous epidemics and famines were successfully eliminated, and the population went into a tizzy, recording an increase of 120 million between 1951 and 1961. The Government initiated the "Grow More Food" campaign, encouraging extensive agricultural expansions into forests and pastures. With losses of pasturelands, the enormous livestock population headed into the remaining forests - in 1956, some 12 per cent of all livestock grazed exclusively within forests. Under degenerating range conditions, there were epidemic outbreaks in livestock, which triggered large die-offs of wild ungulates such as the gaur and chital. The "Grow More Food" campaign also sanctioned the liberal issue of crop protection guns. Together with the availability of flashlights and jeeps, erosion of traditional restraints, and the rejection of hunting regulations as a form of colonial repression, wildlife was diligently wiped out from many areas adjoining habitation.

At this stage then, forests remained only in pockets where some form of regulatory authority - State-administered or otherwise - prevailed, and wildlife mostly occurred therein. In 1952, the Indian Board for Wildlife was constituted, and in the following years, many small protected areas - sanctuaries and national parks - were carved out of Government-held forests or princely hunting reserves. However, the on-ground effectiveness of these protected areas in containing forces driving wildlife declines remained poor, and by 1970, the once-abundant tiger teetered on the brink of extinction. At this juncture, an essentially elitist movement successfully mobilised political interest at the highest levels for conservation. In 1972, the Wildlife (Protection) Act was passed, giving teeth to efforts aimed at stemming decline of wildlife . Many more forests were subsequently gazetted as protected areas, where extractive uses were restricted, and hunting was forbidden. Such measures have indeed been successful in averting the otherwise-imminent extinction of species like the tiger, rhinoceros and sangai, and in checking the pace of decline in other wildlife. But, by no means have the threats disappeared.

Today's trends

Today, threats from organised commercial activities and unorganised subsistence activities operate collaterally - often synergistically - driving wildlife decline. In Karnataka's Kudremukha National Park, a renewed central clearance for iron- ore prospecting threatens to aggravate earlier damage to its rich rainforest wildlife from logging, road-building, and two decades of mining. However, in the forests on its western fringes, which are relatively unaffected by mining and associated pressures, energetic hunting of many mammal and large bird species by local communities have brought about major declines in these species. Similarly, while the Teirei hydro-electric project in Mizoram today threatens to inundate large areas of the Dampa tiger reserve, traditional shifting cultivation and hunting in the same area have already spelt disastrous consequences for the region's wildlife. In the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, both commercial logging as well as illicit clearing by settlers for subsistence- cropland helps wash away tons of topsoil into the ocean: forests as well as the fragile coral reefs are seriously affected.

In many instances now, a tight links exists between subsistence and commercial activities, blurring the distinctions. In Hangala village of Karnataka, for instance, thousands of cattle return every evening from neighbouring Bandipur tiger reserve where they go in to graze. The dung they deposit at their stalls overnight leaves as daily lorry-loads to fertilise commercial plantations of coffee in Kodagu (Karnataka) and Wyanaad (Kerala). Similarly, markets for wild animal meat in nearby towns have intensified hunting pressures within protected areas; stocking densities of pastoralists' livestock even in remote areas have gone up in response to demands of faraway markets, and the extent of commercial pressure on minor forests produce has driven an intensification of their collection.

Yet, the ideologues of subsistence use hold commerce the more pernicious threat to wildlife, and similarly, the partisans of growing free-markets - the state and industry - take a seldom- articulated, but opposing, view. However, the fact remains that commerce, subsistence, and the linkages that bind them, all stand culpable in today's wildlife declines.

Arresting the decline

To the preservationist, the intrinsic ecological potential of wildlife habitats reigns paramount, while to the local user, it is their subsistence potential, and to the enterprise, their developmental potential that matters. All are important. Very often, however, in contexts of high human densities, to realise one of these potentials fully, necessarily means to forfeit others. Put simply, if we are serious about conserving our wildlife, we must concede that it will not be possible within landscapes conceived for subsistence or developmental needs. In saying this, my concern lies specifically with those wildlife species that are extremely sensitive and vulnerable to human pressures.

This, however, is not a rejection of the goals of subsistence. Under historical design and neglect, and in today's reigning preoccupation with commerce, most subsistence lifestyles have suffered. Even to consider that underfed, ill-housed, illiterate peoples, often by the sheer force of numbers and need, visit much damage upon the vestiges of our natural heritage, leaves one in a deep crisis of conscience. But the answer is not to turn the clock back, and cleanse history. So too, answers cannot be found in knee-jerk rejection of development either.

Considering the multifarious needs of various groups above, it is imperative to create and maintain a matrix of landscapes comprising inviolate areas for wildlife, include areas for subsistence use, and areas for commercial production through efforts that may be founded on participatory approaches. In the meanwhile, the need to keep areas inviolate for wildlife must be regarded more as a reflection of the constraints in their conservation, than as intrigues against subsistence. Right now, we need to ensure that the wildlife there is, survives long enough to be conserved under such sanguine schemes. And that means stricter on-ground protection of wildlife and their habitat against anthropogenic pressures, subsistence or otherwise.

The take-home message, therefore, is inevitably blunt. In the human-dominated Indian landscape, there is no easy way of conserving wildlife. But, if we are serious about it, it is time we got tough.

The writer is with the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, and the Centre for Ecological Research and Conservation, Mysore.

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