Samyak Photography - Bird Poaching at Siruthavur

Samyak Photography - Bird Poaching at Siruthavur

One hot summer sunday, when me and my birding buddies went out to Siruthavur lake (located at the outskirts of chennai), we were welcomed by the gunshots from the other side of the lake.
  Instantly, we could see a flock of birds taking off from that place. They moved to little away from gunshot place and settled down for their feeding.
  Our binoculars and lenses came out promptly trying to figure out the source of the shot.
  Not able to find anything, we went on our activities of birding and started noting down the birding activities at the lake.
  While I moved on near to lake, trying to "shoot" some close flying shots of cotton teals, rest were scanning the grounds and water for birds from the road itself.
  We heard few more gunshots and as usual, unable to find out the source (as the poachers were hiding) during this time too.
  Below photo story is as developed during this couse of time.

  Location : Siruthavur lake, Thiruporur, Chennai, India.
  Photos by : Gnanskandan (GK), Subramanian Sankar, Samyak Kaninde. Deepak and Gayathri were constantly keeping watch on poachers and forest officials during all this drama.

7:32AM - The poacher (in khaki) came to the light to collect the dead birds. Seen here are two local boys walking along with the poacher.

The poacher (in khaki) and local kids (helping them) colleting the dead birds. The Painted Stork (Mycteria leucocephala) as seen here.

The Little Cormorant (Phalacrocorax niger) or The Glossy Ibis (Plegadis falcinellus) being handed over.

The Purple Heron (Ardea purpurea) pair - one having a fish in the beak and other landing completely ignorant of what is happening in the background.

The two standing birds near the boy collecting dead birds are either 'live birds tied with ropes in muddy soil' or 'dead stuffed birds' kept their as bet to attract other birds flocks. The green patch beside the boy is a hide used by the poacher sitting there with a loaded gun. He was still hiding while the others were kept collecting dead birds.

The first poacher went behind a hide and the the shooter poacher (old guy with turban)came out. The local boy is inspecting the baiting bird. Not sure if it was 'alive and tied' or 'dead stuffed bird'.

7:49AM - After collecting almost all birds, locals and poachers parted their ways. The forest guards had just arrived and we briefed them about this and showed the poachers and asked them to hurry up to go behind them to catch them red handed.

The FD guards were shouting from behind and running a great distance towards poachers. Looking at this, the poacher ran with his bags towards the FD fellows. We could not understand what was happening and what is to happen next.

The poacher had hid the bags with dead birds in the green vegetation(the egret flying over that patch on RHS) and started running back to join his old mate waiting at the other end. The two local boys were as clueless as we were to understand what was happening.

7:54AM - Finally, we could see the Forest department guards reaching the scene. Later they told us that they were shouting and posing as a potential buyers for the birds. The local kid was dragging one of the dead bird to be taken away but later he threw it away. Probably, as we were watching from road, the kid thought of not carrying it in hands.

The FD guards negotiating with one poacher while the other is little away. The other poacher still had the gun and the FD guards could have been in trouble too.

Once both the poachers were at hand, the FD guards had them caught over and a long talks and long wait to see them at the roads started. The local boys escaped from the other side and went back to village.

09:05AM - Meanwhile, one more FD guard came in and joined the two. The old poacher was apparantly doing some drama about not feeling well and this new FD guard was attending him at the other side. The previous FD guards got hold of one poacher and were taking him to their department on the bike. The FD guard showing the dead The Eurasian Spoonbill (Platalea leucorodia).

Finally, Mr. Moorthy, a forest ranger from thiruporur division, came promptly in a jeep to take away the old poacher to take into custody. Fortunately, the local boys also turned up on a bike this time to take away the dead bird. We told ranger about it and he took them into custody too.
Below - the dead birds were taken out of the bags and kept on the steps of forest department office.

The dead birds at the FD office.

9:57AM - The Cotton Pygmy Goose (or the Cotton Teal) (Nettapus coromandelianus) - one dead, one alive. The alive one was having a broken legs and was sent to the zoo to be taken care of. It later succumbed to the injury and shock and died later. The cotton like white color of this bird was all soaked in the blood red. Unfortunate to see such a beauty in such a state.

This was the second poaching incident I witnessed within the span of 3 months after the last kelambakkam incident(read below in links). The places are quite nearby to each other and done by the same people (Narikurava tribe mostly). But, the prompt response by the forest department from Thiruporur division was something pleasantly unexpected. The ranger and DFO were following it with us about all happening in the field during this 2-3 hour drama. With our experinece from these incidents, I would like to make following observations :

1. We need a dedicated hotline number for a city/state/country (depending on the feasibility) to report the poaching realted incidents. Most of the time, we are spending a lot of time in ringing our friends, getting the correct contacts and talking to the officials. Sometimes, the officials/forest guards does not even turn up at the incident (like my previous kelambakkam poaching incident).

2. The task force which is specialised in handling poachers and work on the ground to nab them red-handed is required. The forest guards did not even carry a stick while they were running behind the poachers who were having guns. Fortunately, nothing happened in this case.

3. The poachers, moreover, require an alternate livelihood. Unless, we find solutions to their bread and butter problems, we can not stop poaching.

4. The poachers were let off by paying a fine of just 10000/- which we think does not do justice to the repeated killings of these birds. The law has to be strengthened for stringent punishments according to the different wildlife classification of poached birds.

5. GK with help from others, is working on a list of contact numbers to report such cases directly to the forest department rangers/DFOs, we shall share that soon once it is ready.

If you have different ideas/suggestions/feedback, please put them down in comments below. The debate might not change the situation on field in a day, but could be a beginning for a betrer world in future.

  Links :

    -- TOI - news article

    -- Conservation India article by GK

    -- TOI - news article about kelambakkam poaching

Ouch! Phew!

It's that time of the year again.  Valley of Flowers is on the mind.  Same as last year.  I bought my books, wore-in my trekking shoes, and was all set.

But the rains came, and then there were landslides, the state of Uttarakhand suffered.

A trip that never was.

It is 42 degrees Celsius in Madras as I take out and dust off those treeking shoes again.  The trio of Gapi, Raji and me are planning again. 

I can tell you it is no fun walking in those shoes.  I went Ouch! as I walked (or rather huffed and puffed) last evening, and went Phew! as I sank into a chair at the end of 90 minutes of torture!

How to Make a Forest | OPEN Magazine

How to Make a Forest | OPEN Magazine

2 June 2012

How to Make a Forest

...with minimum fuss and maximum effect

It is possible to make the most adverse circumstances bend to extraordinary will. The story of one such green warrior in the Doodhatoli mountains of Uttarakhand

2

BY Sopan Joshi EMAIL AUTHOR(S)

Way to go

SACHCHIDANAND BHARATI Building water tanks to save the forest

Before their menfolk started migrating out in droves, before rainwater started running off the eroded slopes of the Doodhatoli mountains in Uttarakhand, the people here had suffered an erosion of confidence and dignity. So Sachchidanand Bharati didn’t believe it when he read in 1993 about the region’s age-old water management systems. It was an account of large ponds called taal (like Nainital), small ponds called khaal, and chaal, a string of small, terraced tanks to catch water running off the slope.
If the book was right, the name of Bharati’s village—Ufrainkhaal—meant it was built around a small pond. But there wasn’t one. He went around asking old people, but nobody knew of the existence of a small pond in Ufrainkhaal, 6,000 feet above sea level in the mountains north of the Jim Corbett National Park.
A teacher in the village intermediate school, Bharati had cut his teeth as a young volunteer in the Chipko movement of the 1970s, hanging around environmentalist Chandi Prasad Bhatt. He was well known in the neighbourhood for rallying the villagers of the area against a government logging permit in 1982 to fell the forests that sustained them. His efforts were non-violent and successful: the government had to rescind the logging permit. But the forests were degraded because rain, which was plentiful, ran off the slopes into distant valleys, eroding the soil along the way. The rainwater had to be retained on the slopes.
But there were no accounts to be found of building khaals and chaals to catch the gushing runoff. Bharati decided to experiment with designs and sites in 1993. The hill folk knew their terrain, knew terraced farms and thought, as Bharati found, in three dimensions, unlike the plainspeople. But the water scarcity and the degraded forests had made livelihoods impossible, and the villages were bereft of men, who had gone ‘down’ in search of employment.
Bharati began talking to the women who were left behind. In the first year, they built a chaal on a monsoonal channel that had dried up. After the next monsoon, it retained water longer, the surrounding soil remained moist, the forest looked healthier. Over the next five years, Bharati’s Doodhatoli Lok Vikas Sansthan built several chaals in Ufrainkhaal and neighbouring villages, improving their design through trial.
They had broken free of the vicious cycle of drought/flood—more water meant the forests were getting more dense, which in turn retained even more water. The big test came during the drought of 2000-01. Forest fires are a regular feature in the pine plantations that pass for government forests in the region—pine kills all undergrowth and its needles pile up into a tinderbox. The fires did not spread to the regenerated oak forests, which have soil moisture and diversity. Yet there was the fear that the fires will engulf them, so the village women who had built the chaals turned out in numbers to prevent fires in government forests. Three women died in these efforts. The fire was controlled.
The women guard the forest with their lives. Literally. Their method is remarkable. Guard duty is determined by khakhar, a stick with bells tied on top. Whoever sees the khakhar pitched in front of her house takes the next turn at guard duty. When she gets tired, she goes and pitches it in front of a neighbour’s house. Simple. No duty roster, no register, no grievance. They don’t need official orders or coercion to protect what is theirs.
They also don’t need a budget or an office building or a development project. Their only major expense is on the sweets they distribute at their camps; this is met through donations from friends and well-wishers. Labour is contributed without cost. The annual expenses seldom exceed Rs 25,000.
No need for full-time staff either. Apart from the school teacher Bharati, there are three others who work for this non-organisation. There is Devi Dayal, their postman; Dinesh, a vaidya who practises ayurveda; and Vikram Singh, who runs a grocery shop. All four have to meet lots of people every day. Messages get conveyed and relayed just fine with homegrown IT that mainly resides between the ears, and people turn up to volunteer without Facebook reminders.
Bharati and his colleagues have steadfastly rejected the trappings of a formal organisation. They don’t issue press releases or seek publicity, they do not demand development funding. In fact, they once refused an FAO offer of a grant of Rs 1 crore. The villagers here know a healthy forest is essential to survive, and they revel in being its protectors. When the government offered a watershed development project, Bharati politely refused.
Yet they have built about 20,000 chaals in about 125 villages over the past 19 years—the numbers are estimates, because they don’t go around counting and documenting their work; they just do it, and move to the next task. And they don’t have fancy terms like ‘social forestry’, ‘community forestry’ or ‘Joint Forest Management’ to describe their work either. The largest of their regenerated forests is in Daund, which spans about 800 hectares.
It’s not just the expanse either. The canopy of their regenerated forests is 100 feet high. The humus on the floor is several inches thick. There are birds and wild animals. There is water for the forest, for agriculture and to grow fodder. There is liquidity for all kinds of life.

Where we were - seven years ago!

Yosemite! 28/5/2005

Bested by Purple

My heart was with yellow, but Bisla's purple patch sealed the deal.  Well done KKR!

Memories of the US - Spring 2005, Central Park New York

Walking from Fernhill, Ooty to Lovedale

Tea estates, stopped by reserve forest areas

The red-cheeked bulbul called even with its' beak full!

The spotted dove called out to its mate in the next tree, eyeballing us all the time.

Huge flocks of sparrows all around.

A blackbird!  My first.  Called so sweetly.  Could not imagine it being baked in a pie!

Lovedale station - memories of Moondram Pirai

The Mountain Railway chugged in

Garden flowers

Tree flowers....

Two sparrows in the bush...

A hoopoe was busy with breakfast in the meadows

The jungle myna was ready for lunch

The bees, too busy to bother us

Farmlands and reforested lands

More tree flowers

Pied bushchats, everywhere

Theme Yellow - Go CSK!

This portfolio has to be seen!!

Zenfolio | camerags | Theme Yellow - one host tree and many guests

A Cassia fistula tree, also known as Golden Shower, is in full bloom outside my sitout window. Every morning, I am greeted with the chuckles of the White breasted kingfisher, the deafening squeals in crescendo from the Koels, the hammering from the Crimson breasted barbet and so on.

The wonderful characteristic of birds is that they announce their arrival on the Cassia tree and my camera springs to action!

This is pushing the term ‘armchair naturalist’ to its limits, but all this action happens just outside my window and I don’t have to travel far – all I have to do is sip my morning coffee and take photos!

The ones that have been eluding my camera are the White headed babblers, the Tailor birds and the Rose ringed parakeets, all visitors to the Cassia tree. Will get them included soon in this gallery by the end of this summer!

You can listen to music in slideshow mode!

Enjoy!



Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years : Krulwich Wonders... : NPR

Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years : Krulwich Wonders... : NPR

10:10 am

February 29, 2012

 

by Robert Krulwich

No, this isn't a make-believe place. It's real.

John White

They call it "Ball's Pyramid." It's what's left of an old volcano that emerged from the sea about 7 million years ago. A British naval officer named Ball was the first European to see it in 1788. It sits off Australia, in the South Pacific. It is extremely narrow, 1,844 feet high, and it sits alone.
What's more, for years this place had a secret. At 225 feet above sea level, hanging on the rock surface, there is a small, spindly little bush, and under that bush, a few years ago, two climbers, working in the dark, found something totally improbable hiding in the soil below. How it got there, we still don't know.

Google Maps A satellite view of Ball's Pyramid in the Tasman Sea off the eastern coast of Australia.

Here's the story: About 13 miles from this spindle of rock, there's a bigger island, called Lord Howe Island.
On Lord Howe, there used to be an insect, famous for being big. It's a stick insect, a critter that masquerades as a piece of wood, and the Lord Howe Island version was so large — as big as a human hand — that the Europeans labeled it a "tree lobster" because of its size and hard, lobsterlike exoskeleton. It was 12 centimeters long and the heaviest flightless stick insect in the world. Local fishermen used to put them on fishing hooks and use them as bait.

Rod Morris/www.rodmorris.co.nz

  Then one day in 1918, a supply ship, the S.S. Makambo from Britain, ran aground at Lord Howe Island and had to be evacuated. One passenger drowned. The rest were put ashore. It took nine days to repair the Makambo, and during that time, some black rats managed to get from the ship to the island, where they instantly discovered a delicious new rat food: giant stick insects. Two years later, the rats were everywhere and the tree lobsters were gone.
Totally gone. After 1920, there wasn't a single sighting. By 1960, the Lord Howe stick insect, Dryococelus australis, was presumed extinct.
There was a rumor, though.

Credit: Stephanie d'Otreppe / NPR

Some climbers scaling Ball's Pyramid in the 1960s said they'd seen a few stick insect corpses lying on the rocks that looked "recently dead." But the species is nocturnal, and nobody wanted to scale the spire hunting for bugs in the dark.
Climbing The Pyramid

Fast forward to 2001, when two Australian scientists, David Priddel and Nicholas Carlile, with two assistants, decided to take a closer look. From the water, they'd seen a few patches of vegetation that just might support walking sticks. So, they boated over. ("Swimming would have been much easier," Carlile said, "but there are too many sharks.") They crawled up the vertical rock face to about 500 feet, where they found a few crickets, nothing special. But on their way down, on a precarious, unstable rock surface, they saw a single melaleuca bush peeping out of a crack and, underneath, what looked like fresh droppings of some large insect.
Where, they wondered, did that poop come from?
The only thing to do was to go back up after dark, with flashlights and cameras, to see if the pooper would be out taking a nighttime walk. Nick Carlile and a local ranger, Dean Hiscox, agreed to make the climb. And with flashlights, they scaled the wall till they reached the plant, and there, spread out on the bushy surface, were two enormous, shiny, black-looking bodies. And below those two, slithering into the muck, were more, and more ... 24 in all. All gathered near this one plant.

Patrick Honan

They were alive and, to Nick Carlile's eye, enormous. Looking at them, he said, "It felt like stepping back into the Jurassic age, when insects ruled the world."
They were Dryococelus australis. A search the next morning, and two years later, concluded these are the only ones on Ball's Pyramid, the last ones. They live there, and, as best we know, nowhere else.
How they got there is a mystery. Maybe they hitchhiked on birds, or traveled with fishermen, and how they survived for so long on just a single patch of plants, nobody knows either. The important thing, the scientists thought, was to get a few of these insects protected and into a breeding program.

Patrick Honan/Nick Carlile

That wasn't so easy. The Australian government didn't know if the animals on Ball's Pyramid could or should be moved. There were meetings, studies, two years passed, and finally officials agreed to allow four animals to be retrieved. Just four.
When the team went back to collect them, it turned out there had been a rock slide on the mountain, and at first they feared that the whole population had been wiped out. But when they got back up to the site, on Valentine's Day 2003, the animals were still there, sitting on and around their bush.
The plan was to take one pair and give it a man who was very familiar with mainland walking stick insects, a private breeder living in Sydney. He got his pair, but within two weeks, they died.
Adam And Eve And Patrick
That left the other two. They were named "Adam" and "Eve," taken to the Melbourne Zoo and placed with Patrick Honan, of the zoo's invertebrate conservation breeding group. At first, everything went well. Eve began laying little pea-shaped eggs, exactly as hoped. But then she got sick. According to biologist Jane Goodall, writing for Discover Magazine:

"Eve became very, very sick. Patrick ... worked every night for a month desperately trying to cure her. ... Eventually, based on gut instinct, Patrick concocted a mixture that included calcium and nectar and fed it to his patient, drop by drop, as she lay curled up in his hand."

Her recovery was almost instant. Patrick told the Australian Broadcasting Company, "She went from being on her back curled up in my hand, almost as good as dead, to being up and walking around within a couple of hours."
Eve's eggs were harvested, incubated (though it turns out only the first 30 were fertile) and became the foundation of the zoo's new population of walking sticks.

Matthew Bulbert/The Australian Museum

When Jane Goodall visited in 2008, Patrick showed her rows and rows of incubating eggs: 11,376 at that time, with about 700 adults in the captive population. Lord Howe Island walking sticks seem to pair off — an unusual insect behavior — and Goodall says Patrick "showed me photos of how they sleep at night, in pairs, the male with three of his legs protectively over the female beside him."
Now comes the question that bedevils all such conservation rescue stories. Once a rare animal is safe at the zoo, when can we release it back to the wild?
On Lord Howe Island, their former habitat, the great-great-great-grandkids of those original black rats are still out and about, presumably hungry and still a problem. Step one, therefore, would be to mount an intensive (and expensive) rat annihilation program. Residents would, no doubt, be happy to go rat-free, but not every Lord Howe islander wants to make the neighborhood safe for gigantic, hard-shell crawling insects. So the Melbourne Museum is mulling over a public relations campaign to make these insects more ... well, adorable, or noble, or whatever it takes.
They recently made a video, with strumming guitars, featuring a brand new baby emerging from its egg. The newborn is emerald green, squirmy and so long, it just keeps coming and coming from an impossibly small container. Will this soften the hearts of Lord Howe islanders? I dunno. It's so ... so ... big.
But, hey, why don't you look for yourself?

What happens next? The story is simple: A bunch of black rats almost wiped out a bunch of gigantic bugs on a little island far, far away from most of us. A few dedicated scientists, passionate about biological diversity, risked their lives to keep the bugs going. For the bugs to get their homes and their future back doesn't depend on scientists anymore. They've done their job. Now it's up to the folks on Lord Howe Island.
Will ordinary Janes and Joes, going about their days, agree to spend a little extra effort and money to preserve an animal that isn't what most of us would call beautiful? Its main attraction is that it has lived on the planet for a long time, and we have the power to keep it around. I don't know if it will work, but in the end, that's the walking stick's best argument:
I'm still here. Don't let me go.