Coexisting with wild animals is possible
It felt like anything could have happened on that dark night.
The sky opened like a tear and rain poured out, freezing and insistent. I had just reached my destination, but I was completely soaked walking from the car to the venue I was going to. I was in a hurry, and January rain appealed only from a safe distance.
Through the patter, a sound travelled. It sounded like a rip in the air, perhaps a rusty, jagged saw. It was in fact the sound of a Barn owl, calling from one of Delhi’s most prominent buildings, which is a conference venue and a party place rolled into one.
There was a time when Barn owls were so common you could see them on every other light pole in the night, watching the streets with clever eyes for rats.
There are many rats still in the Capital city, but not so many Barn owls.
On New Year’s Eve, I was at Kolkata’s Tolly Club. The many trees there were full of birds—Black-rumped flamebacks tapping at trunks, a coucal with its booming, haunting call, and White-breasted kingfishers dashing from trees towards their prey. But it felt like there was something else too. A strong smell, wafting, towards us—wild, sour. A narrow, pointed face looked at me from behind the hedge. The eyes were grave and lined with black, their expression cautious. It was an Indian jackal. Behind the jackal, on a patch of greens, more movement. Another jackal. We counted seven jackals that day.
Many golf courses have wild animals—some have elephants passing through, courses in Florida have alligators; Delhi’s golf club has a resident wild Nilgai population.
They are also a suggestion that coexisting with wild animals is not just possible, but occurring more than we think.
Some of the degradation in cities around us mimics the degradation of our relationship with the natural world: many of us seem to think that places should be sanitised of trees, wild animals and bugs. Yet, weedicides and cement have a toll on us too. They settle as murky poison that lowers our quality of life—tarmac creates heat islands, pesticides impact our own nervous system and enter our food chain through bioaccumulation.
What we need then is a kind of structured penetration between the wild and the urban, a way of planning that involves the greens and blues among the greys. And so, we must keep the big trees, plant more Indian trees, build footpaths that allow for water seepage, and keep drainage intact. The jackal running through the golf greens demonstrates that a hybrid life—full of surprise—is possible.
It felt like anything could have happened on that dark January night. But all that happened was good—an owl’s wild cry resonated through the air. A nocturnal being was out in the night, hunting and living. Despite all of life’s challenges, a wild creature was doing its best to survive, and perhaps getting by, as the old building provided shelter to it. I felt energised; the owl’s primeval call took away the cold.
Neha Sinha
Conservation biologist and author
Views expressed are personal
Posts on X: @nehaa_sinha