HYDERABAD: WF-India organised a lecture by Dr Y V Jhala, a renowned wildlife conservationist as part of its ‘Earth Series: Conservation Matters.’ Dr Jhala delivered his talk, Infusion of Science in Large Carnivore Conservation, emphasising the significance of science in wildlife conservation and the evolution of wildlife conservation technology.
Excerpts from the interview:
Is it challenging to bring a scientific bent of mind to conservation?
Applying the principles of conservation biology to policy and management brings long-term conservation and not just short-sighted conservation. Sometimes you can make errors when you just base them on emotions and anecdotes. Science ensures that you have persistence in what you do and it gets the same results always.
However, it’s easier to say this than to make it happen in reality. This is because conservation is a blend of emotions, money, people’s support and cultural and religious aspects. They play a more significant role when it comes to decision-making. (It’s the vote bank that eventually matters, rather than science.) So to get science infused into policy and management is a very tough task, not only in India but across the world. I believe that people like us have to try and bridge the two sides together.
Religion and culture, sociology, economics, etc., also play a very important role, probably much more than science. You have to keep all the balls afloat, without dropping any. If you manage to do that, science enters in the whole amalgamation. I was lucky enough to have a lot of support from the bureaucrats and the politicians of our country to make headway into getting that in the course.
Do you think that landscape has changed over the years?
At the end of my innings, it’s difficult to say whether the landscape has changed or not, but the perceptions have changed. I believe the top leadership of our country needs to have advisors who can guide them on scientific principles of conservation. Unfortunately, the bureaucracy lacks that. The bureaucrats believe that they know all of it. That phenomenon results in deterioration because the advice given to lawmakers and policymakers is not based on science. It’s based on people’s whims and fancies and their experience. That lacuna is widening. The wildlife bodies and NGOs with professionalism are sidelined.
Do you see any hope with technology coming in?
Oh yes, definitely. A lot of technology is infused into our conservation policy as well as in management today. We used to do counts of animals using pug marks. Now the technology has changed to camera traps, artificial intelligence and model-based inferences. There are ups and downs in everything and I believe it is going to get better.
How much involvement of the community do you see there?
I believe community involvement has to be 100%. Today, we lack in that arena. Earlier, religion, culture and emotions used to be the driving force. But today, it is economic. Economics is the religion of today and money generation from wildlife resources, whether we like it or not, is an important conservation concept that India needs to adopt. Without monetising and people benefiting from conservation actions, we will not have support for conservation. People will vote for developing a highway in place of conserving a forest. The problem is, we don’t market it for communities to benefit from conservation which is the essence of ensuring a balance between development and conservation.
Do you think education is also important in that respect and awareness?
Absolutely. The word education is crucial. Our syllabi at the state level, and the national level, need to change to incorporate conservation ethos, right from kindergarten to universities and specialisations.
About Project Cheetah. Do you think India has the habitat of taking care of the cheetah or are there certain challenges?
There are huge challenges. Bringing back an extinct carnivore is by no means an easy task, it requires long-term commitment from the governments and in terms of resources. There is enough possibility of having sustainable long-term viability of the cheetah in India. But we cannot have Africa in India.
The wilderness in Africa is hundreds of thousands of sq km. Our national parks are 230 sq km. Unlike in colonial times, we don’t have any trophy hunting or legalised hunting anymore and we have created natural parks, sanctuaries and biodiversity repositories. So those kind of threats have now been removed. What we lack is a consolidated habitat of that scale and largeness. We have more than 100,000 sq km of cheetah habitat in this country. But it’s fragmented. You can bring in the cheetah, but you cannot have a single population that is viable by itself in the long term. You have to manage it as a meta-population.
That’s what we had proposed, that we don’t bring cheetah to one site in India, but we bring it to four or five sites. Then manage those sites together till these populations build up. Then they can exchange individuals on their own. But till that point in time, you have to artificially move animals so that there’s genetic variability. If that’s done, cheetah is very much possible in India.
Some cheetahs have died since they were brought in. What factors do you see that caused these deaths?
I’ve written the action plan for the cheetah re-introduction and I had factored in a 50% mortality by predation by leopards, road hits, poaching and killing by humans and dogs. The cheetahs when they were released outside, spent close to about 700 cheetah days, ranging freely across Kuno and outside Kuno in human dominion. Not a single animal died due to these causes, which is a big asset. They died due to our negligence. Not all but some deaths could have been avoided if we had consulted with the right people at the right time.
What are your thoughts on human-animal conflicts?
There are two aspects to it. One is reducing the conflict intensity to acceptable levels and the other is to bring the tolerance of the people to a higher level. Most of the conflict is in our minds, it is perceived. If you do not address a man-eating situation in time, the backlash from the community is going to wipe out not just that tiger, but the entire population of tigers from that area. There is no law which will be able to control it. So to safeguard the population and the species, you have to sacrifice individual animals, especially those that come into conflict with people. Having said that, coexisting with carnivores requires a change in lifestyles which many people are not willing to make.
What immediate steps can we take to address this matter?
There are many mitigation measures like barriers, repulsion devices for animals, education level of the people so that they know how to live with carnivores or with snakes or for that matter, with monkeys. All these require different skill sets to be conveyed to people and just increase their sensitivity that they are also co-existent creatures on this planet. One can give a solution for the management of conflict but not eradication of it. When humans live with wildlife, there will be conflict. But what is conflict? That is the question.