Early one morning, while paddling silently across the Nagar (snake) river in Karnataka, I looked up to find four huge, grey forms step gingerly out of the thick, green jungle. “Haathi, haathi”, whispered the boatman. It was cold and a wispy mist rose up like steam from the river. The elephants seemed almost ghost-like. I really marvel at how graceful, silent and quick elephants are, even in tangled jungles. There was a young bull among the four animals, his tusks less than a metre in length and no thicker than my arm. “I love you,” I said in my head to these magnificent beasts, “And how I wish I could promise that no harm will come to you.”
Sadly, I realised, elephants have a dim future ahead of them in India. Large tuskers are regularly killed for the value of their ivory and the great herds now have less and less place to roam, as their jungle homes are quickly being cut down, or partitioned off for farms, tea estates, railway lines, etc. Elephants are extremely useful animals. They scatter fruit seeds and thus help new trees to come up. Their huge bodies create `game trails’ which are used by deer and wild boar to migrate from one place to another. Their dung fertilises the soil. They also make waterholes by digging into the ground for water when the rains are late. More than most other animals, elephants need space, and more than most other animals, their available space is being squeezed. According to some naturalists, it’s only a matter of time before the great Asian elephant becomes extinct. What a loss that would be for India and the world!
India has an enormous variety of wild plants and animals. Sadly, its list of endangered species is also quite large. Why? Why is it that animals, which have survived on earth for millions of years, have suddenly started to vanish? As expected, the answer lies with man. As a species, we have become too aggressive. To make our lives temporarily comfortable we casually elbow out the countless small and large life forms which have, in fact, been responsible for the good health of our planet, all this while. Extinction however, has been a part of Nature’s plan from the moment life began on earth. The problem is, we have greatly speeded up the extinction process. Just before man, scientists suggest that extinctions used to take place every four years or so. Today, a plant or animal species is becoming extinct every day!
“But,” ask some people, “In a country where people are dying why do we need to save animals? So what if the lion or tiger becomes extinct? Will it really make a difference to human life?” In a word, “Yes.” Human life will suffer. It’s not that any one species is more important than another; it’s just that we must fight the growing trend towards mass extinction and this can only be done by trying to prevent any species from dying out.
Long, long ago, if and when any species died, its `job’ was slowly taken over by some other life form. Every creature had time to adjust, and such gaps were inevitably filled. Life was easy paced. In today’s hectic world, the extinction of any species leaves a blank in Nature’s web, like a broken strand. And before it gets repaired, another species becomes extinct. What worries us is that when too many threads break, the whole web will come crashing down around us. If certain bees become extinct, for instance, the flowers they pollinate could become extinct too. And, if certain grasses are destroyed in Manipur, the brow-antlered deer will become extinct, as it can survive nowhere else. If tigers become extinct, deer will multiply greatly. They will almost surely overgraze the forests, eventually exhausting their own food stocks. Thus, the extinction of the tiger could lead to the extinction of deer. And, in the process, the destruction of the forest is certain. Here is where the human race begins to suffer. Forests help moderate our climate. They help to produce rain and also to stop rivers from flooding. Without forests our fields would soon be ruined, and then not all the gold or jewels in the world will be able to satisfy the hungry stomachs of our people.
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Bittu Sahgal
Bittu Sahgal Editor, Sanctuary magazine[/column]