[Book Review] A spotlight on India’s vanishing wildlife

With the rapid extinction of biodiversity, our flora and fauna, are there too many books presenting a doomsday scenario? I don’t think so. The situation is so dire that there should be constant ringing of alarm bells to wake up governments and citizens who take the forests, oceans, mountains and the myriad creatures that add to their lustre, for granted. The economic growth juggernaut needs to pause and take stock of human greed for better living.

Biological Apocalypse: Species Extinction in the Anthropocene, edited by Pronami Bhattacharyya and with contributions from 17 wildlife activists, birders, nature conservationists and scientists, focuses on wildlife listed as critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable and near threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Many of these species, whether it’s the Jerdon’s courser, the black soft-shelled turtle, the pangolin, the great Indian bustard, the Indian elephant or the one-horned rhino are intrinsic to the Indian subcontinent.

The editor, a professor of English at the Royal Global University, Assam, in her elaborate introduction, reflects on the five earlier extinctions and steers the readers to the sixth predicted extinction.

“The declining biodiversity has amplified the risk of animal-borne viruses like Ebola, SARS, bird flu and Covid-19,” writes Bhattacharyya. In 2008, K. Jones and a team of researchers listed 335 novel diseases that surfaced between 1960 and 2004, 64 % of them zoonotic, derived from animals. Trees and forests are at the epicentre of sustainable development but since humans began practicing agriculture some 12,000 years ago, about half the world’s estimated 5.80 trillion trees were axed.

The natural world is a web of elaborate connections with a finely maintained equilibrium. Tinkering with any part of it can affect the entire ecosystem. However, this decimation does not hit us as hard as it does when we see pictures of a dead rhino with its horn chopped off.

Each time a species goes extinct, the ecosystem loses it balance. The dodo and the dinosaur are iconic examples of mass extinctions. When a predator goes extinct, its prey, like the grass-eating deer, can destroy the vegetation cover of forests; a declining population of owls can lead to rodent population swelling; when a rhino vanishes, seed dispersal is affected because they eat in one place and defecate in another, helping dispersal of plant seeds in the ecosystem.

A resident of northeast India and a birder, Bhattacharyya has seen a spurt in the use of electric saws in Arunachal Pradesh. The pace of forest destruction has skyrocketed and with trees gone, avian species like the laughing thrush or tragopan and even the native Arunachal macaque, are endangered. The sixth mass extinction will be of humans as much as of birds, animals and trees.

Unlike Elizabeth Kolbert’s book The Sixth Extinction and Prerna Singh Bindra’s The Vanishing: India’s Wildlife Crisis, Biological Apocalypse zooms in on the IUCN’s list of endangered animals. Since a large number of them are Indian, the book is relevant to the subcontinent. It also deals with less dominant species like the black soft-shell turtles, the Chinese pangolin, the red panda, the Jerdon’s courser, the white-bellied heron and the white-backed vulture and brings in the new dimension of climate change on ecosystems. It has updated information on the extensive research and efforts being made to save them and ends with success stories on the frontlines of conservation.

Akashdeep Baruah’s chapter, The fall of Jatayu, the oriental white-backed vulture, documents how the vulture population fell from 353 nesting pairs in the Keoladeo Bird Sanctuary in Bharatpur in 1988 to half that number in 1996. By 2000 not a single pair could be seen in the sanctuary. The deaths happened due to a drug called diclofenac sodium used for relieving pain in livestock. When vultures ate the carcass of animals treated with the drug, they suffered renal failure and died.

India’s Vulture Action Plan initiated by the Ministry of Environment and Forests in 2006 led to in-situ and ex-situ conservation measures; the use of diclofenac was prohibited and eight vulture captive breeding centres were set up. However, new problems keep cropping up. With carcasses being buried, the availability of food for vultures became a problem. Special “restaurants” are being set up to provide poison-free, non-toxic meat for vultures. A 2015 BNHS study shows the decline has slowed down and vulture population is stabilising.

One of the rarest sights in the wild is the Amur leopard, also known as the Far-eastern leopard, the Manchurian, Korean and Siberian leopard. In 2007 its population reached a shocking low of 30 in the wild. Thanks to conservation work in 2022, it rose to 70 but it is still critically endangered. This beautiful animal’s rosette-covered fur adorns the rich even as its population dwindles and its habitat shrinks. Inbreeding threatens their survival. Fortunately, China and Russia are working on a bilateral conservation strategy for the Amur leopard and modifying human activity for their revival. The Land of Leopards national park in Russia is having positive results, says WWF director of Russia’s Amur branch.

Both Bindra and Bhattacharyya, in their respective chapters, have dwelled on the fate of the great Indian bustard, whose numbers have dwindled from 1260 in 1969 to about 150 due to habitat destruction, hunting, mining, solar power and windmills. This large bird was once in the race for status as the National Bird of India. The Wildlife Institute of India, the central environment ministry and state governments are collectively working for ex-situ and in-situ conservation of the bird. An artificial hatching centre has been set up in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. Recently a new trend of two eggs in a clutch has raised hopes of bustard survival. While one of the two eggs is collected for artificial hatching, the second is left for the bird to rear.

Read more: Peninsular India close to losing its last remaining great Indian bustards

The critically endangered orangutan, a lovable, tree dwelling ape with long dark brown or orange hair, has always fascinated me and I was happy to see a whole chapter devoted to their status by Ulhas Gondhali and S. K. Gupta. Historically found all over South East Asia, including Java, Sumatra and China, anthropogenic activity like deforestation has restricted them to protected forests in Borneo and Sumatra. There are interesting details like orangutans making umbrellas with twigs and leaves when it rains. All three species of the orangutan have declined fast. They are kept as pets, used for medical research, displayed in zoos and used by the entertainment industry. Many are even pushed into kickboxing matches. Illegal sale of young orangutan is a global issue.

Inspiring people for conservation, the book ends with success stories. Purnima Devi Barman of the wildlife NGO Aaranyak in Assam has been able to pull out of extinction the greater adjutant stork or Hargila. A bald bird, with an enormous pouch on its neck, it was considered a pest who literally produced a lot of shit and a bad omen. In Kamrup district, where a large number of these birds were found, people would chop down the tall nesting trees of the adjutant stork. Working with village women, Purnima Devi was able to convince them about the ecological importance of the bird as a scavenger and the cutting of trees stopped. From 30 nests in 2007, there were 150 in 2015 and around 550 in 2016.

In Majuli Island in northeast India, Jadav Molai Payeng, has been planting trees for 30 years and has turned 1,300 acres of barren land into a lush green forest attracting 80 per cent of the world’s migratory birds. Mishak Nzimbi, a night watchman-turned-elephant keeper of the Nairobi Elephant nursery, is father and mother to 130 orphaned elephants. Under his care, they want to live.

Read more: Book on endemic birds says three species almost extinct

Banner image: Wild Chinese Pangolin in Hong Kong. Photo from Primus Books.