Wild and endangered....

The environs in which we live are perhaps the most endangered ones. I am not jesting when I say this, what with the paucity of open spaces in our cities, forest land being appropriated in a most indiscriminate manner for ‘development’, and basic environmental norms and regulations flouted with impunity. Poachers and illicit loggers are free to roam to do their business destroying the natural heritage, while those charged with protecting it are constrained by the lack of adequate manpower, resources and an overall interfering political class.

Our environmental laws are a joke at best. Antiquated, redundant, and completely ineffective in today’s circumstances, these norms only serve to restrict our efficacy in regulating and protecting our flora and fauna from harm. Reluctance to invest in mechanisms which would modernise and consequently make the forest service more effective is perhaps the most glaring example of this myopia.

Tiger conservation, once the pride of India’s preservation movement, has now become its biggest failure. All over the place, tigers are dropping dead like flies, and I suspect we all know why. Disease may be a factor, but that doesn’t explain why only tigers are getting afflicted by it. The biggest factor that affects the wildlife is poaching. Poaching is inherently a disgusting and abominable profession. To seek wealth from the murder of such beautiful creatures, to seek happiness on earth by shedding the innocent blood of so many of these divine beings, is to forsake happiness beyond life, to be tormented in the deepest and most horrible depths of Hades, wherever it may be.

All around, forests are being cleared without care or concern to accommodate for malls, residential complexes, industrial belts, and what not. Agriculturists have been clearing forestland to increase their acreage. And all this while, our Government, “defender of justice”, has sat silent.

Ashish makes a very pertinent point when he says that we are bypassing a major opportunity to use the innate skills of the aboriginal tribes to conserve the forests and the fauna contained in them. By asking these tribes to vacate the forests, we are evicting them from an environs which they are familiar with, and in the process, destroying a system which could be used to stem the problem of poaching and illegal logging.

This cannot go on. Sariska cannot be allowed to happen again. Ranthambhore, Kaziranga, Gir, Melghat, Periyar, and other preserves call out to our attention. Should we fail to respond now, it may be too late later on. The clock is ticking.