Observations and stories |
Observations and stories |
0 Comments
The clock turned eleven and I realized we have been moving for 50 km straight. Along with my colleague's restlessness, mine too was reaching cloud nine. Few more hours spent travelling and I asked him to stop the vehicle near a field. With binoculars on top of my eyes, I scanned the far reaches of endless plain land with electricity cables, huge pylons, a mango tree, and couple of houses in the background. Whenever I inquired about the whereabouts of bucks, the locals always ended up saying, “They roam here in the fields & you can find them sitting near the Ficus tree”. With this thought I resumed the scan. My eyes suddenly picked up two poles that seemed to oscillate. Jumping with ecstasy, I handed over the binoculars to Subhasis, my colleague, to crosscheck whether I am daydreaming. “Yes, it is one beautiful male” he said “and there are six more”, he added. I was in Bihar, studying the charismatic Gangetic River Dolphin as part of a project aiming to understand and conserve them. My team was surveying the junction of two large human populations - Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Ganga here meets with Karamnasa, a tributary flowing into it from the south. Entering Bihar near village Chausa, the river is sandwiched between lush lentil and mustard fields nurturing abundant birds like the graceful prinia, black hooded orioles as well as a variety of other wildlife. While I searched for these enthralling grey animals with utmost sincerity, I couldn’t help but look for other wildlife in my spare time. This passion for wilderness compelled me to take a kaccha road and along with my friends I explored the land for yet another dusky beauty- the blackbuck. Black buck or ‘Kala mrug’ is an endemic antelope to the Indian subcontinent. While the males are dark-brown and black in colour, the females and fawns sport a caramel brown coat with white belly and eye rings. It is a widely distributed, grassland dwelling mammal and the males perform lekking display during mating season. I have seen them in protected areas, but their presence in a human-dominated landscape piqued me. I pondered about their lives in these human-modified grasslands and how these agro-ecosystems act as refugia for their sustenance. In the absence of any wild predator these animals would be doing great, I engaged myself in these thoughts and suddenly I saw a male with an erect posture. Completely alarmed with the surroundings he constantly gazed towards one corner of the field. I looked around for what could be there, a jackal, perhaps? Or maybe a leopard! But to my surprise it was a pack of four dogs who criss-crossed the adjacent field, in search of food. My presence didn’t bother and the buck stood there with all his vigor. He was all set to protect his kin without caring for his own life. This behavior is termed altruism and it is observed in many other ungulates. I stood there to witness the incident but to my luck the dogs moved ahead and the antelopes were spared. This time the bucks were lucky but it isn’t the case always. With the ever-expanding human domination on land; urban and semi-urban spaces are soldering into protected areas. “Expanding agriculture, cob-webs of roads and abundant livestock now extend till the very boundary of a forest” said Shashi Bhushan ji, a forest official from Kaimur Wildlife Sanctuary. He added that “Many wild animals stay in close proximity with humans and this scenario often makes them come face-to-face with each other”. Where wild carnivores are said to kill livestock, wild ungulates exploit the abundant resources at the farmland. They are accused as ‘crop-raiders’ and black bucks are no exception to it. In turn, such proximity finds its way for many tales like that of ‘bucks and the dogs’. These animals haven’t changed much since their evolution and fall prey to rapidly changing conditions of this new wilderness. Getting chased down by dogs, poached by humans, and infected with contagious diseases from cattle, black bucks here, are always standing on crossroads. After sighting seven individuals on that fateful afternoon, we continued with our journey forward and found 19 more. Occurring in groups of twos, threes and sixes, we counted a total of 90 individual blackbucks in that tiny detour to Kaimur and Buxar. Wildlife around us has to deal with human-induced ordeals like these on a regular basis! It is a matter of chance in a game of snake and ladders that the dear becomes the devil and beauty turns grey. The bucks are fine for now and so are humans… Ample is available to sustain both, but till when? With this question in my mind, I moved ahead continuing with my voyage for the blind dolphins...
|
|