The young naturalists of MNS

Chennai’s environment enthusiasts form a new online network - The Hindu





The city-based Young Naturalists Network forms an intriguing mix of community-building, knowledge sharing and career plans



Meghna Majumdar

“You would think that most people in Chennai are aware of the Madras Bird Race, but not many people really know about it, or about the Madras Naturalists Society, especially in our age group,” says 17-year-old Mahathi Narayanaswamy, a student from Chennai. And yet, she adds, there are many in the age group of 13 to 25 who are interested in all things Nature, and are actively documenting species and gaining and spreading knowledge in their own ways.



But most of them are working out of their own prerogative, without the guidance, public platform or even confidence boost that established naturalists societies can provide. Mahathi’s solution for this disconnect is Young Naturalists Network.



Set up in June, this is an initiative that connects Nature enthusiasts to like-minded people, and to bigger initiatives in the city. “Students who are a part of this know how to reach out to their friends better than others (seasoned experts) who have never met these children earlier,” explains Mahathi, adding that only after founding the network did she realise that many of her friends shared these interests.



Founder Mahathi Narayanaswamy

As of now, Young Naturalists Network is 30-member strong. “Vikas Madhav is the Chennai coordinator for butterfly-related events. He is also a reviewer for eBird (a leading birding portal) and Butterflies Of India. Vikas Madhav and Rohith Srinivasan amongst few others have recorded nearly 90 identified species in Adyar Poonga. Melvin Jaison has documented birds from Mittanamalli Wetland in 2016-2018 and has documented nearly 110 species. Many have volunteered for several outreach, awareness and education programs. Many have been part of several surveys, censuses and studies. Some have interned with several organisations like the Wildlife Conservation Society — India, Ashoka Trust For Research In Ecology And The Environment and Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History, for instance to study smooth-coated otters and leopards,” reels off Mahathi, who herself has documented over 160 species of moths at IIT-Madras, and is confident of doing at least 100 more.



So what do proactive minds like these do, when they get together? They expand their circle, and spread interest in intensive, patient, factual study of the world around them. So far, the society has been active with Instagram quizzes, sharing of their members’ observations about different species on Instagram, celebration of things like National Moth Week, and even a full-fledged e-magazine put together by members, most of whom are still in school or college.



Chennai’s environment enthusiasts form a new online network

Mission Career



The magazine is rich with creature profiles, backyard observations and even scientific papers (reproduced with permission), but a key segment is an interview of a field expert.



The maiden edition, released this week, featured chiropterologist Rohit Chakravarti, followed with a detailed profile of a leading institution that offers a course in the study of bats. Editor Vikas Madhav says this is a deliberate pairing, “We want to talk to someone who has made a career out of studying Nature, and also give our readers an idea of how they can pursue it.” Rohit’s interview, thus, has details not only of his work, but also of how he got started along this career path.



“Parents typically consider this to be a field which does not have too many opportunities, and are reluctant to let their children explore it. But when you see 30 people doing it and looking successful, parents might be a bit more open to it,” says Mahathi.



Mahathi’s original plans for the network included plenty of treks and explorations, but for now the young naturalists have to be content with reading and studying backyard creatures. Judging by the content they are putting out, this limitation is hardly a limitation at all.

Pobitora and the monsoon this year - the need for highlands to be accessible

Assam: Prolonged floods force rhinos of Pobitora to seek refuge in houses

In the sanctuary with the highest density of rhinos in the world, severe floods have led to shortage of food, forcing animals to move out.

Tora Agarwala

Written by | Guwahati | Updated: July 26, 2020 2:34:30 pm

Displaced by the flood, a pair of rhinos visit the range office at the Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary. (Source: Mukul Tamuly)

The rhino is about 30 feet from the bathroom, settled in a spot by the pond in Nripen Nath’s backyard. As it chews on his gourd vine, grunting occasionally, the 47-year-old and his two daughters watch silently. “I am not scared,” says Nath, who works as a tour guide, “I love animals.”

The same cannot be said for his aged parents, who, too, have been sharing this ‘Assam-type’ cottage on the fringes of the Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary with the endangered animal for over a week now as it takes refuge from the floods.

“Chase it away, there are kids in this house’,” Nath recalls his father saying, when the rhino ambled in last Friday. But the animal has shown no signs of budging, except to forage for grass in the backyard, and on one occasion, destroy his bamboo shed.

Explained| Why annual floods are essential for the survival of Kaziranga National Park

It Rajamayong village, it is not only Nath’s home that is witness to such a curious sight. Sleeping in the courtyard of 70-year-old Radhika Devi’s house are a female rhino and her calf, forcing the occupants to stay indoors from sundown every day. “We can’t even use the bathroom [located outside the house] at night,” says a disgruntled Devi, on the phone from her village.

Rhinos straying out of Pobitora — located in the floodplains of the Brahmaputra river in the Morigaon district, and surrounded by at least 27 villages — is not new, especially during the annual floods when food becomes scant inside sanctuary. However, this year’s unusually prolonged deluge in Assam — which has taken 97 lives and affected nearly 40 lakh people — has resulted in a serious shortage of food forcing the animals to move out of the sanctuary for such long stretches for the first time.

“It is a very serious problem,” says MK Yadava, Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) and Chief Wildlife Warden, Assam, “For the first time, we have had to provide them with grass and fodder from outside.”

As of Saturday, ninety per cent of the sanctuary remains submerged. “While floods are a natural occurrence, the situation is grave this year and the animals are stressed — all the grass is submerged,” says Jitendra Kumar, DFO, Guwahati Wildlife Division.

In July alone, multiple waves of floods have submerged the tiny wildlife sanctuary, giving its animals little time to adjust. “In 20 days, there have been three waves,” says Dr Bibhab Talukdar, rhino expert and secretary general of wildlife NGO Aaranyak. “Usually floods happen in cycles from June until mid-September, waters recede for about two-three weeks before another wave hits the sanctuary. But this time, while one wave has barely receded, another wave hits. This is a rare case.”

The rhino has been taking refuge by the pond in Nripen Nath’s house for a week now. (Source: Nripen Nath)

On Friday, two rhinos visited the sanctuary’s range office in search of food. Since then, Mukul Tamuly, Range Officer, Pobitora, has left the gates of his office open, so the rhinos can come feed themselves “as they please.” “We have also cut stacks of grass and left it out in the open for them,” he says.

In Nath’s house too, the rhino is getting a free range. “I have convinced my parents since I know a thing or two about animals,” says Nath. “They won’t attack for no reason. But our neighbours are scared, ringing up the forest department at the slightest movement.”

Currently, five rhinos are taking refuge in three homes in Rajamayong village. “Many others come and go,” says Tamuly, who is in constant touch with the families, in case they need help. “We are patrolling, creating awareness among people so they don’t chase it away. Any damages in their homes, we will compensate for.”

Animals are increasingly jostling for space in the 38.8 sq km Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary (Source: Mukul Tamuly)

While the Kaziranga National Park is synonymous with rhinos, the little-known Pobitora — earlier a grazing reserve and notified as a wildlife sanctuary in 1998 — has the highest density of rhino population in the world. “There are 102 rhinos in a 16 sq km area of the sanctuary, which means about six to seven per sq km— imagine that,” says Tamuly, “In Kaziranga, there are about two per sq km.”

While the high density means that the area has a good gene pool and can be used as a source population to translocate rhinos, animals are increasingly jostling for space in the sanctuary, which is notified to be 38.8 sq km on paper. “As per the 1998 notification, Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary should include the area of Pobitora Reserve Forest, the adjacent Rajamayong Hills as well as the khas land which connects the two areas,” says DFO Kumar, “However, the forest department still does not have control over the connecting area — if we did, then the animals would have a safer passage to the hill areas during the flood.”

Don’t miss from Explained| Why Assam is prone to floods, and what the solution is

Yadava said he has spoken to the Morigaon administration and the problem will be sorted as soon as there is some respite from floods and Covid in Assam. “But it is not just about getting possession of this area but consolidating the sanctuary. This is a matter which has not been given attention for so many years,” he says, “We are thinking of a more long term approach, for the floods will just worsen every year.”

Tamuly — who has been working in the sanctuary for a decade now — says that while it was imperative that Pobitora extends in area, the animals need highlands to take refuge on. “Some highlands need to be created as a short term measure at least,” he says, adding that even if areas are acquired higher roads will need to be built for a safe passage for animals to go to the Rajamayong Hills.

Apart from rhinos, feral buffaloes, wild boar also inhabit the sanctuary. “It was earlier a grazing reserve but came to limelight in the 1960s when rhinos were spotted,” says Talukdar, “So it is very common to find rhinos, along with cows, goats — and many times — people, in the same area, all very used to each other.”

But at Nath’s home these days, the rhino sleeps fitfully in its new environment. “It will hear a utensil fall in the kitchen, or someone washing clothes — then it wakes up and cocks its ear, wondering where the sound came from,” says Nath, with a laugh, adding that at night, the rhino will begin to feed, feasting on the vegetables they have planted. “My parents get angry, but I tell them — look, people from all over the world come to see the rhino, but here, the rhino has come to see us. Are we not lucky?”

© The Indian Express (P) Ltd

Kaziranga in the monsoon

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A booster diet stirs Kaziranga’s flood-hit ‘road rhino’

GUWAHATI
All rhinos have poor eyesight. Some, like the one that has made a highway beside the Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve (KNPTR) its temporary home, have even poorer vision.

The male rhino, about 30 years old, was thought to be ill or injured when he swam laboriously out of the flooded KNPTR, hauled himself onto the highway and lay on the asphalt on the evening of July 17. Barring the twitching of the ears, he was motionless as vehicles whizzed past.

He has refused to budge three days later, earning the ‘road rhino’ moniker. But he has been venturing out a few feet on either side of the highway after some doses of sweetened multivitamin were given in bundles of grass and antibiotic eye drop sprayed from a high-pressure water gun.

The rhino had emerged from the Bagori Range of the 1,055 sq km KNPTR that has a core area of 430 sq km and more than 55% of the world’s population of the one-horned herbivore.

Security cordon

“Our men threw a security cordon around the rhino. From experience, we knew the rhino was really tired after swimming for hours in search of dry land, but we sought the help of veterinarians nonetheless,” said P. Sivakumar, KNPTR director.

A team of veterinarians led by Shamsul Ali of the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation (CWRC) nearby began observing the animal. The “crisis situation” prompted Kushal Konwar Sarma, head of College of Veterinary Science, to rush from Guwahati, 200 km away.

“We were prepared to take the rhino to the zoo in Guwahati, but he was in good health other than suffering from partial vision. We could sense he was not confident enough to swim back probably because of uncertainty in figuring out what lies ahead although he has been venturing further from the road with the water level receding,” Dr. Sarma said.

Dr. Ali said his team embedded multivitamin pills in jaggery wrapped in bundles of grass and threw them from a distance. As the animal lay on the road on Saturday, they sprayed the eye drop mixed in saline water from five metres.

“Rhinos have blurred vision and tend to attack based on smell and hearing. We had an animal too weak to react and with corneal opacity in the left eye and conjunctivitis in the right,” he told The Hindu on Sunday. Rathin Barman, who heads the CWRC, said the rhino was expected to melt into the forest soon.