Indian Wildlife Club Ezine (September, 2004)

'I believe any trip in search of wildlife can be coupled with physical activity and elements of cultural diversity to form a thrilling opportunity '
John H.Eickert

I had been walking a short while and there in a tree, just in front and above was a large dark creature licking the leaves from the tree it was sitting in. Such was my first encounter with the lion-tail macaque. I was in Silent National Park walking the step shaped foothills of Kerala. Silent is in Kerala above the community of Perintalmanna or south from Ooty in Tamil Nadu in the Western Ghats. It is a very small park, part of a larger area. Most of the parks and some of the land here belongs to an experimental area called the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve.

What is unique is the desire to preserve the land and wildlife, and a way of life as well. Here indigenous subsistence living is encouraged and hopefully sustained. Indeed, the last hunter-gatherer group on the peninsula, the Cholanaickens, lives here. With large corporate greed swirling unchecked and out of control across the face of our planet, I wish those people well and wish them much luck.

I also hope the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve finds success, showing respect for the land, the wildlife, and the people who live there is an experiment contrary to life on our planet. I think it is a giant step forward. In the tree, I think it was a fig tree, sat the dog sized black macaque with light colored facial hair and not surprisingly a long tail with a tuft of fur at the end, a lion tail! The tree was very tall, perhaps 50-55 meters. We were in a small dark forest surrounded by grassland. Such forests in the Western Ghats are called sholas. These sholas have always existed, but were enhanced by timber felling and fire from the hand of man. In our age, I can imagine this taking place, but timber-felling tens of thousands of years ago could not have been that easy.

I heard an answer to this riddle actually I heard it twice. I was told that it is possible, if properly trained, to shout down a large tree. Really, shouting in the Silent Valley! I have no reason to doubt what is possible, as I have witnessed so many things, which I probably would not have believed had I stayed home. During my walk in the forest I also saw a giant Indian pied hornbill wing across a stretch of grassland and watched a Malabar squirrel hustle along the branch of a tree. This area of India is rich in wildlife including tigers and elephants. The Western Ghats region is a wet forest, but not a rainforest. In a rainforest, there is precipitation year round, while in the Western Ghats and Silent Valley the rain is seasonally heavy. It rains enough to sustain the forest and its creatures during the drier periods. I long for more time in these rich forests and I hope to see you there.

Please, take the time to go and when you go take your time.

Cheers.

(Photograph of lion tailed macaque by Ajith Kumar, ENVIS)
P.S by Dr. Susan Sharma

You can check the location of Nilgiri by clicking on the link below.NILGIRI BIOSPHERE RESERVE

Visit http://www.numbum.net or call NumBum Adventurers at 406-777-2228

News….

This month we are announcing the launch of "Wildscapes.net".

Wildscapes is a subset of our online club Indianwildlifeclub.com .

Wildscapes.netis an online gallery of nature and wildlife photographs by committed photographers from India . These photographers have been showcasing their work at "Wildscapes" the annual photo exhibition organized by IndianWildlifeClub.com at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi . New photographs / photographers are being added on a continuous basis.

Prints of the photographs, in various sizes, can be mailed to you for a small fee. We have also made provision for high-resolution images to be mailed to you in a CD / to be downloaded from a password protected site.

The images are searchable by key words. You can also search on multiple key words (advanced search). A list of key words is available to you. Simply mark the images you are interested in and add them to your light box (this will be retained for 7 days should you wish to return to it). Then place your inquiry/order and complete the required details for online purchase through a secure payment gateway.

The soft launch of the site was done in May 2004 by Mr. D.P.S Sandhoo, Chief Public Relations Officer, Northern Railways, who took time off to visit the exhibition and also declare open the online portal "Wildscapes.net"

Views………..

" I have just returned from Himachal and was again astonished by the perfection of nature. Right along side the Beas river, a hot spring bubbled up from the ground and there were people bathing in that hot water. If you hike in the Himalayas , you'll see deep cavernous caves that are cool in summer and warm in winter. They always contain small ash patches where some wandering shepherds took shelter and cooked food. And if you sit on a terraced hillside, the earth against your back will be perfectly contoured with your body. And there are miles and miles of space with distant mountains and a blue sky with soaring eagles.

I am mentioning the wonders of nature because Vaastu Shastra itself believes that our homes should have the perfection of the human body, which is a marvel of nature itself. If Vaastu was only about North, South, East and West, it wouldn't have survived for 4000 years. It survived because it saw the link between a human being, his house, and nature. It saw that a house was necessary to protect us from the extremes of nature, like storms, lightning, cold winds, and torrential rains. But it also saw a danger of homes becoming fortress-like in the centuries to come. Which is why it emphasized the five elements of nature which Vaastu seeks to harness for human welfare. These elements are earth, wind, water, fire and space. And Vaastu stoked our awareness of these elements by attributing directions to each.

So wind became represented by the North-West, water by the North -East, fire by the South-East and Earth by the South-West. Our wise ancestors engaged themselves in great introspection. By attributing four natural elements to four directions, they hoped we'd build houses that would let nature in and not shut it out. ……….."

Jugal Kishor " A Window to nature", Times of India September 19, 2004

Toby Ninan retired from Delhi Zoo about two years back. With his varied experiences with the wild animals in the zoo, he is the right person to direct your queries to. Hear what Ninan has to say about his life and chosen career!

I had always (before this incident) wanted to know about he minimum space through which a leopard could escape as this was something which was a sort of a night mare which I had always dreaded. Mind you the time was before tranquilizers came into the arsenal of the Zoo.

Well I learnt it the hard way as I did most of my difficult lessons in wild life management.

My old father with the help of a cousin sister had arranged my marriage and finally I brought my bride home. No sooner had I brought her across the threshold of the house, the door bell was ringing stridently which as all zoo people know spells trouble. This time it was trouble spelt with capital letters.

The black panther which was confined to the hospital and in the squeeze cage had escaped and was roaming around the big hall which served as a hospital ward. Luckily one side of the entrance to the hall had a set of double doors and the other exit had a single door. All these were closed so the animal could not escape into the outdoors and become a real menace. The hall had ventilators about four on each side and high up where no animal could climb up to.

There were not very many options and with a fervent prayer in my heart, the carpenter, myself and other staff got to work. The side which had double doors and a space in between was our hope for getting the animal out. There was one set of doors which opened - he other set of doors which were of also of wood had to have an opening cut out in such a way that only when we wanted would the opening be seen, till then it would just be four thin saw cuts in all four sides of this opening –ie.two vertical and two horizontal- the traveling crate was put flush against this opening and after a final push the opening was visible- till this time the four cuts that formed the incipient opening just held on by mere slivers of wood.

Now that the up-slide was in position and the opening in the door was with out any impediment. We could also shoo the panther into the crate but how! This is where a bright idea ie. Diwali crackers came into the picture. We had about eight men clamber up to the ventilators on either side of the outer side of the hall and throw lighted crackers into this ward of the hospital. Again to our good fortune there were no other patient in this hall –it would have been disastrous if there were some excitable deer or birds there,who in turn would have committed suicide by crashing into the sides of their crates in the face of this barrage of bursting crackers! To shorten a long story –about four hours later the panther could not stand this onslaught of noise and rushed into the traveling crate and was safely shut in it.

The wound for which the panther was hospitalized had any way nearly healed and we decided to continue dressings in its enclosure.

We could finally go in to the hall and inspect the squeeze cage and to our dismay we found one of the bars had broken of from the bottom and was bent to one side leaving a gap of 8” through which the animal had escaped. Thus I had the answer to my question! How the bar broke or was bent is a mystery which was never solved .!