Author: Lalitha Krishnan

How the Teak Tree Tilted the Course of History in India and Other Stories.

~ Lalitha Krishnan ~ Leave a comment

With Mallika Ravikumar and Nishanth Srinivas

Episode #34 Heart of Conservation podcast. Show Notes (Edited)

or listen here.
Mallika Ravikumar
Nishanth Srinivas

0:03

Lalitha Krishnan: Hey there. I am Lalitha Krishna and you are listening to episode #34 of Heart of Conservation. Today I am speaking to two plant and tree lovers, basically tree experts. I find it so fascinating to listen to folks who are passionate and knowledgeable about the things that they love. Some of the fauna we are going to discuss are everyday plants and trees we pass by or sit under or love for their fruits and flowers, but truly we barely notice or know much about them. I promise you some extraordinary insights, botanical facts, myths, history, personal stories and more, on this episode.

0:47

My guest Mallika Ravikumar is a lawyer-turned-writer. She writes about history, culture and nature and has authored over six books mostly for children including one called ‘Tracing Roots’.  She also has her own ‘YouTube’ channel called ‘Tree Talk with Mallika Ravikumar’. You’re very likely to have watched her on Instagram but you can check out more about her work on her website https://mallikaravikumar.com/

1:12

I have also been following ‘Trees of Shillong’ on Instagram which belongs to Nishanth Srinivas, my other guest.  Nishant has a Master’s degree in Biotechnology from Bangalore University and worked as a Junior Research Fellow at the Department of Molecular Reproduction, Development and Genetics at the Indian Institute of Science.  Having changed course, he is now based out of Shillong, and is working with an NGO called Conservation Initiatives. He specializes in satellite mapping and is interested in human–elephant interactions and landscape ecology. I believe Nishanth loves, doodling, graphic design, and writing and staring at tree canopies. I have a feeling that is true of both of my guests.

1:47

Mallika, and Nishanth thank you both for joining me on Heart of Conservation. I am really looking forward to your stories.

Mallika Ravikumar: Thank you, Lalitha for having me.

Nishanth Srinivas: Thank you so much for having us Lalitha.

2:02

Lalitha Krishnan: My pleasure really. To start with, why don’t you briefly tell me about the fascination for trees? Mallika, why don’t you go first?

2:12

Mallika Ravikumar: I grew up in Mumbai which as you know is a city with a lot of people, with a lot of concrete. Trees are not something you think about or associate with Mumbai. I grew up like any city person, knowing very little about trees and then I happened to shift into a place where I was surrounded by trees. I was very curious; I felt very bad that I didn’t know… I couldn’t recognize most of the trees around me. I didn’t know their names. It made me feel like something was off because I knew from what I had learnt in science and textbooks that we get our oxygen from trees. We get our food from trees. Trees are such an important part of regulating our environments so the role of trees in textbooks I was aware of, but I was not able to identify more than a handful of trees which made me feel very awkward. That started the process of making me want to learn, and enroll for field botany lessons during weekends at BNHS. I went for some field trips with botanists and ornithologists, to learn about birds and flowers and things. And, that took me down the rabbit hole and that learning process is still on. So, that’s how it all began.

Lalitha Krishnan: The learning process for all of us will keep going on I hope.  What about you Nishanth?

3:31

Nishanth Srinivas: My story is not much different from what Mallika’s story is. I am also from the city; I am from Bangalore. Just like she mentioned, trees give us oxygen. I remember when I was so concerned about the environment, reading about all of this. The thing is during summer holidays, the best most outdoorsy thing that I would get to do is go to my grandparent’s place. They had a very big garden and they were every possible fruit tree there. This started my love for gardening. It started with gardening and I took a different route. I studied biotechnology and I happened to work in the Indian Institute of Science. And there, there were more trees and they have a 400-plus acre filled with trees. And, all my free time would be spent observing trees, canopies… Eventually, somewhere, that fueled my change to a different profession and now, I’m in conservation and I actually started observing trees beyond what is there in the city. And, that’s how Trees of Shillong was born and here we are. Right.

Lalitha Krishnan: It’s amazing how the ‘outdoors’ draws us out of our shelters.  One of my podcast guests, Suniti Bhushan, introduced me to the concept, not his concept of ‘Nature Deficiency Syndrome’. Still, I would like to hear from you; why do you think tree stories are important? Nishanth, do you want to go first?

Nishanth Srinivas: Tree stories or stories in general related to myths or folk stories I believe are very important. Coming from a conservation point of view, whenever we approach a place or a region to understand what are people’s beliefs and how they connect with their culture, it usually starts with understanding or trying to make sense of their surroundings. And most of this is usually in the form of folk stories. There might be biases as conservationists so I try to bring in this idea of conservation a lot. And even in my stories when I write about Shillong, I usually end it with two lines about conservation which is very much the need of the hour. So, the thing is these stories need that. As a researcher and conservationist, they give me an understanding of the local context and how people relate to it and some sense of the relation of how they understand and make sense of the nature around them.

As a researcher and conservationist, they give me an understanding of the local context and how people relate to it and some sense of the relation of how they understand and make sense of the nature around them.

-Nishanth Srnivas

Lalitha Krishnan: So true. Mallika?

6:21

Mallika Ravikumar: Yes, very similar to what Nishanth said. In a country where we are such an ancient culture-we have such a plethora of stories and folk tales, myths, and legends about trees from various backgrounds: Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam… In every tradition, some people consider trees sacred. There is an association with them. I think, going into the psychology of it, people’s actions are not based on reason alone. Although we would like to believe we are rational, reasonable people, intelligence plays a very important role in how we behave but reason is only one of the faculties we use to make decisions. The other huge factor is emotion. Many things we do in our life–the decision to marry somebody, the decision to follow a certain career—it is based on hope and dreams and are also mixed with emotion. It’s not ‘reason’ alone that guides us. So, pummeling people with facts alone—you know, “trees give us oxygen, trees regulate the environment” — all this appeals to a certain side of us but all these legends, myths, folktales, and rituals and traditions; appeal to the emotional side of us. Which is also a very important part of human decision-making and psychology.

So, I think they have a very important role. Sometimes, I think emotions play a larger role when I connect with a tree or plant or pet dog emotionally, I feel much more to protect them and save them than if I connected with them academically or you know, intellectually. So, I think they play an important role in the way people behave in general.

8:05

Lalitha Krishnan: OK. And from a male point of view, Nishanth, do you also feel the emotional connection?

8:13

Nishanth Srinivas: Yes, very much so. The whole point of why we are very interested in learning and trying to talk about myths… is generally when we have a conservation or do a presentation, it’s to have that emotional connection. When we speak of myths and folk stories, they also reveal a lot about the culture and they trying to make sense so yes, the emotional aspect makes a very good point. It’s important.

8:33

Lalitha Krishnan: Thank you. This question is for both of you. So, how many trees are you going to share with us today?  Mallika if you would like to start, you can tell us some interesting facts that you like and then a myth.

8:57

Mallika Ravikumar: Sure, how many trees? There is no answer to that. It can go on endlessly but I would be happy to start with a tree that I talk about a lot which is the teak tree which is an Indian tree. It’s called ‘Saagaun’ in Hindi, and Thekku maram’ in the south. In fact, the word ‘Teak’ itself comes from the word Thekku maram’ which is in Malayalam, and before that in Tamil. It is a tree that changed world history. We have this human-centric way of looking at history and saying, “This king changed history, this general, Alexander the Great, Akbar the Great, Chandra Gupta Maurya; they did this…and they changed history…” But really, so many of these trees if they could speak, would tell you that they are the ones who changed history and changed the course of time. So, teak is one of those trees you know.

But really, so many of these trees if they could speak, would tell you that they are the ones who changed history and changed the course of time. So, teak is one of those trees you know.

-Mallika Ravikumar

9:45

There is this period in history in the 16th and 17th centuries that was called the period of Teak Rush, which was a time when the French and the British were engaged in several battles before and during Napolean’s time when the British were very wary of the rise of Napolean because he was a big threat. And, they had completely decimated the oak trees of England to build ships. And we all know the British were able to control a large part of the world because they had a great navy. And what was the basis of their navy? Their ships. And what were their ships made of? Wood. But their oak forests were completely decimated because of the ships they had built in conquering various places and they were on the lookout for wood to build their ships. That is when this period of Teak Rush comes in when both the French and the British are on the lookout for wood for building ships. Because all these battles that used to happen were naval battles. And by chance, it is the British who discovered the teak forests of southern India and then they brought in forest laws to control all our forests. The conservation laws that we have today didn’t start as a measure of protecting the forest as much as wanting to control the resources from the forest.

And what is the main resource they wanted to control? Teak. They had scouts going out to look out for these teak forests. They massacred these forests, they had teak plantations, they converted large forest areas into monoculture teak plantations and it is the teak that they got that helped them get this hegemony and control larger parts of the world. So, it titled the scale of history. We are having this conversation in English today because of teak otherwise we might have been talking in French. Who knows? But it’s teak that changed the tide that was the bedrock of the British empire. So, that’s just one of the many stories that changed our past and continue to shape our present.

11:37

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s amazing. Frankly, I did not know of this. I have only heard of the Gold Rush, not the Teak Rush. Nishanth, what plant, or tree are you bringing home to our listeners?

11:41

Nishanth Srinivas: Well, I thought of four plants but one tree which is very common to our listeners which we all know; it is very common is the coconut. I have always been intrigued; there was a coconut tree near my home in Bangalore, in my neighbour’s house and it stood tall. In 2018 we had very terrible rains; very cyclonic. There were a couple of trees which fell but this one tree did not fall. You do not hear of many instances of coconut trees falling and if you follow the weather channels you will always see that when they talk about coasts or rain in the weather reports, you will always see some palm trees flaying around but it’s not usually uprooting away. I always used to think about why and it is very interesting how coconut trees have adapted to live in a coastal region where geographically, it is quite flat. We know that when the winds come in, they pick up rain, and the first thing they will encounter is the coast. So, how these trees have adapted is quite interesting.

13:00

First of all, the shape of a coconut tree is a tube-like any other palm tree. And if you observe the bottom of the tree, it is a little wider at the bottom than the top. Very marginally. And, the top region of the tree, the crown as we call it is quite flexible. That is one. We have all seen Bahubali (the movie) where he uses the palm tree to make it so flexible that it is wind-borne and things like that. Though, palm trees are not that flexible but the top region is. So, it sways when there is a lot of wind movement. That is one.

13:39

When we talk about the inside structure of the coconut tree… it is a monocot. Monocot trees do not grow by girth every year and it’s made up of spongy tissue inside. It is so much like a concrete mould and is reinforced by lignin fibres. These fibres run longitudinally along the length of the coconut trees so they are fill which is inside the concrete. It provides structural stability to the tree. That is one.

14:11

The other is the roots. We have all seen the roots. These roots are fibrous. They go in every direction and they hold the tree in a place like any other (root system).

14:25

Last but not the least is the frond. So, the coconut tree is almost feather-like; it is pinnate. So, it has a central big stem called the Rachis. So, most of the very tall palm trees have feather-like leaves. So, these are some of the very interesting adaptions that I came across when I was trying to understand how the coconut tree stands cyclones.

14:51

Lalitha Krishnan: Wow. You explained that well. I also believe every part of the coconut tree can be used. Am I right?

15:00

Nishanth Srinivas: That’s true. That’s one of the reasons why it is called ‘Kalpavriksha’ I guess. Mallika would have many more stories about it. But interestingly, since coconut trees are there in the tropical regions all around, there are multiple stories of ‘how’ or ‘what’ when it comes to the folk stories. Each culture or region has its own take on it. It is quite interesting.

15:25

Lalitha Krishnan: O.K. Would you like to share that?

15:30

Nishanth Srinivas: I will quickly share two of them. One of them is from Hindu mythology itself. When Ganesh was very small, he wanted to play with the third eye of Shiva. And then, I guess, one of the demons if I am not mistaken a small model/idol with three eyes and gives it to Ganesh. By mistake, this small idol falls from Ganesh’s hands and falls on earth. They say that’s how coconut came into existence or how mankind found the coconut.

16:04

That is one of the stories. There is one more very interesting story—again similar to this—the three eyes. When you de-husk a coconut, why does it have three eyes? This story is from the Polynesian culture- Hawaii, Melanesia, New Zealand and all of those places.  They say, in an ancient island there used to be a chieftain’s daughter. Her name was Sina. She used to always visit the sea and she sort of became friends with an eel. This eel over time developed feelings for Sina. And it became very violent as time moved on; wanting more of her time and affection. But then, she goes back to her village and complains about this eel which is sort of always stalking her. And then, one of her relatives goes and kills the eel. Before dying, the eel’s head speaks. It tells Sina to bury the head in the sand and that it will be reborn as a tree whose fruit Sina can drink. The three holes are where the coconut shell is the lightest. So, every time, you break it open and drink, it’s like the eel kissing Sina. That’s what the story says. These are different stories and they talk about (lost in translation).

17:30

Lalitha Krishnan: Lovely stories. Mallika, would you like to share another one?

17:33

Mallika Ravikumar: Sure, I can talk about a plant which is not a tree but a lot of people think it is a tree which is the Banana. You know, in usual parlance, we say banana tree or kela ka jaad or vāḻai maram in Tamil. Botanically, it is not a tree and the reason is- for a plant to be considered a tree, the key feature is the wooden trunk. And the banana, if you notice closely, does not have a wooden trunk so it is not botanically a tree, although we all call it a tree.

Botanically, it is not a tree and the reason is- for a plant to be considered a tree, the key feature is the wooden trunk. And the banana, if you notice closely, does not have a wooden trunk so it is not botanically a tree, although we all call it a tree.

-Mallika Ravikumar

18:03

There’s this interesting story from the Gadabas tribe of Odisha which I like very much. So, the story goes that there were five sisters. They were the mango, the tamarind, the fig, the jamun and the banana. As they were growing older, their father was getting worried that they weren’t getting married and he wanted to find husbands for each of them. So, he asked them what kind of husbands they wanted and they all told him. And, he looked for such partners for them but the banana said, “I want children but I don’t want a husband.” This is a very modern, feminist sort of story so I like it for many reasons. She said, “I want children but I am very clear I don’t want a husband.” So, the father grew worried. “How is this going to work?” But the other girls got married and they had children and it is said that all the mango and fig, tamarind and jamun trees that we have are descendants of those children. But then what about the banana? She said, “I don’t want to marry but I want children.”

19:00

The thing is as per the story the banana had children without a husband. The beautiful thing about this story is that bananas reproduce parthenogenetically which is asexual reproduction. In botanical terms, if one were to study that there are two forms of reproduction: one is sexual, and one is asexual; the way the banana reproduces by bypassing the fertilization of the ovule by the pollen is sexual reproduction. And it is fascinating to see that this ancient folktale has captured that in such a simple way. Those daughters wanting to marry and one daughter saying, “I want children but I don’t want a husband.” And to see that very astute scientific observation finds reflection in this folktale. So, I find it very fascinating for many reasons including the fact that it’s a sort of modern, feminist sort of take on life. But, yeah, this is a fascinating story about the banana that I shared on my YouTube channel where I share these sorts of stories that I find.

20:02

Lalitha Krishnan: Fascinating. I agree with you. How on earth did they figure it out then? Nishanth, it’s your turn. Another tree, another plant?

20:10

Nishanth Srinivas: One more tree that is quite common in Bangalore gardens is Nyctanthes arbor-tristis. It’s called parijata. It’s also called night jasmine though it does not belong to the Jasmine family. Again, according to legend, what happens is this tree also comes from the churning of the milky ocean. The demons and the gods churn up the mountain. And then, from the ocean arises this tree and Indraloka who plants it in his garden. Once, Narada,–who is usually a mischief-monger—takes some of the flowers from Indira’s garden and gives them to Krishna. And, Krishna goes and gives it to Rukmini, his wife. Having known this Narada being Narada, he goes and tells Krishna’s other wife, Satyabhama, that Rukmini got these heavenly flowers and Satyabhama becomes quite jealous. So then, she asks for the whole tree and so Krishna goes and steals the tree. En route, when he is coming with the tree, he is confronted by Indra and a battle ensues. Eventually what happens is Indra curses the tree such that it never produces fruit. Interestingly, this parijata does not produce fruit. It belongs to the Oleaceae family. It produces a heart-shaped capsule. Oleaceae is the olive family- the olive fruit. So, this does not produce that. It just produces the capsule. And, this is a little bit of humour: he (Indra) says that the owners where this plant is will never get the flowers. What I have observed is that in Bangalore morning time, around 6:00 or 7:00 o’clock, you see all these people coming to pick these flowers and usually the flower never falls in the garden where it is planted but usually falls on the roadside. ( lost in translation )These are some of the things that I find nice. Also, it brings the thought –as we discussed- we don’t know what came first. This or that but it is people trying to make sense of what they observe in nature and putting it into some sort of context.

22:55

Lalitha Krishnan: Very interesting. I can relate to this. I never get any of the fruits or flowers that I plant. They all go mostly to the monkeys. But I don’t feel cursed. I feel privileged. I think it’s the tax one pays for having wildlife around. Mallika, what next?

22:17

 Mallika Ravikumar: The story that Nishanth related…I had a parijat growing in my house and it was exactly like that. The plant was on one side of the fence and the flowers were falling on the building on the other side of the fence. That story also has another element. You know when he brings back the tree, Rukmani is very upset and says, “Why did you give Satyabhama the tree?” So, Krishna being very smart, plants it in a way that Satyabhama is happy to have the tree but the flowers come to Rukmani’s side of the garden because he knew that then both his wives were happy. These folk stories have several narratives or variations. So, that’s also very interesting that someone has heard one part and you hear another part. This is a version of the story that I had heard but yes, it’s a beautiful tree and flowers and a lovely story also.

These folk stories have several narratives or variations. So, that’s also very interesting that someone has heard one part and you hear another part.

– Mallika Ravikumar

24:12

Another tree with lovely flowers that I can think of is the silk cotton tree- the semal. This story comes from the Mahabharat. This story is narrated by Bhishma when he is on his bed of arrows; when he is about to die all the others come around him, asking for advice and ask various questions. He narrates this story when he is asked about the qualities of a good king. How must a king behave when a neighbouring king is stronger than him?  What is the diplomacy and relations one must have? So, he narrates this story of the silk cotton tree.

Nishanth mentioned Narada so this story struck me. Narad Muni, as he said was a troublemaker. He is walking along a forest and he comes upon this beautiful silk cotton tree and he is absolutely stunned. He says, “You know, you are so gorgeous and your flowers are so beautiful, how is it that you are still standing like this? “The wind is blowing so hard over here; all the trees are bent; all the leaves have fallen because Vayu has blown with such force but you seem to be unaffected by Vayu’s force. How is it possible? So, the silk cotton replies saying, “You know Vayu may be strong for the others but I am stronger than Vayu and what do you think? I can’t bear the brunt of the breeze?” So, he boasts about how strong he is and Narada is sure that if the wind really wants to blow something down, nobody can stand in its way so he being a troublemaker, goes back to Vayu and says, “ You know there is this proud silk cotton tree in the forest who thinks it is stronger than you and I find it laughable.”

Vayu of course says, “That’s ridiculous. I spared the silk cotton tree because when Brahma created the world, he rested under this tree and therefore, I have respect for this tree and therefore I don’t blow on it. But, if the silk cotton tree is going to interpret this as my weakness, let me show him how strong I am.

26:04

He says, “I’ll show him how strong I am tomorrow. But that night, the silk cotton thinks and reflects and looks at all the trees around and thinks, “If all these trees are bent and turned over, and leaves have fallen and they are all facing Vayu’s impact, surely it can’t be that I am so strong that I am stronger than Vayu.” So that night, the silk cotton tree decides that before Vayu comes, let me myself, drop my leaves and flowers so that when Vayu comes tomorrow, he cannot inflict any damage on me. So, the next day, when Vayu comes blowing fiercely down the mountainside, the silk cotton has nothing left. No leaves or flowers. Nothing is left on the branches. He says, “I am glad that you learnt the lesson to be humble. Now shorn out of your beauty, you have realized that you don’t need to show off many times. People are being gracious and nice to you and it’s not all about how strong you are.” So Bhisma is narrating this story to say that you have to accept that someone is stronger than you and not be futile and say, “I can take on anyone.” If your neighbouring king is stronger than you, then accept and be humble and bow before him. That was the context of the story.

27:17

But I use this story when I take children out for tree walks to tell them about leaves falling. And, why some trees are deciduous and some trees are evergreen and have you noticed leaves falling? So, if you just start off with deciduous and evergreen, kids sort of get put off. But if you start with a story, it becomes a point of generating curiosity and then they start noticing which trees around them are dropping leaves. Some kids have come back to me and said, “Aunty, we remembered this story from the Mahabharat when you told us when we saw this tree outside our school which was dropping leaves. So the important thing is also to connect kids with trees around them because it’s a way to generate curiosity.

27:56

Lalitha Krishnan: wonderful. I am feeling like a kid listening to your stories. Nishanth, why don’t you tell us more? What’s your next tree or plant of choice?

28:08

Nishanth Srinivas: The next is a plant, a type of ginger and this takes forward what Mallika said. Some of these stories and myths also serve a purpose to teach kids or the younger generation something. There is some moral behind it. This story is about a type of rock ginger. Rock gingers have very showy flowers and they are quite common in the Himalayan region. It’s called butterfly-ginger, butterfly rock ginger- it’s got different names but they have very showy flowers and they are quite common in and around the Himalayan region. This particular plant, its scientific name is Hedychium gardenarium.

Since I work in Meghalaya, this is one story which came to me from one of the museums that I visited here. So, they have this plant and they have this story along with it. so, in Khasi, this plant is called Ka tiew lalyngi. ‘Lalyngi’ which I understand must be the name and ‘tiew’ is flower. There is a saying, “Wat long tiew lalyngi pepshad” which roughly translates to: “Do not be late like the Lalyngi flower who missed the dance.”

29: 31

So, the story goes that there was a great feast. There was a huge tree called the lei tree. I am sure I am pronouncing these things wrong but if someone knows the correct pronunciation, please get back to me. This large tree was blocking out the sunlight and that itself is a different story. Eventually what happens is that people cut it down and there is sunlight again in the land and there is a celebration that happens. So, to celebrate, all the creatures that is animals, people, birds, and insects were invited to a great dance in the region of Meghalaya. So, what happens is there’s also this girl who is invited. Her name is Lalyngi. She’s a very beautiful young girl and she happens to come.  But the thing is she wants to look the best. What she does is she takes a lot of time to get ready. In that process of getting reading, she loses track of time. So, by the time, she reaches the dance arena, she finds the event is already over and she is quite upset by it. Because nobody is there to see her after all the effort she took. She is so upset she jumps off the cliff and dies. Where she dies, a flower is born and that flower is the Hedychium gardenarium.

The thing is, this flower is so much part of the culture. If you have seen the Khasi dress, they wear these Paila beads which are mostly in shades of golden yellow and red. And, this flower has stamens which are of the same hue of red. And the petals are yellow. In some sense, they feel it is part of their folk story. Most of these stories are oral; part of the oral tradition they have here in Meghalaya. Stories that are passed on through generations; something which they feel is one of their own which tells something about their culture. And, interprets some sort of moral lesson to children to prioritize and give importance to things when they are doing something.

Stories that are passed on through generations; something which they feel is one of their own which tells something about their culture. And, interprets some sort of moral lesson to children to prioritize and give importance to things when they are doing something.

-Niahanth Srinivas

32:12

Lalitha Krishnan: Wow. That’s a sad but beautiful story but also such an exotic flower.

32:21

Nishanth Srinivas: It is. Google it and see.

32:28

Lalitha Krishnan: Mallika, would you like to share another story or plant if you like?

32:33

Mallika Ravikumar: Another commonly seen tree in India is the Neem. This is not a story that comes from myths or folk legends. It’s a historical, current affairs kind of story. Where, as we all know, the neem has been traditional medicine in India for centuries. From ancient times to now, we have all experienced how if you had chickenpox, were told to have a bath in neem-leaf water or brush yourself with neem branches to heal.

33:10

Generally, if there’s a neem tree around you, one considers mosquitoes won’t come into your house. Neem is just part of growing up in India. You keep hearing the healing properties of neem. Some decades ago, in the US this company was granted a patent for the use of the neem in their pesticides or herbicides for controlling pests in plants. And, they also applied for a patent in the European patent office and fortunately, this was highlighted and India opposed that.  The Indian Council of Scientific Research opposed that and this is Traditional Knowledge. A patent as we all know is a special right given to you if you have invested in researching something and you have come up with something very novel, and it is original and it’s of use to people. Those are the considerations for a patent. But here is someone asking for a patent for something that was commonly known. Haldi is another one. Basmati, as we know, we also got a patent some time back. So many Indian plants, some of them medicinal whose healing properties have been common knowledge—even illiterate, uneducated—everybody in India knows about the healing properties of these plants. You don’t need to be a doctor or anything.

34:17

And, you get a patent for that where you are claiming that you have something original and useful and novel was something that India opposed and that patent was finally revoked after a lot of appeals and several processes. What it highlighted was something called Biopiracy. Piracy we know that if you film a movie in a theatre and you release it and make money out of it, is called a pirated copy of the movie or a book. Because it is making money out of somebody else’s creativity without giving them their due.

34:50

But, this idea of bio-piracy became a taking point after this Indian Neem incident of biopiracy and India then woke up to the fact—even till now, several of the patent applications made by pharmaceutical companies in the West are based on traditional knowledge of ancient cultures including India. And then fortunately this was taken to serious levels. There was this body called the Indian Traditional Knowledge Systems and a database was formed where if someone in the US applies for a patent for, let’s say haldi, obviously they might know this is traditional knowledge in India… But the Patent Office can then search in this database where you have all these plants that have been recorded as traditional healing plants in unani, ayurveda, siddha etc. and it will show up in the search at the patent office. At least in the future, private enterprises will not given rights– exclusive rights—for traditional healing plants of common knowledge in India. It all began with the neem biopiracy case that triggered all this. That’s not a legend or a myth but an interesting story, especially something to be aware of this is a huge amount of traditional knowledge that we are sitting on and some people are using it for private gain. We should be aware of it.

36:14

Lalitha Krishnan: Very true. And biopiracy is a new one for me. And I doubt they are trying to get patents for anything innocently.

36:28

Mallika Ravikumar: Absolutely. There was a very interesting article that I read. In Covid times, a lot of plants were getting stolen out of our botanical gardens. Orchids. Nishanth is in the north-east. He will know better. Orchids are disappearing in the northeast. Some of them are threatened species because there is this craze for owning these exotic plants and keeping them in your gardens and your house. The West has always had this craze but even today it is there. We talk about the tiger and the elephants and big mammals, birds etc. when they are threatened but a large number of species on the IUCN list are actually plants. Many of them are Indian plants. We somehow don’t highlight them because they are not as dramatic as the tiger and elephant and so on. But they are also part of threatened species.

We talk about the tiger and the elephants and big mammals, birds etc. when they are threatened but a large number of species on the IUCN list are actually plants.

-Mallika Ravikumar

37:14

Lalitha Krishnan: Butterflies too…from the northeast. Thanks for sharing that, Mallika. Nishanth, would you share some more?

37:21

Nishanth Srinivas: Yes. Mallika has given me segways into different things… She mentions the US and how plants are collected and taken to different places. One very common plant which was reversed from the New World to the Old World is scientifically known as Euphorbia pulcherrima. It’scommonly known as the Christmas flower. It’s these red bracts; it’s almost like bougainvillaea. It usually flowers during Christmas time. I’m sure both of you are familiar with seeing this plant. It’s very common. Especially in the western ghats, it’s grown as a hedge around coffee plantations etc. Here in Shillong, it’s quite a common garden plant.

38:14

Though this plant is a showy ornamental plant, it’s got a very nice and interesting story. And, it highlights something which I shall share at the end. It’s also commonly known as the poinsettia. The thing is even the names: Why poinsettia? Why Christmas flowers? It has a nice big story to it. This plant is native to the dry forests of Mexico, basically central and northern South America.

38:50

During the Aztec civilization time, this was also a plant of high cultural importance.  In Aztec, it was known as cuetlaxochitl which translates to ‘a mortal flower that perishes and withers but is all pure. Apparently, in Aztec legend when it was formed it was white. And, because of the war between two different tribes, the flowers become red.

39: 26

So, the Aztecs would plant this around their habitations or wherever they had their cities and stuff. But we know a little bit about their history and how the Europeans started coming and colonizing the West. So, what happens is, that when the people/missionaries came into the region in the 17th century, they noticed these plants. They sort of took this aspect of how important this plant was and made it part of the Christian culture. How they did this is quite interesting.

40:10

There is one interesting story. In Spanish, this flower is called Flor de Nochebuena which translates to “flower of the Christmas eve.’ The story is all about a girl named Pepita. I am sure you’ll be aware that during Christmas time, they make a manger which is a model of the birth of Jesus/ nativity scene. This girl comes from a very modest background. The story goes that all the people go to the church to offer something to baby Jesus. Everybody is trying to get the best thing to give as an offering. Being of a modest background, she tries her hand at many things. She tries to knit a shawl but she can’t untangle the wool. She then tries to make small boots for baby Jesus but she doesn’t even have the strength to push the needle through the leather.

41:29

She gets quite upset and a stranger comes up to her and tells the young Pepita, “Even if you offer anything with a lot of devotion, it will be accepted.” So, she goes around and gathers a bunch of leaves and twigs and she offers them at the church.  What happens is, magically over time, these greens she has picked, turn red.  This also goes back to the plant as I was saying. They are not flowers but like bougainvillea, they are red bracts. The flowers themselves are quite small. The story weaves the aspect of those and also them coming into flower during winter time around Christmas. That is what I found interesting; it gives a reference point. Some of these myths and stories may stay but this is how some aspects get introduced and become one of their own. So, that was what this story represents to me.

42:45

The word ‘poinsettia’ is also quite interesting. Mallika mentioned how people collect plants. There was a person called Joel Roberts Poinsett who was very much into collecting plants. He was from the US and was working as an ambassador to Mexico sometime in the early 19Th century. When he was there he collected these plants and sent them to the botanical gardens. In honour of him having introduced this to the western plant per se, it got the name, poinsettia. In political terminology, there is a term called poinsettismo which represents a kind of diplomacy which the US follows. Which is very intrusive. It represents how the US is or functions with other countries which they trade with.  This tells us also how words are derived, how there are stories are attached to them and what the roots of the stories are. This is an example of a plant being behind one such name.

44:09

Lalitha Krishnan: Thank you.

44:19

Mallika Ravikumar: I was about to say, I learnt a new word. Poinsettismo. I am going to look it up and read more about it.

44: 27

Lalitha Krishnan: The association is still there. I remember 2 Christmases ago; I gifted a poinsettia to someone.

44:36

Nishanth Srinivas: It all came from one small town in Mexico and got sent to the Philadelphia Botanical Society and from there, if I am not mistaken, just one company had world domination. And, they sent this poinsettia to different parts of the world. So, all of them probably have one or two mother plants if I am not mistaken. That’s how it is.

45:09

Lalitha Krishnan: Thank you so much. My last question to you both—and I feel almost guilty asking you this question—because both of you have already introduced so many new concepts and words but I am going to ask anyway cos this is how I always end my podcast.

Could you share something about trees or plants that is new to us or significant to you in some way?   It could even be about your relationship with plants.      

43:35

Mallika Ravikumar: Before that, can I add to something that Nishanth said which reminded me of something else?

45:40

Lalitha Krishnan: Of course:

45: 42

Mallika Ravikumar: Nishanth said how beautifully the idea was told to the girl: “You offer something with devotion and that is the most important thing”. There is a mirror story of that even here. That is one of the stories that I thought I could narrate but we don’t have time. This is the popular story of Shabri and the ber—the Indian jujube—where you have, shabri picking ber fruits from the tree and offering them to Ram. It comes from the Odhiya Ramayan. It’s not in Valmiki’s Ramayan. And, that became a very important story in the Bhakti movement to cut across barriers of caste and varna… In the Odhiya Ramayan, he accepts this jhutey ber as they say. She has tasted the ber, tasted the fruit to see if they are sweet and gives it to Ram. Laxman says, “I cannot eat this but Ram says, “Anything offered to me with love and devotion is acceptable and nobody is small or lesser or greater and I will take anything that is given to me with love and devotion. That is exactly the mirror story of what he mentioned. So, in every country, or culture, I guess you have such stories and it is really beautiful to study these parallels. Even in the Bhagvat Geeta, you have a slok/verse which is exactly that. “Patram pushpam phalam toyam, yo me bhaktya prayaschati” (You offer me fruit, you offer me flowers, you give me anything. As long as you give it with devotion, I will take it.)

It’s beautiful though and very often those offerings are plants and fruits and flowers which is a form of expressing devotion to whichever divine power that you worship.

47:16

Lalitha Krishnan: I am getting goosebumps. Between you guys, you can start an Oral History of Plants podcast. There are too many stories to go on one episode.

47:30

Nishanth Srinivas: There are a lot more.

47:31

Lalitha Krishnan: I think it will be amazing to have an encyclopedia of stories. So, coming back to my question…

47:45

Nishanth Srinivas: One word which comes to mind and which is central to… the reason why I am here also is ‘Green blindness’. People do not see green things. What captures our imagination is things which move—animals, birds, insects. They come to mind very fast but when we talk about plants, a common person may speak of plants in respect of their utility. In respect to food, or in respect to being ornament like a flower. But plants are much more. They are the reason why we are here. Somewhere when it comes to the topic of conservation, as Mallika initially spoke of the British way of forest management, it’s mostly utilitarian purpose. They wanted something which they wanted to extract and that is something which is continuing even today. Even with many forest departments, there have been many instances of people razing down natural forests, razing down places of high diversity and putting down monocultures of teak and mahogany and things like that. There are many examples like that that keep happening. With different forest laws and policies and amendments; time is progressing least in the Indian context, what is happening is not going for the good. In some ways, it is going for the bad because we are also an aspiring nation. We want to develop and be a superpower. We always see this happening in the spectrum of life but the conservation of our natural resources, our trees, what is natural per se, is much more important. Usually, the first thing that gets chopped or which gets the axe is always the tree. When there is any development even in our cities, when there is road broadening or widening, or setting up an economic zone or trying to expand business, anything that relates to land, it is usually the plants and trees which suffer first. Because they can’t move. They will be lost if they are removed from a region.

Usually, the first thing that gets chopped or which gets the axe is always the tree. When there is any development even in our cities, when there is road broadening or widening, or setting up an economic zone or trying to expand business, anything that relates to land, it is usually the plants and trees which suffer first. Because they can’t move. They will be lost if they are removed from a region.

-Nishanth Srinivas

50:40

Green Blindness is also one of the reasons why I started writing about plants though I do not come from a background of botany. So, that is something that I believe people should keep in mind and be more cognizant of what is green around them and living.

50:55

Lalitha Krishnan: So true. And where can we read your writings?

50:59

Nishanth Srinivas: I’m on Instagram @treesofshillong Otherwise, very much like you, write for magazines like #RoundGlassSustain I saw you had an article about how ants carry flowers so… different things. I also write to the Meghalayan. I have been writing about plants: myths and trees that are very common in Shillong gardens.

51:36

Lalitha Krishnan: Do share these links for my blog. Okay, Mallika; what would you like to share?

51:43

Mallika Ravikumar: Okay. While there are many ideas and words, something I noticed before I started learning about trees, I noticed that when I used to walk, I used to like looking up at the canopies of the trees from below and the reflection and the play of light. I discovered much later, that there is a word in Japanese, for this phenomenon and it is called Komorebi. I was so happy to discover that there was a word for this. Because, sometimes you observe or have certain experiences and you don’t have a word to explain what it is you are experiencing. But I was delighted to know that there was a word for this light filtering through the canopy of trees and the way you see it from below is called Komorebi in Japanese. So that’s a very wonderful idea and concept.

52:31

And going from that, another associated term called ‘crown shyness’.  What is fascinating is—again when I tell children or tell adults about it—if you’re walking below trees—say on the road and there are trees on both sides of the road, if you look up, you will notice the canopy of the trees are meeting up but just about. They touch each other but there is a slight gap between them. Not all trees do this but it is observed in many places and this is called ‘crown shyness’ where the crowns of the trees just stay within touching distance of each other. The reason of course is because they both want sunlight and if one covers the other one, the other one is not going to get sunlight. So, the tree is not going to grow under the shade of the other. There is a reason of course for it but we call it “crown shyness’ and it is very easy to observe when you’re out for a walk. Just look up. There are two beautiful things you can see. Light -whether daylight or moonlight –whatever it is, it’s filtering through these trees and it’s a beautiful Japanese word called Komorebi and this concept of crown shyness which you notice. It almost looks like the trees are having a conversation but they don’t want to be touching each other they are just about touching. That’s a beautiful thing to see and anybody can observe that when they are walking under trees.

53:46

Lalitha Krishnan: It’s like they are being good neighbours, right? Not getting into each other’s space that much.

53:53

Mallika Ravikumar: Live and let live…

53:55

Lalitha Krishnan:  Exactly. And the Japanese word? Is it the same for forest bathing?

54:00

 Mallika Ravikumar: No, Shinrin-yoku I think. Forest bathing is where you soak in the sounds smells and sights of a forest, and you spend time there. That is also a very beautiful Japanese idea as well. But this is Komorebi which is light filtering in through the canopy, through the leaves. The leaves are moving in the breeze, so the light is playing and dancing around. That idea is called Komorebi.  It is also very beautiful to have a word for it.

54:25

Lalitha Krishnan: It paints such a pretty picture. That’s fantastic. Thank you both so much. It was wonderful

54:35

Mallika Ravikumar: it was wonderful being here and chatting and connecting with Nishanth and you; both of you.

54:37

Nishanth Srinivas: Yes, same here. It was very nice to hear about new things and learn and put forth…

Disclaimer: Views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the podcast and show notes belong solely to the guest/guests featured in the episode, and not necessarily to the host of this podcast/blog or the guest’s employer, organization, committee or other group or individual

Acrobat of the Sky, Dweller of the Heart: The Barn Swallow.

Barn swallow. Photo by Rajdeep Mitra
~ Lalitha Krishnan ~ Leave a comment

Heart of Conservation, Episode #33 shownotes. Read or listen on several platforms.

Introduction:

Hi, I am Lalitha Krishnan and you’re listening to Ep# 33 of Heart of Conservation. I bring you stories from the wild that keep us all connected to our natural world. You can listen to Heart of Conservation on several platforms and read the transcript right here on my blog Earthy Matters.

Today I feel very privileged to be speaking to my mentor Dr Suresh Kumar who spiked my interest and knowledge in nature and everything wild during a citizen’s course for wildlife conservation at the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, Dr Suresh is remarkable wildlife biologist who specialises in animal ecology, migration and movement studies, conservation biology. Since 2008 he has been a teacher, trainer and mentor to several students at WII.  He has crisscrossed the country in pursuit of wildlife conservation.  Be it discovering a new species of pheasant, studying macaques, using satellite telemetry to obverse the distribution of olive ridley turtles, tagging and following long distance migration patterns of Amur falcons and mapping habitats of the Great Indian Bustard, Dr Suresh has several feathers in his cap.  He was also part of the 29th Indian Scientific Expedition to Antarctica in 2009, where he conducted aerial surveys for marine mammals and birds. I always look forward to snippets of his many wildlife adventures that he updates us with in his unique storytelling style.

 I am also very happy to have as a guest on today’s episode, his research student Amarjeet Kaur, completed her graduation and post-graduation from Delhi and then moved to Wildlife Institute of India. At WII, she first started her journey working on the migration and conservation of Amur Falcons in Nagaland and Manipur, and thereafter, joined for her PhD on another long-distance migratory bird. Amarjeet is now completing her PhD on the first study of Barn swallows in India. Together they have been working on a lesser-known species that most of us take for granted.

Thank you both so much. Welcome to the Heart of Conservation podcast.

1. My first question is why is your research focused on the Barn swallow? Why not some big exotic or rarely spotted species?

2:35

Dr Suresh Kumar: Thank you Lalitha for having us in your podcast. Well, you asked quite a challenging question especially when there are so many beautiful birds all over; not that the barn swallows are not beautiful but to me they are very unique. They are an extremely interesting group of birds and that they are long distance migrants, very common;  it’s a human commensal. It lives very close to people. it actually literally requires people to actually survive and they are long distance migrants like I mentioned earlier. They are possibly travelling 1000s of kilometres like many other species.  And in India, the barn swallows come to the Himalayas to breed. So, they are summer breeding visitors and by the time the monsoon arrives, they leave. So where do they go? There are some interesting details about these birds that we still don’t know. I think Amarjeet will possibly be able to  tell you a little bit more about the local connections, the cultural connects of this bird and it’s very interesting.

3:58 

Amarjeet Kaur:

Very interesting question that you asked. So, I just would like to mention that because this podcast is all about barn swallows, I think it is a unique bird also because we are giving it so much importance.

in fact

Lalitha Krishnan: In fact, some of the facts you brought up are also my questions. Barn swallows are often seen –in fact they are still seen as we know–nesting in small shops here in the hills. Why do they nest inside shops and houses so close to humans? You mentioned they need us. No other bird does that except perhaps the Red-rumped swallow which is not as common though.Somehow humans too do not seem to mind barn swallows.  They may not generally like a crow nesting in their shop if you know what I mean.

Amarjeet Kaur:  Again like you rightly mentioned that humans also don’t seem to mind. Barn swallows, they love to go inside the houses inside the shops as we have found out during our surveys and it is not just in India, it is everywhere that they are actually dependent on human buildings or shops and houses.  So what is so unique about these birds? Earlier they never used to, as is mentioned in literature, they never used to nest inside shops. And it is not just in India, it is everywhere that they are actually dependent on human buildings or human houses.

So what is unique about these birds?  Earlier they never used to nest inside shops.They used to nest in caves and crevices. And, they are such a smart species that as they found out humans are coming up with the buildings they found that right opportunity to get in. So what is the use? Why are they actually nesting inside saree shops which are so busy? If you go to Nainital market you will be astounded to see that it is so crowded. Barn swallows don’t seem to mind, they just lie around, feed their chicks and they are just there. It’s because they actually get an additional protection for their nest from predators. 

Because, when you observe the nest, you’ll see it is a mud nest  but it is open from the top. So I have found in the nest, when there are less nesting spaces, they have to resolve to the outside– in corridors– and they build their nests in corridors. And those are more prone to attacks by predators or by other commensal species so they see a lot of competitions in other species so that’s why they are more prone to go inside your house and make the nest And, like the red rumped swallow that you mentioned, I will just like to add they again build mud nests but their nest is closed/tunnel shaped so they don’t need that extra protection. That is what red-rumped swallows can nest outside, it’s because their nests are closed.

7:01:

Dr Suresh Kumar: Just adding on to what Amarjeet said, it will be interesting for your listeners to know that while we generally talk about human footprint, and how this has literally shaped the environs around, and we mostly look at it from a negative connect. Right? About displacing species from their natural habitats. But strangely there are certain species which benefit from human activities, changes in land use types because of humans or people. And, I think barn swallows are fantastic examples of that. The name ’Barn’–it was otherwise known as the Common swallow earlier– but the name ‘barn’ is because of its strong association to the barn. And, this is a very western thing. Like in America, in the rural areas they have  a barn to stock all the food that is required for their livestock. Here in India, in the Himalayas, we do have such a thing but it is not like they live in the barns. They live in people’s houses. And, I think there is an interesting connect here to religion. To the hindu religion, or for that matter to other faiths also…the Islamic faith or the Christian faith…anywhere you find people of different faiths living here in the Himalayas, they all have a very strong connection to these birds. They refer to these birds as Amarjeet will call the ‘Devchidya’, locally known in some places as ‘devchidya’-the God bird of the Himalayas that we would say. They are related to the significance of wealth or prosperity. So, if these birds come into your property to nest naturally, it’s a sign of prosperity. So it’s welcome. For the hindus, it’s a Laxmi avatar. 

9:9

Coming to the other question as to why barn swallows have evolved this strategy of nesting inside people’s houses or in shops. I think in the natural world there is always some competitive force or the other. There is also this major predation pressure. So, there must have been in the evolutionary period of time, there must have been strong predations affecting populations of barn swallows,probably everywhere. And those populations that started to nest closer to people’s houses and then taking the benefits of moving into people’s houses to nest may have survived. That’s how this shift from the natural environment which Amarjeet mentioned–nesting in- caves-might have moved to now, living with people. Also if you see, during this so-called evolutionary period of time, humans have also begun to settle down. I would say, with settled agriculture, these birds also had started to evolve the strategy of living closer to humans and thereafter, literally being commensals. 

10:31 

Now, the other interesting point that Amarjeet mentioned is, then why didn’t the red-rumped swallow also nest inside? Whether it makes a cup-shaped nest or tunnel shaped nest–they are mud nesters.They could have also moved in. Hare, it appears like there is an understanding among the red-rumped swallow and the barn swallow. In a simplistic way of looking at it, “Hey, we will nest outside, you nest inside.”Compatibility Okay?  So if I have to look at it from a more technical point of view, here it is competition for nesting space. So, they would be highly territorial in terms of holding onto a property. 

Among barn swallow individuals you will see strong territoriality. They will chase one another away. And some of these birds come back to the same nests to nest every year. In the same house. So, territoriality plus competition for space has shaped this. So the red-rumped swallows, the poorer cousins of the barn swallows, are forced to nest outside. So, there also, because of predation pressure, are nesting close to human households. But here, nesting outside would still evoke some predation. So, they have evolved the strategy of completely closing their nest with a very narrow passage tunnel for them to enter in unlike the barn swallows’ which are cup shaped and exposed. So they build it inside.

12:08

It’s amazing when you see these birds, all swallows,closely related, and how they are associating with humans and the understanding amongst them. “Okay, I nest inside, you nest outside. My housing architecture will be this way..” “Mine will be this way.” 

12:33

Lalitha Krishnan: We have a lot to learn from the swallows. I wish we would behave like that especially when it comes to housing. And be nice to our neighbours. So, all shops shut for the night. Where do barn swallows go when that happens? How do they understand and manage our concept of time?

12:44

Amarjeet Kaur” That’s truly an amazing question. Because those who are unaware of barn swallows nesting may wonder  where these birds go at night. These birds perfectly time their arrival and departure from the shops with the shopkeeper. They know the time the shop closes so they enter just before the shops are going to close. Early in the morning, they will actually wake up the humans–if the house is also attached to the shop–they start their chit-chat, chit-chat ..almost like, “Let us out, let us go out.”

13:21

I have interviewed so many people and they often say, “these birds start calling us at 4 o’clock  in the morning and we have to open the shutters for them. Because their chicks are in the nest, the swallows have to go out and fetch food for them. So, somehow for every different shop, the timing matches perfectly. It could be because, every year, they are coming back, they know the shop’s closing time. They were really affected during COVID. What happened everywhere during Corona is that shops were closed. Some birds were actually inside the shops. What some owners did was, they shooed away the adult birds but they couldn’t do anything about the chicks..the juveniles. So a lot of shop owners actually saw failed nesting. But, again, the hill people, they are big hearted. They made a space for barn swallows to enter. They cut their shutters just for barn swallows to enter.

14:30

Dr Suresh Kumar: They would create openings.For example, if the birds were nesting inside the house, we have seen places where they have removed the glass pane from a window so that the birds could enter. This is truly amazing. We’ve been talking about this from the bird point of view but when you look at it from a people point of view, people just love these birds. Of course, they have that religious connect and look at them as very sacred birds and things like that but even otherwise, like Amarjeet was mentioning, the birds know when the shop is going to be shut. But, there were many times when the birds wouldn’t arrive and the shopkeeper would wait for a few more hours for the birds to come. He would keep the shutter open. So, you can imagine the kind of association that people have with these birds. And, they are very strongly protective. They wouldn’t allow anybody to touch them. It will almost be like touching distance where they would make the nests. Birds also recognise the owner of the shop–seeing him day in and out or the people residing in a particular house. If there is a stranger like me and Amarjeet, walking into a shop, immediately  you will notice an alert  behaviour, they will be looking at us differently. I think in the minds of these birds they know, they have facial recognition clearly. They are able to distinguish. So, when I look at barn swallows,  and when I particularly go back every year and look at those individuals, which we have possibly caught previously and put a ring on them and they look at us…they know… Hey, these guys have come back.

16:15

Lalitha Krishnan: It almost sounds like a pet’s relationship with its owner except these birds are free to come and go but it seems like the same association. 

16:31

Amrjeet Kaur: There is a general perception that in the north-east that everybody is a hunter. If you go into the forests, you don’t see much wildlife, specifically in Nagaland. When we entered Manipur, in Imphal valley, only in this valley are the (swallows) nesting. They are not nesting as they nest in Uttarakhand at higher elevations. They are nesting at 700 metres in the valley. And, there again, people are protecting them. They again consider them as Laxmi or good fortune. If you go there from kids to the elderly know the word ‘Sambraang.’ You just have to say the word and they will show you the nest. That bird is that popular. Even in the main city of Imphal centre. 

17:13

Lalitha Krishnan: Amazing. Dr Suresh you did speak about swallows migrating but because of that one doesn’t see barn swallows all year. Where are they migrating from?  What distances do they fly?

17:31

Dr Suresh Kumar: Well, at this point in time, we don’t know. Before I get into the technicalities of this question, I’d like to tell you about what Amarjeet and I have been reading about what people generally think about barn swallows. Where they come from. I think Amarjeet will be happy to share that information about what people think. They all know the swallows come from somewhere. Or rather, where they go after breeding.

18:08

Amarjeet Kaur: I want to narrate a beautiful story of a shopkeeper I met in north Bengal. .He said.” I think the mother birds, after completing nesting, they go and take a dip in Kashi and they devote their souls to the heavens”.  I said, “Why do you think like this?”  He mentioned that his grandmother was curious and since then, they had been observing these birds. One day she tied a thread on this bird because birds were also accustomed to them. They knew them as Dr Suresh had mentioned. She tied the thread and next year, the thread was not there.From that point onwards they thought that adult birds go away after completing the nesting. They go and take a dip in the Kashi -in some river and they never return.  The birds that return they think are their juveniles. That’s what people believed. 

19:19

Again, the ringing that we did last year created that amazement in people. They could see their birds returning. They felt good that those are the same birds and that they are not taking a dip in the Kashi but are possibly migrating.

19:41

Suresh Kumar:  From the story that Amarjeet just mentioned, the perceptions that locals have about these birds, if you actually look at it technically, they are in a way right. These are small passerine birds and they have a short life span. It’s not that they are coming every year for years. It’s not the same pair of individuals coming. So, I think they may perish and the point is also  these birds being migrants are faced with lots of threats wherever they go. So the chances of probability that they would return back the next year is far lower than for many other species.  

20:24

I would like to add a personal note to this story. Way back when I was in college in 1993 I did a small project for my entomology course in Bangalore. It had a field component to it and I would look at birds and see what they feed on. And there’s one particular site where I used to look for birds and insects in Bangalore. It happened to be in winter. I happened to see thousands of barn swallows hanging around, foraging there. So, my story of working with barn swallows dates back to that time. I used to wonder where these birds were coming from. Thereafter, I have had a series of such sightings of barn swallows in winter. If it was along the Gujarat coastline…right in the Arabian sea coast, I would see thousands of barn swallows all ganging up, gathering together on a powerline. It would give you a feel that they were all getting together, preparing themselves to go somewhere.

21:40

If you look at the sites where I had seen them, it gave me a feeling. Are they headed in the direction of Africa? Then, you also see barn swallows in the Andamans and Nicobar islands in winter. That would mean they have made oceanic crossings. So, of course in literature what we know about barn swallows is that they are truly long distance migrants. The European birds, the Canadian birds, they would all breed up there in the Northern latitudes and cross the equator and go down into the southern hemisphere. So, they are truly long distance flyers if you are saying that, you know, how many kilometres?  They would be flying 20,000 kms one way; 10,000-20,000 kms. It can vary across populations. That’s the story  that we are still not sure of what is happening here in India. What we have been speculating is that along the Himalayan range, that’s about 2500 kms long, even if say  that barn swallows are nesting in 2000 kms length of the mountains, starting from Kashmir all the way to Bhutan, and thereafter in Arunachal you don’t see them nesting. That’s another story. The populations that are nesting as far west as the western Himalaya -that’s in Kashmir valley,could very likely be going down into Pakistan  and thereafter heading out further south. Which may mean they are going down to Africa and joining the European populations that are migrating  down there. And then, when it’s time to return, they would again go back their different ways and come back to Kashmir or the western Himalaya.

23:19

So, now it’s interesting those populations you see in the east, that you see in Manipur, that you see in Darjeeling, would they also come down to peninsular India and head out down to Africa? We also see populations wintering in peninsular India. Southern India: Kerala, Tamil Nadu and all these areas. So, it’s possible that there are some populations of barn swallows moving within the Indian region. They are all moving to breed in the Himalayas but they all have different routes or different wintering ranges. So some populations would go down to Africa, some populations would be coming down to peninsular India or Southern India or Sri Lanka.  Some populations are going down into South-east Asia. Some of those could be actually heading down into the Andamans and Nicobar islands.

So incredible migration stories are still to be unearthed. We don’t know but these are possibilities.naturally, even if we talk about within the Indian region, for a small passerine bird weighing about 17-20 gms, they are easily covering about 5000 kms one way. 

24:34

Lalitha Krishnan: It’s mind boggling.The logistics. How do they manage? I don’t know if this is a silly question after all that you’ve said. Why don’t they stay here till winter? Has it got to do with the availability of their diet?

24:53

Amarjeet Kaur: Yes.

Suresh Kumar: We can answer that question.

24:58

Amarjeet Kaur: That’s absolutely true…in response to the availability of food. These birds like pleasant summer weather and that’s what they are tracking throughout their range. So when they do come to the hills it is at the start of March or end of February-March where you see lots of insects because of the change in weather. And once you hit June or July and it starts to rain heavily..persistent rains that stop these birds from going out to forage, that is the time that they finish nesting, pack up and start to move down possibly to south India or Africa, where it is summer and they again enjoy the availability of food.

25:50

Suresh Kumar: We saw a very interesting pattern. There are swallows that have adapted to living in urban centres like in the city and there are swallows that live in the village. Just like people. We are city dwellers and there are people who want to stay away from the city. They are happy living in the villages. Like that, we do see swallows behaving that way. 

I have often wondered what it would be like if we picked up some of the swallows from the village and went and left them in the city? They would say “No.”  In the city the question comes up…they are aerial insectivorous birds. So, they are picking up insects in the air, right? Now, what do they get in the city? What do they eat? 

26:39

So, very interestingly we saw swallows in Imphal town foraging at the traffic signals. If there is a major intersection, the moment the red light comes on at a particular section, the swallows would immediately come and forage in front of those vehicles. And they would fly between the vehicles. And, fly very low. The moment the green light comes on, the swallows would shift to the next section. It’s all learnt. So they are birds that forage there and of course you see other swallows that are foraging in nice, clean environs you know? Smokeless environments like over the lake…very scenic places. But here they are foraging among all the chaos and people. Sometimes, they are just flying straight to you and flying over your head. They have very high manoeuvrability; they do lots of acrobatic things in the air. It’s amazing. Actually, Amarjeet and I during our visit to Manipur, we did stop at one such road crossing just to watch how these birds are behaving. I was mind-blown. It was too good.

28:12

Lalitha Krishnan: Very cool.

Amarjeet Kaur: They show high adaptability  and intelligence.

28:18

Lalitha Krishnan: You have also been ringing the barn swallows. This is the first time barn swallows in India have been ringed. Which by itself is amazing. Tell us about that experience and what information does a leg-ring on a bird reveal?

28:39

Dr Suresh Kumar:Rightly mentioned, Amarjeet’s study is the first detailed ecological study of the species in the Indian region. The focus has been to understand their nesting sites. For instance, when do they arrive here? We’re talking about nesting periodicity. When do they arrive and when do they depart? And, we are also trying to understand this across the HImalayan axis. So, what happens to birds? How do birds in Kashmir valley behave or when do they arrive? When do they nest compared to the east, in Manipur? In Manipur,we have a resident population of barn swallows. They don’t migrate. That’s again very very interesting.

29:26

Why don’t those populations migrate? Everywhere else in the Himalayas you will see swallows migrate.

29:32

Lalitha Krishnan: I want to know that.

29:34

Suresh Kumar: That’s a different story and it’s very interesting. Now, the first thing that we wanted to as part of our study, what we wanted to understand was whether it is the same pair that is nesting in a particular shop or a home.So how do we know that? They all look alike.Okay. There could be some select features–if you observe them very intently, very closely but then your sample size is going to be very small. So one way to get around this is to actually individually colour-mark birds. Ring birds. So you know, this individual is ringed and this is an individual coming back to this particular shop. That is the purpose of ringing.

30:17

And, they are also known to nest multiple times in a season. So they arrive in the month of March and they immediately make a clutch. They would finish and then go in for a second clutch.So, asking for those in depth questions like their reproductive investment in the first clutch–is it more as compared to the second clutch? What dictates all of this? Is it also the fitness of the bird? Does it mean that the heavier birds have larger clutch size v/s individuals that are not  great in terms of plumage or slightly low in weight? Not that, they would vary amongst them a lot but these are all interesting questions.

31:10

You would also notice that barn swallows though territorial around their nest site, they are also social. So, wherever there are barn swallows nesting you would invariably see a lot more. So there is clustering of these birds when it comes to nesting sites .Now, that is the story, they are also taking  benefits of staying together. Maybe it has something to do with looking for food. Or maybe they would gang up together to shoo away  or chase away a predator. Or it could be as simple as giving an alarm like if there were a cat prowling around, they would give an alarm to indicate to the others. So, that;s some benefits there.

31:51

If this is the case, we also do see some individuals nesting solitarily. So why are these birds not taking the benefits? Are these birds not in great reproductive conditions? Are they not dominant enough that they can’t live amongst the flock so they are going and nesting elsewhere? Are these young birds breeding for the first time so they are nesting elsewhere? 

32:15

In order to answer all of these questions, you need to neatly mark individuals so you can try and understand these birds in more detail. Now the last part of it is that they are so small. They are very tiny birds–like I mentioned earlier:20 gms. And, whether you can put a small transmitter; a small device on these birds and whether they will come back the next year or not is also dependent on you being able to put rings on them. And, checking out whether they are the same individuals who are returning. Confirming that they do show site fidelity. This is very well documented in other populations elsewhere in the world.

33:02

But before you go in for deploying a tracking device, it’s first important to deploy a simple ring. You know? Ask some of these basic questions. Confirm  for site fidelity-that they do come back. Natal homing. They come back to their homes..their respective nest sites.That is the reason why we have started off with this ringing.

I think Amarjeet can further add on the fact on how ringing has actually helped create more conservation awareness.

33:36

Amarjeet Kaur: I will add to the experience first; the experience we had while ringing these birds. We will start from Kashmir and go all the way to Manipur.

When we went to Kashmir, we observed that these birds are nesting inside houses. And everywhere, people were just welcoming (us) strangers who had come to take their birds in our hands–they considered the birds as their own.And when they got to know that we were going to catch them, the first question they asked was, “Are you going to harm our birds”? So that’s the pressure we had everywhere we went to ring the birds because people are so close to these birds. This was our first time, catching the barn swallows and ringing them. So  there was this doubt: What if the birds don’t return? What if we scare them? These people will be really upset. But luckily nothing of that sort happened. I think this is because these birds are used to humans.That’s the advantage.

34:37

And, when we went to ring these birds in Kashmir, it would begin with people greeting us, offering us tea. And then, they would say, “now you go ahead and catch these birds. But before everything you have to have tea or something from our house”. That’s the culture. You can’t just do your work and move out.That was truly an overwhelming experience that I had in Kashmir. It actually brought tears to my eyes. 

35:05

And then we move on to Uttarakhand. So here, most of the nesting happens inside shops. And people have their timings right? People have to shut their shops by 7:00 pm. So what we did was, we caught these birds by night to avoid disturbance. Because, they nest in markets and we cannot place mist nets in daylight and disturb the tourists and everybody. So,  at night, when the birds are resting we catch them, ring them and release them back into the shop. That gives them time to get used to it and by morning they get back to their routine. So, people actually waited for us. They kept their shops open till 1:00 am in the night and they were with us watching everything we were doing. And they were okay with it. They say, “Do your work, no problem. We will manage, we will be here with you.

36:00

Dr Suresh Kumar: Now it has reached to the extent where people who earlier used to be apprehensive are now asking us, “Why did you not come this year and ring the birds?” Why don’t you ring the chicks? We want to know whether the chicks will come back to our house. So you know, they are also in a way, have become part of our story. Our research. 

And now they have begun to understand that these birds are truly special. They all know that they are very special. Very unique. But the point is when we share the stories of where these birds are possibly going and all our stories of connecting with Kashmir and Manipur, with the people of Uttarakhand, people seem to appreciate this a lot better.

 36:57

So there is this (lost in translation) approach  which is basically- it’s a taboo amongst all of the local communities that you should never touch the bird. “If you touch the bird, they will not come.” To break that and do our work was a huge challenge. But then, it worked. While I tell you this story, some people have simply refused. They say,”Nothing doing. You do research; don’t touch the bird. If you touch the bird, they will not come back, which is a bad omen for us.” Thankfully for us, we managed to convince people.

37:28

Amarjeet Kaur: Coming back to my story in West Bengal… We caught some birds in West Bengal. They were not nesting inside shops but were outside on wires and it was midnight. We didn’t have enough light to process these birds -to take measurements. And, we asked one lady who was just closing her house; “Can we come in and use one room to ring these birds?” She said, “Yes, come”. You won’t believe this; we actually sat in her kitchen while she was cooking food and did our work. It was amazing.

In Manipur, they were again nesting in houses and rooms that were not well lit. There too, people helped us, letting us use their emergency lights. In one house there were multiple rooms and multiple pairs were nesting. The house owners were saying, “you have to come here. There are birds in this room also.” They helped us hold the poles, they gave us light to work so it was beautiful. And all this, as Sir mentioned, has created a lot more awareness among people. They are now keeping track of these birds. They tell us when the birds come and invite us to come back or ask “why didn’t you come this year?” Or say, “ You need to tag more birds.”  When I started collecting data, everybody would tell me. “Oh we never noticed this.” It’s good that you came and now we will also pay more attention to these birds.” I think that’s fabulous.

 39:02

Lalitha Krishnan: I think what you are doing is fabulous and unknowingly, there’s a community of people now in different states doing conservation along with you. That’s fantastic. Talking of barn swallows, how long do they live?

39:22

Dr Suresh Kumar: These are small passerine birds and given that they are long distance migrants, there must be a lot of physiological stress on these birds. I suspect that they live for maybe 5-6 years. So, that is what their lifespan is. But they are highly productive so they raise clutches of five…sometimes, seven to eight chicks in one nest. So the nest is brimming with these chicks and sometimes, there is no space and the chicks fall off. So, the birds are quite productive. I think, to add to all this, their lifespan may not be much. This is the story of what we hear from literature, not something we have documented. That is again possible only through ringing. You ring the chick and you will know if it returns next year to breed. They also possibly mature earlier, and be ready to breed. And how often are they coming back? For how many years after ringing are they coming back. This is a very interesting story to document.

40:34

Lalitha Krishna: That’s wonderful. I have something. Red rumped swallows built a nest near my home; I don’t exactly know where. By the time they had their second clutch I felt like the juveniles were helping them build/repair the nest. Because, the numbers just increased. Is that possible?

41:06

Dr Suresh Kumar: Some young birds do practise building nests. You would invariably see this with the weaver birds.The Baya weaver and the other weaver birds also. You would see that while the dominant adults are busy building their nests, the young individuals–you can make them out by their plumage that these guys are young–they would also build nests. What is interesting is that they are also seeing the adult birds and they are learning. You can see that their construction is not that great. It’s documented that these birds are practising  their nest building. So, in the case of the red-rumped swallows you observed, it’s very likely that they are also learning to build a nest. 

There are a few other cases where young birds–especially the cooperative breeders– the young birds join in to help their parents, the breeding adults, to build the nest though they may not be breeding or coming into breeding immediately. That’s a different aspect altogether. This is possible

42:21

Amarjeet Kaur: There could be one more possibility of another pair coming in and competing for the same nest. That could also happen. Or that the male is coming and trying to impress the female.” Okay see, I am also competent enough..ha ha.”

42:38

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s also possible. My last question to you both is could you share a word or experience or concept  that will help us understand the barn swallow or remember it in a new way? Something that will add to our vocabulary.

41:57

Amarjeet Kaur: I think firstly for the vocabulary, you should remember ‘Dev chidiya’. There are different names across the Himalayan range. In Kashmir they are known as ‘Katij’. That’s a beautiful name. And when you come to Uttarakhand, there are different names. ‘Dev chidiya’, ‘Dhan chidiya’. You have Gotayi in eastern Uttarakhand.There is an interesting part here.  Near eastern Uttarakhand you have Nepal. We couldn’t go to Nepal but if you move to north Bengal again they call it ‘Gotali’.

43:37

Dr Suresh Kumar: There is a Nepali influence. The language, the dialects as you transit from the west to the east or east to west, you know there are people of different cultures and regions. They have their own language so the birds have also got their own names. We know very well that in Uttarakhand there is the Nepali influence. So some of these names do have a slightly different touch.

44:16

Amarjeet Kaur: in Manipur, they call the barn swallow ‘Sambraang’. Sambraang is the bird  which guides house building. They believe the way the birds build their nests is a sign that humans should also build their house in a particular direction. I will be good for them.

44:31

That’s so inspiring

44:33

Amarjeet Kaur: Exactly. I want your listeners to remember this: when yo go to the hills- it has become habitual for us, we consciously do this-if you are going to the hills, to around 1000 metres elevation, do look into the shops or homes and see if the barn swallows are nesting there or not. And stand there for five minutes and observe how they go into crowded spaces and manage to nest there.

45:13

Dr Suresh Kumar: For many of my research stories that I have been working on, the word, ‘connection’ resonates in every aspect of my studies. Or every species that I study.  So the barn swallow is also something that gets me that connection.  There is something from the emotional point of view but it also teaches me about how for these birds, it’s not one region or landscape that’s important. It’s the entire Indian or Asian region that’s important for them. So, it’s connecting multiple cultures. It’s connecting multiple landscapes. So, when I look at the barn swallow in the Himalayas, it gives me this visual of these birds having gone to my backyard in southern India. And if I see these birds in Southern India,  then I think they must have been in this particular shop somewhere up in the Himalayas. Resting in somebody’s house, raising its clutch of five-six birds… So, you know, it connects you and I think when you start to observe things in nature, these connections become very important. I think it’s important for us all to be connected. And, I think these birds are fantastic examples of how important it is to understand nature. What’s happening in nature and things like that. You asked me for one word; it’s connection. The barn swallows truly have that connection.

47:01

Culturally also, there are so many stories. Some people think they(the birds) just go and die in the Ganga. So, the Ganga is the holiest river in the world. That holiness…people are relating to these things. It’s just incredible. So yes, these connections are big for me.

47:24

Lalitha Krishan: Thank you so much. I am so touched and inspired. Dr Suresh, I think your whole career path is like the swallows. You travel place to place, continent to continent saving the birds and other species.

47:38

Dr Suresh Kumar: I am still on a journey. I wish that this journey never ends. As Amarjeet’s field work is coming to an end, I am now wondering after she is gone…like the barn swallow she too will go away somewhere far– and I still need to follow the swallows. At this point of time, we are primarily doing this work because it’s her project and we are understanding the barn swallows. Of course there will be someone else also interested in the barn swallows. But I truly wish that this journey not only for me, but also for Amarjeet,never ends. We continue to follow the swallows for the rest of their lives.

48:20

Amarjeet Kaur: It’s never going to end for me as well.The connection word that Sir mentioned has got to me also. Now, I’m completely connected to the species.

48:32

Lalitha Krishnan: Yes, and also all the people who are homing them, looking after them. It’s great. Thank you both so much.

Birdsong by hillside resident, the collared owlet.

Photos Credit/Courtesy: Amarjeet Kaur and Rajdeep Mitra. Podcast cover/label design by Lalitha Krishnan.

Disclaimer: Views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the podcast and show notes belong solely to the guest/guests featured in the episode, and not necessarily to the host of this podcast/blog or the guest’s employer, organization, committee or other group or individual

Know Your Dugong. A High Priority Species Like the Tiger.

Dugong photo by Darius Quadros
~ Lalitha Krishnan ~ Leave a comment

Ep#32 Heart of Conservation Podcast Show Notes (Edited)

00:00

Audio: Collared owlet 

00:09

Hi I’m Lalitha Krishnan and you’re listening to episode #32 of Heart of Conservation. You can listen to Heart of Conservation on several platforms but you can also always read the transcript right here, on my blog Earthy Matters. Today we are going to be talking about an animal that is an old relative of the elephant but it lives in water. I’m talking about the Dugong spelt ‘Dugong’. It’s also a cousin of the manatee. The dugong is a marine mammal that once lived in large numbers in Indian coastal waters and yet we know very little about it.

I am very excited to be speaking to not one but three amazing researchers Prachi Sachchidanand Hatkar, Chinmaya Ghanekar and Swapnali Gole about their work with Dugongs and their habitats.

Prachi Sachchidanand Hatkar is a PhD Scholar, Project Fellow- CAMPA Recovery of Dugongs and their habitats in India at WII. Currently, she is working on seagrass-associated fauna in the gulf of Kutch and Gujarat. Chinmaya is a wildlife biologist and certified scuba diver. She is currently working on projects involving seagrass, fish, dugongs and their threats under ‘CAMPA Recovery of Dugongs and their habitats in India.’ She is pursuing a Ph.D. in seagrass-associated fish and works in the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Bay region.

Swapnali Gole is a marine researcher and a National Geographic Explorer. Affiliated with WII, she has been working on the insular population of dugongs in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India, for the last seven years.  Between the three of them they have all the dugong habitats of India covered, I think. 

A special thank you to Dr Dr. J. A.Johnson, Scientist and faculty at Wildlife Institute of India and also Head of Department of Habitat Ecology for facilitating this conversation. And for the lovely ladies on my screen, welcome and thank you all for joining me.

2:14

Lalitha Krishnan: Swapnali do you want to start with what are dugongs? 

2:18

Swapnali Gole: When I start introducing dugongs, what I have experienced is that there is a big question mark on everybody’s face. “Do you want to say ‘Dolphin’? Are you talking about some whale species?” Generally, we are always bombarded or greeted with these kinds of reactions. Dugong is a very simple elusive animal which is a marine mammal species. A marine mammal is an animal that lives its life in the sea–of course there are variations–there are some marine mammals that live partly in the sea and partly on land but dugongs are exclusively marine mammals which means right from when they are born to the time they die, they spend their entire life cycle in the sea. And, they are just like dolphins and whales; also, marine mammals.  But they are more popularly known compared to dugongs. 

Dugongs are also more popularly known as sea cows; the reason being the dugong is the only exclusively herbivorous marine mammal. Which means the only diet a dugong prefers is a vegetarian diet in layman’s language. And, they are generally found in around 42 countries in the world globally in the Indo-Pacific belt out of which in India we have only three distribution sites i.e., Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Andaman and Nicobar Islands. So, people must remember the dugong as animals that live in the sea, they give birth to animals–they do not lay eggs like some other marine species and there is strong parental care in dugongs. From the time the calf is born, the calf will be strongly dependent on its mother for one to two years. These dugong mothers nurse their babies which is why they fall in the category of marine mammals. Marine means related to the sea and mammals mean animals that give birth to the calf and not lay eggs.

4:23

Lalitha Krishnan: That is so interesting. There is so much we do not know. How long have you three been researching dugongs and how extensive is the area you work in in these three different parts of India? 

4:39

Prachi Hatkar: I have been working in the Gulf of Kutch for five years now. The Gulf of Kutch is situated between the Saurashtra and the Kutch peninsula so the coastline of the Gulf of Kutch is about 170 km long. It starts from the Okha to the inner gulf and the mouth is about 75 km wide at the mount and the water spreads around 7300 square kms across the Gulf of Kutch. So, the Gulf of Kutch is a Marine National Park and marine sanctuary which was established in 1995. It was the first Indian marine sanctuary which was declared and it has 42 islands which covers various habitats like the grasses, corals, mangroves and intertidal zones etc. 

5:32

Lalitha Krishnan: What about you Chinmaya?

5:34

Chinmaya Ghanekar: So, like Prachi, I have also been working in Tamil Nadu – in the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Bay. These are two regions of separate seas.  One comes in Bay of Bengal which is Palk Bay and one is part of the Indian Ocean which is the Gulf of Mannar, so we kind of work at the confluence of both.  The area, to describe it, is a long, long stretch of Indian coastline – around 500 kilometres. So, from Adirampattinam if you consider till Kanyakumari it is approximately 500 km of the shore line.  And then the sea extends…in Palk Bay it extends to Sri Lanka but because of international borders we cannot access that area. But we generally restrict our area to 10 to 12 kilometres of coast. So, it is around 5000 square kilometres we cover for our study for dugongs and sea grasses and other fauna, and other factors of the project. To tell you about Park Bay, it is a very closed sea; it is like if you see Palk Bay – like I saw Palk Bay for the first time. I thought it was a lake.  It is very calm and has very glass like water most of the time but Gulf of Mannar on the opposite hand has waves and islands. These are two completely different areas so you working in both of them is pretty different from each other. Palk bay has a lot of sea grasses. Gulf of Mannar has corals, sea grasses, algae beds, rocky patches, habitat diversity so to say.  We can encompass most things of marine habitats in both areas.

7:28 

Lalitha Krishnan: Amazing. It also means that the dugong likes both habitats.

7:33

Chinmaya Ghanekar: They definitely do.

7:34

Lalitha Krishnan: Interesting. Swapnali?

7:37

Swapnali Gole: I have been working in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands studying dugongs for more than seven years now. Our study site if you see…because it is an insular set-up, it adds up to the work of our team. Because, the entire stretch is around 1962 kms, right from the northernmost island……..  till Great Nicobar it is 1962 kms. And, we have more than 800 islands, 836 to be precise. Then on each island there is a coast because it is an island, hence, we have more study areas I would say. For every island there are four coasts. And, what we have been doing is working in patches because it is not possible-considering the manpower that we have-to be present everywhere. So, we started our survey with say, the north……Andaman covered that and slowly came to the southern side. And, very recently we covered the Nicobar groups of islands. Practically the entire Andaman and Nicobar is our study area.

8:48

Laitha Krishnan: Sounds like a lifetime of work.

8:50

Swapnali Gole: It was. It took us six years to do what we did and it was very intensive.

8:57

Lalitha Krishnan:  When you say ‘team’ wherever you are, what size teams are you talking about?

9:05

Swapnali Gole: For the islands we never had a team of more than three. There was always a lot to do. I do not know why but we always had the smallest team…two or three people. For the seagrass and dugong (study) especially, the maximum I remember we had was a team of four, never more than that. 

9:27

Chinmaya Ghanekar: I have been fortunate enough to work with a team of eight people on a boat working on different aspects of the project and then we work together and it’s amazing.  But then sometimes we are just two people who are going by an auto to a coast then doing our surveys and coming back so there is variation across the years. 

9:52

Lalitha Krishnan: Prachi, I am going to ask you this question just to know more about the dugong. If a Dugong were a person, how would you describe it? 

10:03

Prachi Hatkar: I would like to describe the dugong as a gentle giant.  We have heard stories that describe the Dugong. If you see dugongs, they look similar to somewhat like a pig you can say, or mermaids… the stories we have been hearing about sailors saying, “We have been seeing mermaids in the sea”, they weren’t mermaids, they were actually seeing dugongs but perceiving them as mermaids. 

10:32

Lalitha Krishnan: Where do these stories come from?

10:36

Swapnali Gole: It was given by Christopher Columbus. In his excerpts—while he was voyaging around the West-Indies side–he wrote that, “I happened to see three mermaids today but they are not as beautiful as they have been described.” Honestly speaking, dugongs do not look like mermaids (or what we think we know of them). Only the tail resembles the mermaid but also later it was detected that maybe he did not see dugongs but manatees which are sisters of dugongs.

11:10

Lalitha Krishna: Right. Chinmaya, where can we find dugongs? In India of course, we now know but where in the rest of the world?

11:19

Chinmaya Ghanekar: So, in India as we have already mentioned it is in Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Andaman Nicobar. So, these three areas are like pockets. If you see the map, it is like one pocket on the left-hand side of the map, one on the south and one on the right-hand side. So, we call this a pocket distribution of dugongs.  

But in the world scenario, we have the greatest number of dugongs as of now in Australia. So, after that, we have this population in Red Sea, so that is also kind of pockets so these mostly as distributed in Indo-Pacific region; very technically saying and they are present in some island countries like Philippines, Indonesia…Southeast Asian countries. They are also there in our neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka. So, they extend from the Indian ocean to the Pacific Ocean completely. But China had dugongs a few years ago and very sadly they have now declared them as functionally extinct so the population cannot grow basically any more. They do not have dugongs anymore which is kind of sad news but we should be alarmed that populations in other countries also are quite threatened. We should look at them and give them the importance they deserve.

12:51

Lalitha Krishnan: True. Swapnali, talking of habitats where do dugongs prefer to live? Tell us a bit about their biology. How long they live, up to what size they grow etc. I know you call them gentle giants but exactly how big are they?

13:15

Swapnali Gole:  Dugongs spend considerable time in the day-I am not talking of their whole night -in shallow waters. So, it is directly linked to the sea grasses that they feed upon. And seagrasses being true plants they need sunlight just like any other plant on land for creating their own energy i.e. their photosynthesis process. So, wherever light reaches the water – and this is a very local concept. In the Andamans for example, the water is very clear so it (sunlight) is going to reach much deeper there compared to Gujarat for example where the water is very turbid. So, depending on how deep the sunlight reaches, it decides on where sea grasses will be found and that automatically regulates where dugongs will be found. It is all very linked. And, because dugongs primarily feed on seagrasses, wherever their food is, their distribution is going to be centred around those areas the most and that differs from place to place. That being one. Also, there have been tagging experiments done in Australia where it has been scientifically proven that more than 70- 80% of time of a day, dugongs have been found in shallow/sheltered waters 1 metre to 5 metres because they were spending a lot of time just feeding on seagrasses. On a similar line, dugongs, as I said, feed on seagrasses. An adult dugong will eat up to, say, 35-40 kgs of sea grasses, that is a lot of seagrasses for an individual. And, when l say, ‘adult dugong’ it goes up to 3.5 to 4 metres. So, the gentle giant’s size limit is 4 metres. Dugongs are generally not recorded to grow more than that. I have never heard of dugongs growing to say, 7-8 metres. Generally, people mistake dugongs for other species. There has been misidentification in my experience also. My informant spotted a whale and thought it was a dugong. He said it was 10 metres long. That is not biologically possible because the limit for dugongs is 3.4- 4 metres. When a dugong calf is born, it is around the 9-1.2 metres size range and around 40 kgs. But as the baby grows older, and it puts on weight after eating a lot of seagrasses, the maximum weight of a dugong, I can say, can go up to 350- 400 kgs on an average. Which is why they are called gentle giants. They are massive. They are very docile animals.

15:45

Lalitha Krishnan: When you say they grow to 4 metres, has this been their size historically? I do not know if there have been any fossil finds etc? 

15:56

Swapnali Gore: Whatever documentation we have come across where dugongs have been mentioned it is beneath the size range of 3.5 to 4 metres. Relatives of the dugongs–there was a species called Steller’s Sea cow– which was really massive. It was much larger than the dugongs in size. But if you talk about the species of dugong the upper limit of dugong size is always given as 3.5-4 metres

16:20

Lalitha Krishnan: OK. Thank you so much. Prachi, now to you. You know the term seagrass meadow paints a lovely picture in the imagination. What are they really like? Also, I read that dugongs regulate seagrass ecosystems. How so?

16:42

Prachy Hatkar: So, as Swapnali mentioned earlier, dugongs are vegetarians; that they prefer seagrass. So the seagrass are present in shallow waters where the dugong reside so they are basically residing where the food is. They graze upon beds of seagrasses regulating the biomass of seagrasses. In the clear water of the Andamans for e.g. the seagrass bed looks like a football field or ground basically. It will be spread across the whole land. It is a beautiful sight. Dugongs prefer a seagrass species called Halodule specifically. Halodule and Halophila species have low fibre content and rich nitrogen content. So basically, the dugongs graze upon the seagrass meadows regulating the biomass and type of varieties of seagrass that grow in these meadows. So, they actually act as gardeners.

17:53

Lalitha Krishnan: Are you three covering aspects of dugong research in the Gulf of Kutch, Gulf of Mannar and the Andamans and Nicobar Islands?

18:02

Chinmaya Ghanekar: To talk about Tamil Nadu, Palk Bay, Gulf of Mannar, we are covering research aspects of dugongs and seagrass projects. We are also covering the outreach and capacity building and these are true for both the other sides. So, these are main four objectives which are divided into a lot of smaller sections. So, if we are talking of dugong research, we are looking at where dugongs are distributed. What are they eating? Where are they going? If they are breeding in some areas how frequently are they sighted? These are some questions we answer with dugongs. With seagrasses we look at what species are there. What types of meadows are there. What are the associated species of fish – on which my PhD is based upon. So, I am looking at how seagrasses and fish interact with each other. How they are dependent on each other. This is not exactly I would say, a direct connection to see but when we say “fish” we obviously think of food. And we have already addressed this previously; dugongs are regulating the sea grasses, and seagrasses are habitat for fish and we are connected to dugongs.

This connection and the layers in between are what we are trying to study. So, there are two things which are my main-focus. I mentioned seagrass-associated fish. What is the diversity? How do they utilise seagrasses? Are they using the space between these? Are they eating seagrasses? Are they hiding in it? Are they laying eggs on them? I am trying to answer these kinds of questions.

20:00

In terms of dugongs, I have mostly looked at the distribution of dugongs and threats associated with them. There are many, many threats like possibly a boat dashing into them or a net entanglement or pollution or coastal development. The threats that we generally hear about in marine ecosystems are also threats for dugongs. I also study that; something like plastic pollution and then we have also looked at primarily what dugongs eat in India. So, the dugong research in India has not investigated this before this so I and one of my colleagues Sumeet have done gut-content. When we get a dead dugong, we get the gut content out of it and we see what seagrass they have eaten and what they prefer. And, we have also found some plastic fragments in the gut. Those aspects we investigate from the research point of view.

In the outreach and capacity building, we mostly interact with people, different stakeholders like the Forest dept., police, marine police…all of those and try to make them aware of dugongs and give them more and more training to continuously monitor dugongs and their habitats.

21:21

Lalitha Krishnan: Well said, So, it’s not one mammal but it’s the whole world around it. Swapnali, my next question was about interacting with fishers and other folk in the coasts that you work in. What have their reactions been?  What are the challenges? And, how do dugongs behave when they encounter humans? Are we perceived as threats? Sorry, that’s a lot of questions.

21:50

Swapnali Gole: The first question is always my favourite question, honestly. It is all about communities and that is my favourite part of the work that I have done. To talk to people- the local people. So, it started with me just interacting with the fishermen. For all marine researchers, the primary stakeholder is always the fisherfolk of that particular area because they have practically spent their entire life by the sea. And nobody can have that kind of knowledge or degree of curiosity, honestly speaking. The interaction that they have with the sea and the creatures living in the sea is immense. So, we started talking with the fishermen initially to understand their idea or perceptions of dugongs and seagrasses. Also, where dugongs and seagrasses are found. So, that would be used as a baseline for our research work.

22:46

Eventually we started talking with many other people who are going out to sea in the Andamans. The benefit is that the entire area is an insular set up. Whether you are a sea-person or not, you are dependent on the sea even for commuting from one island to the other. So, your interface with the sea and these areas is going to be very much pronounced. So, we started talking to different stakeholders you know…sailors, scuba divers or for the first time, the Indian Navy and Indian coast guards. Because, there are many, many regions in the islands which are firstly geographically isolated. So, considering the limited logistics we have, we don’t always get to go to these islands. Secondly, there are restricted areas. So, there is a defense-restricted area, there is a tribal-restricted area. Again, as researchers, we don’t have permits or we need to work on the permits a lot and that takes considerable time. So, we started targeting different stakeholder agencies, who are sea-farers. That’s the only mandate required to be part of this programme which turned out to be something called The Dugong Monitoring programme – a citizen science approach. And, initially whenever we interacted with these stakeholders, not just fishermen but other people also, there was this big question mark on their face as I had mentioned in the opening statement. When you say, “dugong’, people say, “What? Are you talking about dolphins? 

Multiple times, they also correct us. “No Ma’am, you’re probably talking of dolphins.”

“No, we are talking of dugongs.”

That was the kind of response we got initially. Most of the people we spoke to were clueless of what we are studying.

The saddest part is that the dugong is the state animal of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

24:30

Lalitha Krishnan: Really?

24:31

Swapnali Gole: Yes, even in local schools, we were surprised that the local school kids were not aware of what a dugong is. Our work starts there, with that. It’s like Chinmaya mentioned, there are many elements to the work we are doing. It starts with resources but a massive, massive chunk of our work in all three sites is sensitisation of the people. Right from dugongs to the species identity, telling them, “There is a species that lives near you and why it is important, and how you can contribute to saving them…”  in a nutshell is the kind of work we are doing at three sites.

23:11

To answer your second question, I would not say that dugongs avoid humans but in Andamans especially there is an island called Shaheed Dweep which is full of tourists. There is so much anthropogenic footprint in that area and boat traffic. You will see every type of boat there, from ferry boats to speed vessels to normal dinghy boats of fishermen. All sorts of boats are there in the water and dugongs are still coming into those areas again and again. It is said globally also, that in places like Southeast Asia which are hubs of harbours and anthropogenic footprints, dugongs are still coming into those areas.

I would like to add that dugongs behave individualistically too which goes for any species. Even in the Andamans, in Shaeed Dweep, I have seen the dugongs coming into areas where there is a lot of human interfaces. But a neighbouring island group which is a Marine National Park area…when we spotted a dugong there, and got into the water, this is my personal experience, those individuals just swam away to the other island altogether. So maybe because those individual dugongs were inside a marine protected area and not used to human-interface, they were not okay with humans coming close to them but in some other areas where humans were coming in and out every day, maybe the dugongs living in that area have become adapted to that traffic or pressure.

26:39

Lalitha Krishnan: This is so interesting, thank you.

26:42

Chinmaya Ghanekar: Can I add something?

26:44

Lalitha Krishnan: Of course. Please go ahead.

26:45

Chinmaya Ghanekar: Very recently, a week ago, a fisherman told us by phone that, “We are seeing dugongs every day in the Gulf of Mannar” in an area which is kind of a tourist area–the Tourism dept. also manages tourism there. So, he (fisherman) said that, “whenever we go out for fishing, we see dugongs daily. They come near the boat at so close a distance, you can almost pet them”. This is a different kind of interaction they have with the dugong and there is a kind of friendship between them. So, the boat comes, the dugong comes, they see it and feel happy about it. So, it is also a very, very positive interaction between the community and the dugong.

27:28

Lalitha Krishnan: That is such a wonderful thing to hear. It is making me love the dugong, a mammal I have never seen in my life. Dolphins are also known to behave like that. Maybe it is one of the reasons why they mistake them.

27:42

Chinmaya Ghanekar: Maybe but people will have different interactions with different individuals or populations differently. Like Swapnali rightly said, “There are individual reactions”. Something like in the Red sea. If you follow #dugong on Instagram, every day, you will see a photo of the Red sea where the dugong is  surrounded by divers. And, it’s feeding and kind or sleeping or doing its thing. But, that doesn’t happen here. So, the individualistic behaviour is very pronounced and it may vary with different populations also.

26:15

Ep#32 Podcast label design by Lalitha Krishnan. Dugong Photo Credit: Darius Quadros. Researchers photos courtesy Swapnali, Chinmaya and Prachi.

Lalitha Krishnan: So, the dugong is also been accorded the highest protection status i.e. Schedule-I of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. How does it translate in the real world? Would you like to answer that?

28.33

Chinmaya Ghanekar: 

This Wildlife Protection Act is considered one of the strongest conservation acts in the world because it has schedules. It has a lot of animals that receive protection. There are different schedules in the Wildlife Protection Act giving different status of protection to different species. The infamous one is the tiger out of all. The tiger has Schedule I protection, so do dugongs. Which is the highest kind of protection the Wildlife Act can provide. There are so many restrictions. Like, you cannot touch that animal. You cannot research that animal without permission. You cannot utilise any part of the animal in that case, not any part…even if it is excreta which happens in ambergris fish like whales. It is still part of the whale so we cannot utilise that. To even touch that kind of animal, you need permission. It is that kind of protection.

-Chinmaya Ghanekar

29:41

Lalitha Krishnan: Sorry…does that apply to even a dead animal?

29:43

Chinmaya Ghanekar: Yes, even for dead animals. Wildlife Institute of India has acquired all the permissions and we collect those samples and work with it. So, with this kind of protection, we always need permission from the government and the government is always very, very strict about it. We cannot work without permission anywhere. 

30:11

I will give you an example which happened in Thondi (Palk Bay), when I joined the project. It was a case of dugong hunting. It created a lot of fishermen agitating because it is part of their tradition and we struggle with it. They hunted it (the dugong) and the marine police put charges on them. Their boat was confiscated, their nets were confiscated. They were put in jail for seven straight years. The fisherman was about 50 years old. This kind of completely puts all kinds of restrictions on their lives. They cannot get their boat back, they lose all the money they put in for their equipment. So, the implementation of the Wildlife Protection Act is very strict in the real world.

31:05

There is one more story. When I was going on a boat, by mistake, there was a communication gap between the highest forest official and the field people and they did not allow me to go on the boat and research the dugong. So it is that strict, you need all things in place and the Wildlife Protection Act makes things happen at least in case of dugongs which I have seen personally.

31:35

Lalitha Krishnan: It is actually a good thing, isn’t it? In a way, it is protecting the animal which is what it is supposed to do.

31:43

Chinmaya Ghanekar: It might not be so straightforward as it sounded in the answer. There are a lot of agencies that come into it but then it happens. It does happen.

32:00

Lalitha Krishnan: Prachi, what part of the dugong research do you like personally? Or what has been your most amazing take away or encounter.

32:05

Prachy Hatkar: As I mentioned that I have been working with dugongs since the last five years. When I started working in Gujarat, like Swapnali said, when we went for the awareness programme, in schools or interacted with the locals, the fishermen, they mentioned that they had sighted dugongs in Gujarat-in the Gulf of Kutch-long back. Maybe 15-20 years ago. Recently they have not seen any live dugongs as such.

We were fortunate enough to see a live dugong which was the first photographic evidence in the Gulf of Kutch two years ago through the drone survey with one of my colleagues who accompanied me in the field. When we went seagrass mapping, we could actually see two dugongs.

33:02

Lalitha Krishnan: Really? Were they of the same size?

33:05

Prachy Hatkar: They were actually adult sized. We thought we could see a mother and calf pair in another sighting. But we were fortunate enough to have a dugong sighting. We knew then the dugong was not locally extinct from Gujarat.  

33:26

Lalitha Krishnan: Such a positive sighting. Swapnali, how about you?

33:28

Swapnali Gole: On a similar line, I have spent more than seven years studying dugongs. And my first sighting…from boats I had spotted dugongs. Honestly speaking, in the Andamans it is pretty possible to spot a dugong considering the water is also clean. My first underwater sighting–despite diving so much throughout the islands, happened after five years. I remember I had spent 45 minutes with this individual. I had almost given up all hope… “I won’t see it” I said to myself. 

So then when I spotted that individual, it was like “Wow”. You know, your entire journey as a dugong researcher flashes just right in front of you. I was literally crying underwater. I cried so much my mask filled up with my tears.

-Swapnali Gole

I was so happy and then I realised I had left all my friends who had been diving with me behind and I was literally following the individual.

34:38

And in those 45 minutes, it was just me and the dugong. You know, it was a surreal moment for me. Then I was a very happy soul. Finally, after all the hard work I had put in.

34:48

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s an exclusive. First of all, who gets 45 minutes alone with an animal? You are extremely lucky.

34:55

Swapnali Gole: I am lucky. I have so much gratitude for those 45 minutes.

35:01

Lalitha Krishnan: But you all deserve it for the work you have done. That is your reward to see a free, happy, healthy animal living in its habitat. Chinmaya, do you want to add to that?

35:17

Chinmaya Ghanekar: The first ever live dugong sighting I had…  I was dying to see a dugong. Because, everybody was telling you they saw a dugong here, a dugong there but you are not seeing one. It is frustrating. It’s very frustrating after spending a long, long time in the sea. I was talking about the other work I was doing per different aspects of seagrasses and other related fauna… So, we were doing that, sitting on the boat, and sieving the sand out. So, I was doing the sieving and behind me, I just heard this loud breath in the water. It was a loud, loud breath. I left the sieve down and when I turned around, I saw the tail of a dugong which was going underwater. I cannot tell you how beautiful that was. I have a picture-memory of that and I really want to see that again but the first experience will always be special. And this was special.

36:21

Lalitha Krishnan: True. Talking of breath, are dugongs vocal?

36:27

Prachy Hatkar: Yes, they are very much. They chirp like birds. They actually chirp under water. As you know, sound travels four times faster underwater compared to land. So, obviously, that’s the only communication that works for them – underwater sound.

36:49

Swapnali Gole: in addition to what Prachy said, there are various categories of vocalisation patterns which have been identified for dugongs. We unfortunately do not have any dugong vocalisation study happening in India by WII or any other researchers. But in Japan, people have studied dugong vocalisation patterns. So, they have categorised dugong vocalisation patterns…they also bark. So, it is a different frequency range for each category. And, then they chirp as Prachy has mentioned. But then, there is the possibility that dugongs will vocalise very rarely; and only when it is fully needed. They are not like dolphins who echolocate and communicate.

17:28

So there have been studies where the sample size of what researchers have put forward to study communication patterns has been immense but compared to the efforts that have gone into it, there have been very few recordings of dugong communications. So, that is also one point to be understood: that not always do dugongs communicate as dolphins do or other marine mammals do.

37:53

Lalitha Krishnan: Sounds like such a very self-sufficient mammal and very smart too. What is the role of WII in Dugong conservation in India? What are the government initiatives in place right now for protecting it? And what is the way forward? Also, I always ask three questions at a time.

38:18

Chinmaya Ghanekar: Yes, because they are very much connected to each other. Wildlife Institute of India is part of the government. Though it is autonomous it works very, very closely with the government…different, different departments; not only the forest department. As Swapnali mentioned we also work with the Indian navy, coast guard, all of these defence bodies. 

The Wildlife Institute of India initiated the CAMPA dugong recovery programme in 2016. From that time, Swapnali is the most eligible person to comment as she is one of the first researchers from WII who has started work on dugongs. Before that, in 2013, Dr ShivKumar and one more researcher called Aditi Nayar. They both had a research programme regarding dugongs in Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Andamans and Nicobar; where they have seen the perspective of people about dugongs typically, the local communities who interact with the sea on a daily basis. From that they had come up with something called the Critical Dugong Habitats where dugong sightings or populations are more. And also, human pressure is a lot in the area. So, both those things combined are called Critical Dugong Habitats.

39:45 

And based on that we started our work in the CAMPA Dugong Recovery Programme. But as I mentioned earlier, we started with four objectives. One is dugong research, the other is seagrass and associated fauna research; one is outreach and the other is capacity building. So, WII has been actively working on all four of the objectives.

40:17

Research we have touched upon what kind of research we do. But in outreach programmes, there is this highlighted programme called the Dugong Scholarship programme which is a very novel initiative as it targets the fishermen-kids. So, we go from school to school, identify fishermen-kids and we give scholarships to them which is Rs 500/- per month and these scholarships are  given at such a time-in 9th or 11th grade-when they might not have money to go for further education.  At least they will have this one 10th pass certificate or 12th pass certificate which is at least the basic level of education one would expect from someone. So, the scholarship is given at that time.

41:09

And through them, as Swapnali mentioned, the dugong volunteer network or volunteer programme network. Their scholarship student-parents being fisherfolk, they also provide us information. So, we give them the scholarship and we get information. It’s a barter and it’s a beautiful barter because we get to know so many things which we might not be knowing about dugongs through research papers. Because, the local experience is somebody’s father who has been fishing probably for the last 20 years. He will have the experience which we might not expect. Something like, the dugong-friendship story we told you about. This Dugong Scholarship programme has immensely grown in all the three main states. We now have about 500 students who are part of that programme. And we will continue it for the next few years or so. 

42:05

In terms of capacity building specifically–the word capacity building itself says we need to strengthen the stakeholder’s capacity. So, we give them scuba diving training programmes or drone training programmes to monitor and understand more about their habitats. Because, in the end, maybe we will be there, or somebody else will come, but the forest department and other stakeholders…they’re going to stay forever. So, they are the people who should actually see this diversity and have long term monitoring, and WII is kind of hand holding them all the time. And it’s not true only for dugong projects, iit’s for all the outreach and research combined projects WII has, hand holding is a huge, huge part which we play all the time.

42:57

We have also held Marine mammals stranding workshops in Tamil Nadu to state veterinarians and range forest officers. In that, what happens is –you always see videos on facebook or other social media or the news that a whale is stranded or a dolphin or turtles are stranded/dead or something similar. It is a pretty unique situation because we don’t know what to do. If it is a live animal, we may want to rescue it but how, we do not know. Or if it is a dead animal, should we bury it? What samples should be collected? What information can we get out of it? Since marine mammals are very distinct, as researchers or forest officials also, we cannot interact with them on a daily basis. It is only part of the job we do. We have so many other things. So, if a dugong is stranded, we can actually understand the size of it, why it has died or is there any other associated information viz. the gut content I was talking about.

44:07

To get this kind of response, they should be trained people and there should be veterinarians to understand what the reason of death is. Are there any diseases? Are there any infections? All those kinds of questions, veterinarians can answer. So, giving them training on what to do, how to do was a huge, huge part of that workshop.

44:29

We also came up with a book on how to respond to these events. And, hopefully that workshop is going to be repeated with other sets of people so more people can be aware of what to do. WII always provides these kinds of workshops to strengthen the data collection and in the end it all strengthens our understanding of dugong and seagrass populations, of course other marine life populations.

And, the government has been very proactive in dugong conservation. Recently, and this is a huge success story for the government, a new Dugong Conservation Reserve has been declared in north Palk Bay which is around a 50 kms stretch and 10 kms of shore, so approx. a 500 sq kms. area which is a specifically designated area. And, this is the first conservation reserve for dugongs in the country. So, we were notified in 2022. Now they are coming up with a management plan for local people. How to give training to say, stakeholders like tourists. They are planning a dugong conservation centre, an interpretation centre where people can learn more about dugongs. Maybe learn snorkelling, see the fish, seagrasses, and all of it. So, this is a government initiative which they are doing really, really proactively.

46:13

Lalitha Krishnan. Well, good to know. There’s so much work you’ll are doing, individually, as an organisation and with the government, That’s great. OK. The next question. Prachy, I am going to start with you. Could you share a word that will help us increase our understanding/vocabulary of dugongs? Maybe a concept or a word. Something that is significant to you.

46:42

Prachy Hatkar: It (Dugongs) is a part of our marine life and needs to be preserved. The fact is I didn’t know about dugongs before joining the project. I literally saw an advertisement and I did not know such an animal existed, that is a vegetarian mammal. The manatees are already there but they are basically living in freshwater. This one (dugong) is one which is still surviving after so many years and that is so incredible. That’s my thought that we should be saving this marine animal which will go extinct if we don’t make the effort.

47:40

Swapnali Gole:  If I must send this message across in one word, I would say, people should remember the word ‘umbrella’. When it rains and you open the umbrella, whoever is standing under the umbrella gets saved from the rain.  That is exactly, that is exactly what dugongs are for seagrass meadows. It is also called an umbrella species. So, if you save dugongs, you save seagrasses. Chinmaya said she was working on fishes. It saves fish. Me and Prachy are working on associated invertebrates of seagrass habitats for our PhDs. They also get saved. Every single individual which is associated with seagrasses, including dugongs will be saved if you save dugongs. An umbrella. 

48:22

Lalitha Krishnan: Fantastic. And, also eventually, the humans around those habitats. 

48:49

Swapnali Gole: Exactly. And also, the economy. Sorry, I missed out on that. So, the people who are dependent on seagrasses will be saved.

48:42

Chinmaya Ghanekar: I would say, ‘family.’ Not only because as researchers we have developed this emotional connection with the animal over the years but it’s the family structure they have. It is mostly a maternal family. And, the bond between the mother and the calf is so beautiful, so special that people may imagine having the bond with their own mother. It is as special as that.

We must also recognise that these animals will have their life and we are kind of interfering with that so maybe we need to hold back a little and see what we are doing to the families.

-Chinmaya Ghanekar

49:34

Lalitha Krishnan: Very good. Thank you all.

49:45

Prachy Hatkar: I wanted to say a few things. We celebrate World Dugong Day on 20th May every year. We have a huge month of celebration; we carry out activities in the field. So, please stay tuned on our social media, website where we keep updating our activities. There was this school teacher from the Andamans, Chanchal Singha Roy who wrote a book called “Dugong My Friend’. We have translated that in regional languages and we do circulate these in schools. So that copy is also available on the website if somebody wants to check.

50:18

Lalitha Krishnan: Hey guys, that was fantastic. You’ll rock, really! Three amazing women. There is so much you’ll are doing. I am genuinely grateful for you’ll coming on for this interview and speaking your hearts and minds and sharing everything you know. I learnt so much, I really feel like going out there and checking these places out….

50:47

Chinmaya Ghanekar: You’re always welcome. Please come.

Audio: Birdsong

Birdsong by hillside resident, the collared owlet.

Dugong Photo Credit: Darius Quadros. Researchers photos courtesy Swapnali, Chinmaya and Prachi. Podcast cover/label design by Lalitha Krishnan.

Disclaimer: Views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the podcast and show notes belong solely to the guest/guests featured in the episode, and not necessarily to the host of this podcast/blog or the guest’s employer, organization, committee or other group or individual

Tigers of The Tide, Breathing Roots et al. The Sundarbans with Dr Radhika Bhargava.

~ Lalitha Krishnan ~ 2 Comments

Heart of Conservation Podcast Ep#31 Show Notes (Edited)

Introduction:

Hi, I am Lalitha Krishnan and you’re listening to Ep# 31 of Heart of Conservation. I bring you stories from the wild that keep us all connected to our natural world. You can listen to Heart of Conservation on several platforms and also read the transcript right here on my blog Earthy Matters.

Today’s episode is about the Sundarbans. I recently made a trip there and I have to tell I am so spell bound by the immensity and biodiversity of the world’s largest delta which we share with Bangladesh. To be honest, I didn’t know about these 2 facts earlier.  Almost everything I saw was unique somehow, something I had never seen before. I knew I had to find an expert to learn more about the Sundarbans ecosystem. As luck would have it, I came across a social media account @onesundarban which belongs to Dr Radhika Bhargava, my guest here on episode # 31.

In her own words, Dr Radhika wears multiple hats as a coastal geographer, geospatial analyst, and a National Geographic Explorer. She is a Research Fellow at the NUS Centre for Nature-based Climate Solutions working with wetland conservation in Asia. She recently completed her PhD at the National University of Singapore. We will discuss her research some more but for now, Radhika, welcome and congratulations on your PhD. I feel so privileged to have you share your knowledge and experiences with us.

Radhika Bhargava: Hi Lalitha, thank you so much for having me on your podcast. I am so excited and I am so happy that you recently visited the Sundarbans. I am really looking forward to your questions and interacting with you on Sundarbans. 

Lalitha Krishnan: Lovely. So, let us start. Radhika, what made you, first, focus on the mangroves for your research and why must we be watching the mangroves to check on the health of our planet? 

Radhika Bhargava: I started working on mangroves during my Masters actually. I was part of a project where they were looking for someone to do coding or use coding /computer languages to identify mangroves of South East Asia. So, you use satellite images and you have to interpret where the mangroves are. There were many other forest classes that I was interested in studying but somebody had taken up those classes or somebody had taken up those forest areas to study using satellite imagery. They were only left with mangroves and then, I joined the lab. Nobody was willing to take up this project because there was a lot of computer coding required. And, coming from ecology, biology or management backgrounds, we were not trained in it. I saw this gap and even I didn’t know any computer programming at that time. But then, looking at this desperate need that nobody is doing, I said, “Sure, why not? I will give it a try.” I started learning coding from scratch and then my focus was mangroves. So, that is how I learnt a lot about mangroves. I became so curious that through the two years of my Masters which was at University of San Francisco, the focus was Environmental Management. I ended up with all my class projects or side projects related to mangroves. That’s how I came across the Sundarbans.

3:56

You asked me, “why must we be watching the mangroves to check on the health of our planet?” There are many reasons. Especially that mangroves are coastal protectors. They protect the sea from storms and cyclones. Their roots help in purifying water but specially they store or remove carbon dioxide which causes global warming. They store it within themselves and keep it there for millions and millions of years. They have such characteristics that can tell about the health of the planet and actually help in improving the health.

4:30

Lalitha Krishnan:  That’s quite amazing. I love the part about you learning coding from scratch. Look where it has taken you.  Radhika, I’m curious about your social media handle. Why its called ‘One Sundarban? There must be something to it. There must be a good reason why you have called it so?

4:56

Radhika Bhargava: So glad you asked me this question because initially, people thought that maybe I did not get the handle “Sundarbans’ and that it why I went with ‘One Sundarbans’. Also, I think, I have had that account for maybe two years. I only joined social media because I felt the urge to share about the Sundarbans. When I realised that a storm can come, a cyclone can come in that area and nobody would even know that somethings happening…  So, I felt that I am at a place that I can share so I should take that initiative. So, I only joined social media to share about Sundarbans.

And why ‘One Sundarban’?

Sundarbans is across India and Bangladesh. It is one ecosystem. As a researcher, it really annoyed me initially when I would come across studies or management plans or government records that focused on just one side-either India or Bangladesh. So, for me, ‘One Sundarban’ is one ecosystem so hence ‘One Sundarban’ but after I pondered about it a bit more, about the terminology, I realised that “sundar” is in Hindi, In Bangla and in many local Indian languages, “sundar” is beautiful and “ban” or “van” is forest. So, it is just one beautiful forest. If I branch out of onesundarban, this name still holds.

-Radhika Bhargava

6:37

Lalitha Krishnan: Right. That is a beautiful thought and it makes so much sense because you cannot save it in part. It is half the story then. Radhika, how much ground did you cover during your research and what techniques did you employ to cover this vast area?

6:59

Radhika Bhargava: Right. So, I worked across India and Bangladesh. So, Sundarbans, for those who are not familiar, is 10,000 sq. kilometres of just mangrove forests. It is made up of many small islands-I do not even know the exact count-but, adding both India and Bangladesh, it is going to be more than 200 islands. My initial idea was to capture the ecosystem. Since I use geo-spatial analysis, which means using satellite maps and satellite data to understand what is happening on the ground, I was able to understand that from one aspect, right? Since satellite images can help you cover that vast area but when I went into the field, I still intended to go from the easternmost to the westernmost and northernmost to the southernmost island. For that, I first recorded shorelines from on top of a boat. I installed a Go Pro camera on a boat and then we would go parallel across shorelines and then I would be doing a commentary on those videos. Later on, I converted those videos into multiple images, and so from the observations in those images and my commentary, I collected some data.

8:25

So, we covered around 240 kilometres just of observation. The travelling kilometres were much more. And then, I went to around 16 villages to conduct interviews with the communities to understand their part of the story of the work I was doing.

8:53

Lalitha Krishnan: That is very extensive. You must have learnt a lot. That is quite amazing Radhika.

 9:01

Radhika Bhargava: Thank you so much. If not for COVID, I had another few methods I wanted to try out too which would have made me go into the forest to collect some  forest bio-physical  measurements  within the forests but because of COVID, I had a shorter amount of time and PhD scholarship and all restricted me. So, there was still more that I wanted to do.

9:24

Lalitha Krishnan: But you must have amassed quite a lot of information.

9:29

Radhika Bhargava: It took a long time to process it. I think I would still go back to that data set although I have written my thesis on it, there is still so much more to get from it. I hope I get a chance to do that in the future.

9:41

Lalitha Krishnan: I am sure (you will). These things never go to waste – what you’ve observed, what you’ve learnt and what you have surveyed. You know, even though I have lived by the sea, I never bothered to familiarize myself with mangroves. It was in the Sundarbans, that too on a boat that I witnessed up close, the diversity of mangroves species.  They are quite different from each other apart from the fact that they seem to be thriving in this cocktail of river and sea. Could you talk about some of these mangroves species and how unique they are? The snake roots, breathing roots for e.g. or the way some species propagate themselves with seed balls that float till they find a suitable location? It is all so fascinating.

10: 34

Radhika Bhargava: In just a few lines you actually explained how one comes across and becomes fixated with mangroves. Initially you lived by the sea, I come from a land-locked place. So, I had not even heard the word ‘mangroves’. So even today when I tell people I am doing research on mangroves, they assume I am researching mangoes. The word is so unfamiliar.

Lalitha Krishnan: There’s somebody worse than me that means.

11:13

Radhika Bhargava: I was worse than you. Despite visiting coastal areas with my parents, I never processed why there are trees on the beach or why there are trees on the water. Especially in Bombay. Goa, Gujarat side of India. So, I also learnt about it through books and through reading research papers until I went to the Caribbeans to do some project on coral reefs. So, we had a small project where we were snorkelling and looking at fish nurseries around mangrove roots. So, I thought that was cool. But I did not realise that there’s this amazing ecosystem like Sundarbans  or Bhitarkanika in Odisha, where in sediment-rich mangroves you can’t even see what’s happening under water. So, I also came to mangroves in a similar way; I said “what are these crazy roots?” A lot of people whom I have talked to say mangroves for them are like some sci-fi movie, when they come to the Sundarbans.

12:14

It is mainly because of the roots like you said. Mangroves have this crazy kind of roots, especially to adapt to the extreme environment they grow in. By extreme environment, I mean they grow at the interface of land and water. So, they are often flooded with salt water although they receive some fresh water from rivers as well. They get flooded twice a day during high tide. They are exposed to extreme waves. When I am explaining this, I like people to imagine that these mangroves are humans. Or to become mangroves themselves. So, if you’re standing at such a place or if you are to stay there for so long, you would develop some kind of adaptation that would help you first, stand there steadily. That the hold of the roots… the snake roots or the prop roots as it is called. that helps them stay aground. There are four to five kinds of mangroves roots. Basically, the first role they play is help them stay in that silty, flooded land. The second thing specially in the Sundarbans or Bhitarkanika, where there is a lot of sediment that these mangroves are standing on, the second thing they need to do is to be able to breathe. But the soil and the water mix are so poor in oxygen content that they have to grow their roots up or their roots have to come from their branches and then go into the ground, unlike other plants which grow roots hidden in the ground. So the roots that are propping up from the ground-there’s a type of root called pencil roots- which look like if you’ve stuck pencils in the soil, they look like that. Or buttress roots… All of these roots apart from giving them stability, they also help them get oxygen from the air. So, many plants get oxygen from the atmosphere directly and through their leaves and through their stems but mangrove roots also get oxygen content from the air to support breathing for the plants. So, these are some adaptations that mangroves must bring in to stand tall in that extreme environment.

Source: Nature Picture Library

You also asked about propogation of species. How mangroves grow mangrove babies, right? So, if you are a mangrove and you’ve figured out how you are going to stand and how to breathe in this fragile, dynamic ecosystem then the next thing is to figure out how are we going to reproduce? Unlike many trees which produce seeds–those seeds get propagated by wind or by animals or by water–some of the mangrove trees do produce fruits. And then within these fruits, there are seeds which finally find a ground and grow. But, it’s also common in certain kinds of mangrove species to not produce seeds but produce a mangrove propagule. That propagule is just a mangrove baby that’s growing on top of its mom. You might have come across these green sticks hanging from the tree, they are mangrove propagules. They hang from the tree and until they are ready to go- the weather conditions, the time of year, the tidal conditions etc are good-the mom drops them in the water. Now they are floating in the water but these are not seeds ready to be germinated. These are germinated plants which function like any other plant and it keeps floating until it finds the right elevation, the right tidal conditions, the right slope, and the right area to settle in. So, that stick or propagule has that much sense to find the right place for its survival.  It floats horizontally. Once it finds the right place, it becomes vertical, the centre of mass changes and it automatically goes into the soil. Which is just mind-blowing for me. In a way, they are like mammals. In mammals…humans, babies grown within the mum until they are ready to come out. I find equal similarities.

17:19

Lalitha Krishnan: It sounds like they have an intelligence of their own. There is so much we do not know.

17: 25

Radhika Bhargava: There are things people who study these processes are still finding out. Things we know have been published but there is so much more, so much unknown when it comes to mangroves.

17:41

Lalitha Krishnan: Thank you so much for explaining that. Talking of species, the animals that exist in the Sundarbans also seem to have adapted to this unique environment. We saw the rare Mangrove pitta, the Fishing cat we didn’t see but I know it’s there and the swimming Bengal tiger, which is the only tiger that lives in a mangrove system. How cool is that? What makes them so different or what can you tell us about them?

18:19

Radhika Bhargava: If we are talking about Sundarbans, how can not (talk) about the tiger? The Royal Bengal tiger is found in many places in India or in the South Asian subcontinent. However, the subspecies of the Royal Bengal tiger—I’m not sure if sub-species is the correct word—but the evolution of the Royal Bengal tiger that found in the Sundarbans is quite different from the other Royal Bengal tigers that are found, in say, Central India, where I come from.

18:59

The main difference in their adaptation to living in the Sundarban Delta. In those mangroves, in that flooded ecosystem. Just like I was explaining earlier how mangroves adapted to this soil, sediment, flooding conditions, the tigers of the Sundarbans also have to.

19:22

If you are a tiger, you would need sweet water or fresh water, as they say, to survive. But the tigers of the Sundarbans are living in a delta filled with salt water. Their houses or their land or their habitat, gets flooded twice a day which tigers of Central India do not experience.

They go to a fresh water pond within their forest to get water but then they can go back to their caves to chill. But there are no such structures that are dry all year around for the tigers of the Sundarbans. And if they want to go from one place to another, there are huge rivers and streams in between which they have to traverse. So, tigers and other kinds of cats can swim naturally but the tigers of the Sundarbans use swimming as their means of transportation. When their islands get completely flooded because of high tide they climb on to a tree and stay on the tree twice a day during high tide conditions. Hunting also, for  for these animals is very different. Now you don’t have a grassland to run and catch deer but you have to very strategically traverse the silty, quick-sand type or quick-mud type of terrain where you cannot run a lot because of the roots–that I just explained about earlier—would stop you from running far distances.

 21;10

So, it so amazing how the Royal Bengal tigers of the Sundarbans have adapted to live in these conditions. However, these extreme conditions- lack of habitat these days, lack of availability of sweet-water ponds and extreme environmental and anthropogenic pressures are affecting these tigers in a way that now, they are more exposed to the local villages. A lot of human and tiger negative interactions have started to take place. There are a lot of theories of why some of these tigers are also maneaters. These theories that make sense to me are related to the extreme environment and increasing environmental and anthropogenic pressures that are making them encounter humans in a negative aspect.

22:19

Lalitha Krishnan: Right. I imagine tigers or for that matter any other animal there having to climb a tree twice a day to escape drowning if they cannot swim. I never would have even thought that far.  Thank you for explaining that.  It is quite a hard life even for a tiger. I was thinking of the deer…

22:40

Radhika Bhargava: Did you see any tiger?

22:41

Lalitha Krishnan: No, we did not see any tiger and we did not expect toeither. They told us not to expect to see a tiger. But we did see paw prints. What is fascinating is that—I have seen scratch marks of tigers on trees but here, we actually saw scratch marks on the mud. We had such an excellent forest guide. Mud looks like mud; it was all wet but he manged to point that out to us. It was quite distinct. That was fascinating.

23:14

Coming back to the Sundarbans and the ravages of nature, Cyclone Bulbul in 2019, Cyclone Amphan in 2020, Cyclone Yaas and Jawad in 2021 have all struck and affected these low-lying islands.  What makes them so defenceless? What were the losses incurred with every cyclone-hit?

23:50

Radhika Bhargava: The “defenceless” word here is something I should talk about. It’s Yes and No. Mangroves are known to protect inland areas from the impacts of storms and cyclones. So, in a way they are not defenceless. They have those defences. And, even the all the cyclones that you named just now; Kolkata was the least impacted if we are speaking from India’s perspective or Khulna or Dacca if we are speaking from Bangladesh’s perspective. They were impacted but the impact was so small compared to what it could have been if the Sundarbans was not there. So, Sundarbans is still holding ground, defending inland areas.

However, because of ongoing anthropogenic pressures; to name a few: the shipping channel that has been formed within the Sundarbans which is a protected area. It should not be converted into a water highway.

Or a coal plant coming into Sundarbans or other aspects, the extreme erosion of land; the loss of land which was the focus of my research, causing mangroves to degrade and get lost is causing them to reduce the amount of defence they could have provided.

25:28

When you are talking of defence I would also talk about the people. The people of the Sundarbans, I feel are resilient especially in terms of how they manage when these reoccurring cyclones, with the frequency of three to four times a year, impact them. However, with reduced options of livelihood, with reduced preparedness because they are managing a lot of land, and cyclones, lack of livelihoods, lack of protection altogether, their resiliency is also getting reduced.

So, although the people are not defenceless to start with, the conditions are making them such. So, if you hear, I just made a parallel between the resiliency of the mangroves and the resiliency of the people; yet both their resiliencies are getting reduced or impacted. Which on a side note is the conclusion of PhD thesis.

26:38

Lalitha Krishnan: Good. So, during my visit to the Sundarbans, I noticed that the embankment to my resort was half washed away. I was told it was the cyclone which is a recurring factor there. Is there more to it?

26:51

Radhika Bhargava: Great observation Lalitha. I am so glad that you didn’t buy into just the story that a cyclone comes and destroys the structure. So, to give a bit more context to our audience, the soil in the Sundarbans , the sub-sediment in the Sundarbans is silty;  it’s clayish. So, if you want to understand this, clay that a potter uses to mold clay into, it is that kind of clay, on which if you put a step, just as a 55kg human, the soil is going to get compressed and you’re going to slip away.

Imagine putting concrete slab on this silty and soft soil? It’s like creating a hard line in a very dynamic system. That concrete is going to eventually collapse. I’ll explain very quickly how. So, there’s a concrete slab but underneath, is a soft silty soil. And underneath, there are waves that are coming in and out throughout the day, So the waves are going to take some of that soil with them. Or that soil which may be a bit harder during low tide is going to get mixed with water and become soft. So, the concrete slab on top is eventually and slowly and slowly going to collapse. And, then, it’s going to be like the embankment that you saw during your visit.

So, when a cyclone comes, all of this just gets exaggerated. But these processes are happening on a daily basis, causing these embankments to fall and collapse. Yet, when these embankments fall, another embankment of such poor design is built maybe 200 mts. away from the current shoreline. This keeps on repeating to the point where the place you stayed, you saw the 5th embankment collapse in the past 40 years or so. This is something I also worked on during my PhD to understand why this poorly designed embankments are still around and how are they impacting the local people. So, what I explained earlier about the reduced preparedness or resiliency of the people, that lack of preparedness, that lack of having other options make them rely on these quick yet poor solutions. So, the demand also increases for these. One thing collapses, yet the second time, they want the same thing to be built so that they can get some short-term benefits of prevention of flood or some people start living in tents- who have also lost houses because of all of this, start living around the embankment. So, it becomes like a vicious cycle of land loss, poorly designed embankments come in, poorly designed embankments cause more land loss yet more of these embankments come in and the cycle continues.

30:00

Lalitha Krishnan: Again, I never thought of it. I am learning so much from you Radhika.  Finally, my last question for you. Could you share a word that was perhaps part of your research or significant to you in some way? Something new for all of us.

30:16

Radhika Bhargava: So, the word I want to use, building off of what I just explained about embankments, is a word called ‘maladaptation’. It is very relevant because in the last IPCC report, it was used to highlight a pressing issue in our fight against climate change. I will explain it in pieces. Adaptation means any form of project, idea or implementation that comes in to reduce impact or anything. But in climate change context, climate change adaptation is an adaptation such as building a sea wall, or other things that help you reduce the impact of climate change. So one impact could be flooding, sea-levels rising and so on. Maladaptation to climate change means when that adaptation which is built to reduce the impact of climate change fails but not only does it fail but it causes other negative impacts to the local community or the global community.

31:31

So, when an adaptation fails and causes more negative impact it turns into a maladaptation. This is a word that I realise through the work I have done in the Sundarbans, or through my research in the Sundarbans, and I am hoping that I can contribute more to the growing literature of maladaptation.

31:56

Lalitha Krishnan: You have increased our vocabulary. Thank you so much Radhika, we have covered a lot and learnt a lot from you. It’s been a real pleasure talking to you.

Radhika Bhargava: Thank you so much Lalitha. I love talking about the Sundarbans and sharing about it from a place where I did not know and then I had the privilege to go and learn about it. So, I feel that it’s my responsibility in a way to share about it in any medium and form I can. So, thank you so much for giving me this platform to talk more about Sundarbans and the issues people and the forests are facing over there.

32:35

Lalitha Krishnan: Thank you Radhika, I feel the same way. I feel there’s so much we don’t know and I want to share. I am luck I found you.

32:47

Radhika Bhargava: One quick thing to add for our listeners. So, you learnt a lot about Sundarbans, and mangroves. So, one takeaway you can do for me and Lalitha would be if you can go and tell more people in your social circles about how cool and awesome mangroves are and how amazing Sundarbans is. Thank you.

Lalitha Krishnan: I hope you enjoyed listening to episode #31 and Dr Radhika as much as I did. If you know somebody who is doing incredible work and his/her story needs to be shared do write to me at earthymatters013@gmail.com Watch out for my next episode. Till then, take care. Bye.

Birdsong by hillside resident, the collared owlet.

Cover photo: courtesy Dr Radhika Bhargava. Podcast cover artwork by Lalitha Krishnan

Disclaimer: Views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the podcast and show notes belong solely to the guest featured in the episode, and not necessarily to the host of this podcast/blog or the guest’s employer, organization, committee or other group or individual.

Sudarshan Shaw:Breaking Definitions of Art & Nature.

~ Lalitha Krishnan ~ Leave a comment

Ep#30 Season 4 Heart of Conservation Transcript (Edited)

Read or Listen. All paintings-photos courtesy Sudarshan Shaw.

Sudarshan Shaw artwork on Cover art

0:05

Lalitha Krishnan:  I’m Lalitha Krishnan and you’re listening to episode #30, season 4 of Heart of Conservation. I bring you stories from the wild that keep us all connected to the natural world.

For someone who has no sense of direction and couldn’t probably read a map to save her life, I have to say I practically drooled over one visually delightful map that I came across on Instagram.  It conveyed a spectacular visually-rich story of a place, its people and art and biodiversity on a single sheet.  This is one, I would easily put up on my wall permanently. I will be putting them up on my blog, Earthy Matters very soon, so do have a look.

My guest today is not a cartographer by profession but a young, extremely talented visual artist from NIFT, whose keen sense of perception and belonging, passion for depicting, and preserving local art, and love for natural history is tangible in his stunning artworks which go way beyond creating maps. I am speaking to one of India’s rising young, inspiring artists and authors, Sudarshan Shaw. Welcome to Heart of Conservation Sudarshan. Thank you for joining me.

1:19

Sudarshan Shaw:  Thank you so much for having me on Heart of Conservation Lalitha. It’s an absolute honour to be here.

Lalitha Krishnan:  My pleasure. Sudarshan why don’t we start by you telling us a little bit about yourself and what influences your work?

Sudarshan Shaw:  I was born and brought up in the culturally rich cities of Bhubaneshwar and Kolkata. And I grew up feeding on art forms and colours of all types. And, I have always been a history buff so… all of which came together after I discovered my calling towards wildlife while I pursuing my final year of college. That’s when I visited Ranthambore National Park which was my first ever formal introduction to the wild world. It was also for my graduation project and while the forest look all great and beautiful, I always felt that connection was missing; some sort of connection. Thus, I started to explore more and more regions to understand myself and the situation better and have a better understanding of the wider world.

2:25

Lalitha Krishnan:   Nice. Let’s talk briefly about all the maps you created. You created more than one for Orissa, biodiversity maps for Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan and West Bengal, a special Elephant corridor one for Kerala and other clients like the one for the Shiv Nadar University etc.  The first one which is the wildlife map of Orissa- your home state was self-funded. Am I right? What I love about that map is how you incorporated the local tribes and hotspots in the traditional pattachitra style of Orissa. It almost feels like a tribute. So, what made you create this one?

3:13

Sudarshan Shaw: Yes, it is a tribute indeed. It’s a tribute to the land, the wild and the cultural heritage of my state. It’s also a tribute to the strong relationship among them that enhances their meaning of each other. I always felt a huge disjoint in the natural and cultural heritage of India and the kind of graphic language the young communicators use in the country. I feel it is heavily influenced by the west and does not have that connection with the native land and hence it’s not acceptable to the masses in a certain way. So, the vibrance and diversity that folk arts have in store have disappeared from the contemporary visual language that we used to in recent time used to communicate our stories. This was my humble attempt to bring it back with all dignity and pride. Another reason would be Odisha itself. Odisha has an abundance of wildlife. We almost know all the stories regarding Odisha but it never found a place, I mean materially in our surroundings.

What I saw is the pattachitra paintings which are quite prevalent in Odisha -which is the folk-art form in Odisha – and it has a place in our homes over here. There are depictions of gods and goddesses and many other folklores on the walls. I thought this could give me an important platform if I drew it in that style and I depicted wildlife in that style. Eventually, it worked out well and the wildlife map found a place in people’s homes. So, they put it up where they used to put pattachitra paintings.

5:00

Lalitha Krishnan:  That’s such an honour. That’s fantastic. What is your creative process? How do you create a map-I don’t mean technically- but I want to know how you think you know, and how long it takes, who commissions these maps. How does it work?

5:23

Sudarshan Shaw: The process usually starts with intense research, which is both online and in the field. It’s quite impossible to do justice to ….(lost in translation)  with short timelines or deadlines. So, I try my best to gather as much as I can; so more of essence than information. I must say, the internet has negligent information on this so most of the interaction and interpretations have travelled orally with tradition or in folk art forms. So, the idea is to go through and explore as many of these. The next step is where Is it down to innovate a graphic style which is more often inspired but local art and traditions. Then, I design a layout and then spend about one to two months to complete/render it depending on the amount of details. Most of these maps have been funded by the forest departments of various states or other wildlife NGOs if not other private institutions.

Lalitha Krishnan:   Great. Being from Odisha, does practising the traditional art of Odisha come naturally to you? Is it something you learnt as a child or is it something that you learnt in art school?

6:45

Sudarshan Shaw: Naturally it was in my subconscious because we’d always be looking at these art forms on stone sculptures, wall paintings of different buildings in Odisha and also in homes, as I said earlier. But, consciously I started practising and grasping it after I visited Ranthambore wherein I first had that interaction with Phad paintings of Rajasthan. There are these common folk paintings of Rajasthan, wherein they had drawn stories from the wild in their artworks. For example, in the story of ‘Machhli’ the Tiger, wherein they had depicted the tiger in a very beautiful style in stories from its birth to its death and everything. This was the main reason why I started grasping art forms more and this is how I implemented it. I get a story from one place and try to incorporate the folk-art of that place into it (the art).

Lalitha Krishnan: O.K. That’s very sensitive and thoughtful of you to do that. You have depicted wildlife, for example, the striped hyena, otters etc that are also listed as endangered or vulnerable by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Tell us something about these. I love the little camera trap you have put along with the ‘Black tiger’, the pseudo-melanistic black tiger painting of yours. I don’t know if the Fishing cat’ (see podcast cover) is part of this series but that too just caught my eye.


8:27
Sudarshan Shaw: The Fishing cat was the first painting that I did for this series but that was also a self-funded one. The main idea always starts with a self-funded one and the Fishing cat was one of those. The idea behind drawing the Fishing cat was–which is also a mud painting by the way—during that time, I heard a lot about fishing cats. You know they are found on the outskirts of my hometown. It was very interesting to know that these kinds of creatures live nearby. So, I started looking at images of fishing cats in Odisha and West Bengal and other regions of India. I found images of fishing cats which are mostly nocturnal. The images were quite similar. Once I got a glimpse of a fishing cat drawn in the Kalighat form of painting in Bengal, and I saw a very distinct flavour to it. That cat was depicted holding a fish, it had a stance of its own and it almost looked like that fishing cat is Bengal and it was very different from that of Odisha or any other region of the world. So, a depiction of that species in that art form you know helped in sensitising the people of that particular region regarding that species. That was my whole idea. To incorporate that style and show the world that all these creatures have their distinct characters from the places that they belong to. That was my main idea behind that. The other artworks: the Smooth-coated (otters), the (striped) hyena, you know, they tagged along, people understood my reasoning behind the Fishing cat and they wanted similar species to be shown in their own characters so that they would help in spreading awareness and in sensitising people about the species.


10:30
Lalitha Krishnan: It’s true when you say, (species) have their own stance, their own character of the place. That’s an interesting take. You know, tigers have been part of the Indian psyche forever and they feature a lot in your paintings. I saw one of The 9 Tigers depicted in different folk styles which tells us so much in one go.
I also want to talk about the ‘Tiger Boundary’ piece which is nothing short of mesmerising.
I like that you said somewhere that the boundary in the frame instead of blocking in gives you the artist and the subject, in this case, the tiger, free reign. Did I get that right? What do you mean by that? And what draws to the tiger?

11:17

Sudarshan Shaw: Absolutely. Apart from being as popular as ‘T’ for Tiger, and one of the epic predators of the forest systems in India, I feel tigers are truly beautiful beings in all senses. They are as gentle as they are fierce, the air of pride and mystery around the creature makes them much larger than their actual size -which is both inside the forest and outside. So, what draws me and the whole forest and nation to the tiger are that it’s like another mystery. I never met a tiger in the wild. But fortunately, I met so many in folk art and in my imagination and they are all different from each other.
So, yes, as an artist I always felt conflicted about having boundaries around my artworks. On the face, the borders look like confinements, a kind of limitation but they are very common, if you observe, in all the folk-art forms of India. So, one fine day, during an interaction with a pattachitra folk artist, he was explaining to me why they drew borders on the canvas before they started the painting inside. That was the instance when I thought that is how tigers also mark the territories for themselves in the forest and both the artist and tiger would then paint their minds and live inside it. I could then understand how boundaries set by self, bring a sense of safety, depth of connection and commitment to our responsibility. All of which actually sets us free.


12:56
Lalitha Krishnan: Wow. That’s all I can say. You authored your first children’s book called “When a Forest Wakes up”. Congratulations. The name itself evokes a visual flood but the book is also very magical. Your interpretation of nature… where trees are antlers sending messages and elephants block out the sun and birds fly to flowers in gratitude for the colours and where hills are sleeping rhinos…it’s so wonderous and I can just imagine the wonder and oneness that any child will love. I believe you said, “The basic idea of the book is ‘breaking definitions”. Yes?

13:41

Sudarshan Shaw: yes, one of the ideas behind the book was to see beyond rigid definitions that we have set for ourselves. To dive into a world of imagination and the endless possibilities that it has for us. So, another idea behind the book was actually inspired by animism. A belief system by the various ancient indigenous communities in India, according to which everything from the stones to the mountains to the trees and rivers are living forces and beings bigger than us or just like us. All of these live in relation to each other.

I remember how we were taught in our school days that nature is full of resources and had multiple uses for us humans. And the distinction between biotic and abiotic, the living and non-living things. We have been told to see a river or soil as a non-living resource it would be very difficult to respect and have a relationship with them. This book is an attempt to change that perception from a very young age.

14:47

If I give you another example, of it, when we ask a child to see towards the sky and the clouds, they would always say the clouds look like different animals or objects and everything. Suddenly, with time, you’d see how the animals and the various objects turn towards being a single cloud. When you ask an adult, what is that they would say, “That’s a cloud. Either it’s going to rain or not going to rain. But when you ask the child, “That is a tiger”. “That’s a leopard…that’s a dinosaur” and whatnot. All those imaginations with time are suppressed and you know, along with the coming of rigid definitions, that ends it for us. So, I wanted to break that stereotype fear out of understanding and definitions.

15:38

Lalitha Krishnan:  You’re freeing my mind as you speak. So, I believe you have travelled to Uttarakhand–that’s where I live mostly–and walking in the forests there impacted you. How was it different and is that where you got your studio name. ‘Kyari’ from?

15:56

Sudarshan Shaw: Yes. Uttarakhand has been like a second home. I have travelled to Uttarakhand quite frequently as much as I could. You know, I was in college in Delhi so Uttarakhand wasn’t so far from there. Living there, you can totally understand how special the land is. It is almost beaming with life and beauty, to say the least, and ‘Kyari’ is a very small village near Ram Nagar in Uttarakhand and my studio name lends its name from it and the meaning of it; you know how kyari is a small nursery kind of thing where in they put up small plants and flowers. Then they grow wild from it. That’s the main philosophy of starting my studio wherein I’d be experimenting with different forms and art styles, and stories and those would be going into the wide world.

16:52

Lalitha Krishnan: A nursery of ideas. Lovely

16:54

Sudarshan Shaw:  A nursery I would say is one of my best teachers of all the ways I see the world and understand the world the studio is a lifelong tribute to that.

17:05   

Lalitha Krishnan:  I’d like to know briefly about the ‘My Pictures of Divinity’ series your visual stories about the turtle and sea, and the vulture and the dead e.g. though steeped in lore and also educating us about the animals’ role in the world and their vulnerability today.

17:26

Sudarshan Shaw:  Yes, I strongly believe that existence has its meaning in relation and not in isolation. So, my picture of divinity is the search for that godliness that lies in the relationship between the humble life forms that we see and the magnificent ecosystems of sustenance that surround them.  So, it is an attempt to override conventional portraits of God that centralised humans while all the legendary powers that they invented were inspired by the ways of the wild. So, it’s a tribute to our true ancestors, the teachers, the deities of the art of thriving and surviving. So, e.g.

I’d say, Uttarakhand and Odisha have been my main source for drawing this series. One story would be the Olive Ridley Turtles of the Odisha coast. If people talk about the species, they talk about the species in isolation but if you actually get to experience that place, you would see how the species is actually a connection between the land and the sea. It’s tying both of them together. That’s the beauty of seeing things in relation and not in isolation. –Sudarshan Shaw

18:40

Lalitha Krishnan: Beautifully put. Coming to my last question, could you share a word, concept or something you believe is important—you’ve mentioned a lot of things—something for all of us to know or imbibe.

18:59

Sudarshan Shaw:  Sure. So, being an artist, I’ll say a few lines on how we understand art and nature. For me, art and nature are two sisters of the same fate. Nature has been an inseparable part of native peoples’ being. Folk art has also been practised routinely by all in different ways and forms. So once, the colonial influences came, they alienated our art as a speciality which was quite pristine, exclusive and polished and very far away from us. They did the same to nature and wilderness which became (lost in translation). Art is the nature of all living beings; we must understand this. And, separating them in our words and worlds may have separated us from our true selves and denied us access to the strongest relations which are nature and art. So, I believe we can turn folk art for the reunion and reassurance for everybody, which is free too, we must draw, sing and dance to ourselves and our surroundings better.

20:14 So true, Sudarshan, thank you so much. You’re going to go a long way and all the best for your journey ahead.  I am so touched by everything you’ve said and everything you do. Thank you

20:29

Sudarshan Shaw: Thank you so much Lalitha.

Lalitha Krishnan: I hope you enjoyed this episode of Heart of Conservation. Do check out Sudarshan’s artworks. You might want to buy, commission it or gift it to somebody else or yourself. The transcript for this show will be out very soon on Earthy Matters (my blog). You can listen to Heart of Conservation on several platforms so check it out and spread the word, guys. Thanks.

Birdsong by hillside resident, the collared owlet.

All photos courtesy Sudarshan Shaw including Fishing Cat. Podcast cover artwork by Lalitha Krishnan

Disclaimer: Views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the podcast and show notes belong solely to the guest featured in the episode, and not necessarily to the host of this podcast/blog or the guest’s employer, organization, committee or other group or individual.

Is Tourism Taking a Toll Despite the Best Travel Practices?

~ Lalitha Krishnan ~ 1 Comment

Episode #29. Read or Listen. Show notes (Edited)

Introduction.

Hi there, I’m Lalitha Krishnan and you’re listening to Season 4, Episode 29 of Heart of Conservation. I bring you stories from the wild that keep us all connected to our natural world.

It’s so easy to book a ticket and fly out to most destinations. But Imagine what it takes to make a place, especially a high-altitude desert in the Himalayas sitting at  11,980 ft viable for tourism. To be able to involve the community, to be constantly successful and get world recognition for it. I’m speaking to Ishita Khanna who manages to do just that. Ishita is a brave and humble hero in my books. One of the pioneers of responsible tourism in Spiti Ishita is better known as the co-founder of Spiti-Ecosphere, a multi-award* winning eco-tourism enterprise located in Kaza,  in the Spiti & Lahaul district of Himachal Pradesh.

Having visited Spiti several times I am constantly drawn back.  But obviously, I’m not the only one who thinks it’s a go-to place. We all know revenge tourism is a thing right? But Is tourism taking a toll despite the best travel practices? That’s what I’m here to find out. Do check out the Spitiecosphere website for their diverse travel experiences.  Now, let’s find out hows it’s done right.

1:25

Ishita welcome and Thank you so much  Ishita for joining me on Heart of Conservation.

Ishita Khanna: It’s lovely to be here. Thank you, Lalitha for calling me

Lalitha Krishnan: Ishita,  you have been in Spiti since2002 and the sea buckthorn of all things which is a superfood berry led you to Spiti the first time over 20 years ago and you’ve been there ever since. Tell us about that and how Ecosphere came to be.

Ishita Khanna: it’s been quite a journey. As you mentioned right now, I came in the year 2000 and I was working with the state government of Himachal Pradesh. At that point in time, I had come to assess one of their projects which is when I discovered this super berry-seabuckthorn. It had hardly been discovered then. There was very little research and work and I was really in awe. China had done lots of work on it and I felt India was losing out and there was so much that could be done as a livelihood source as well as…it’s got immense ecological as well as medical benefits. So that’s what really got me to Spiti and I started working here in 2002. That’s what started my whole journey to Spiti. I never really thought I’d be spending so many years here. But then, once you start living in a place, you start understanding the place, understanding the people, understanding the challenges that are faced there. One thing led to another and I’m still here 20 years hence.

3:05

Lalitha Krishnan: hard to imagine. It’s a long time but such a fruitful time. Ishita what was it like then and what has changed in terms of infrastructure and tourism?

Ishita Khanna: Spiti was a very, very remote valley when I first came here. In terms of road infrastructure, it was bare minimal. There were two access routes. One is via Simla and one is via Manali. The Shimla road was known as the world’s most dangerous route and the Manali to Spiti road is still perhaps the world’s worst road. It was very difficult to get into Spiti. It was easily a two to three-day journey from Delhi or Shimla just to get into Spiti. So as a result, because it was cut off in a remote part of Himachal, very few people knew about the existence of Spiti over 20 years ago. Now, of course, it’s on the tourist map and it’s on the radar of every traveller, every domestic traveller in India. But back then, very few people knew about Spiti when I first started working here. People thought it was a different country I was working in. Back then, there was no internet or hardly any phone connectivity. So yes, infrastructure was very limited so now, of course, 2o years hence a lot has changed. The Shimla road is a lot better so it’s slightly easy to come in and out. Slightly easier. Still takes quite a bit of time. And now, finally, we have internet in Spiti. Just came in 2021 almost 20 years hence. Working without the internet had been quite a challenge. So yes, a lot had changed. The tourism infrastructure has really developed in a large way. When I first came here, there was just one guest house in Kaza. Now there would be over 100 guest houses. And every house would be a homestay you know? So, a lot has changed since then.

5:10

Lalitha Krishnan:   Do you see a difference in the type of tourists coming to Spiti? Especially post-pandemic?

Ishita Khanna: Yes, that’s something that has changed and I think anyone who is associated with tourism and is working in the tourism industry is now a bit baffled with the kind of tourists that are coming in. It has changed a lot, post-pandemic. Immediately after the 2nd wave, we had kind of like, revenge tourism coming in. People were kind of holed up in their houses for a long time so we had a lot of boy gangs coming in on a kind of revenge kind of a thing and of course, not the most culturally sensitive kind of tourists. Before COVID, we had very diverse kinds of tourists coming in. Now that has changed. So, we’re not getting the kind of tourists that we were getting earlier. So yes, we feel a huge change in the kind of traveller that comes in post-pandemic you know? The kind of diverse backpacker, the slow traveller that was there, both domestic and international pre covid has not picked up. It’s the packaged tourists. A foreign tourist is very very limited. They’re still wary of coming into India. It might pick up only in 2023. You know the quality backpackers, the European backpackers that come in, that haven’t picked up as yet. Even the domestic traveller..they’re more the really crunched up packages, fast-moving packages…eight days and six days.. and you cover the whole of Spiti kind of thing. So that’s the kind of traveller that’s coming in and unfortunately, not very culturally sensitive or really wanting to understand the place. It’s more about clicking selfies and posting on Instagram kind of.

7:30

Lalitha Krishnan: I think for international tourists, it’s also visas and the price of flight tickets has just escalated. Visas are not being issued. There is so much uncertainty for them to invest in a holiday where there’s no guarantee to even reach…now because things are just difficult.

Ishita Khanna: Yeah

7:53

Lalitha Krishnan:

What do you think tipped the scales for Ecosphere? What initiative or practice that you adopted made it such a success story?

Ishita Khanna: It’s been a journey and it’s been challenging over the years as well. You know we started as a typical NGO in terms of grants and donations coming in. Somewhere along the line, we realised that it’s not very sustainable. Especially when you’re working in a remote area like Spiti you know, to be dependent on an outside grant coming in? That’s when we started looking at a model of social enterprise. Where we can try and self-generate our income which would then go into projects that were a requirement and need in the area. Because, if you’re dependent on grants and donations coming in, then it’s often hard to find donations for things that are required on the ground. Everyone has certain specific areas that they want to support but that might not be a need or a requirement in Spiti.

So, that’s what led us to look at a social enterprise model which would then, you know, give us slight independence and sustainability. The first project that we worked on was the seabuckthorn and then we started looking at tourism. How could we ensure that the tourism coming into the valley could benefit the area and the local community you know? That it won’t go out and destroy the cultural heritage and the natural environment. So, we started looking at that and that’s when we developed homestays. Now of course the homestays have really picked up across Spiti and they are doing very well. And, they’ve become a direct source of income for the local community.

9:44

Usually, if you look at most tourist destinations, you’ll see guest houses coming up and it’s usually the richer person in the village who can afford that guest house. So you know, it just creates a larger divide between the people that have the money and the people that don’t. While for a homestay, you can just start a homestay, just a spare room is required. Rich or poor, anyone can people coming in and stay and hence, earn a livelihood from people coming and staying. That model really picked up and has spread across Spiti. Like I was mentioning earlier as well, in Kaza as well, every house is a homestay. In that sense at least the money is going directly to the local community- the residents of Spiti. And, when we started working on tourism, we were in touch with travellers to promote the homestays. A traveller of course wants to experience the homestay but not necessarily every day of their time in Spiti. So we developed entire programmes around these homestays and started marketing that so that people would get to know about homestays and start going to these homestays. In the process, that basically became our enterprise model as well where we started generating some amount of revenue through that which then helped us support other different projects that we were working on the ground in Spiti as well. So, that’s how our transition happened as well. And now, we’ve been working and operating like this for over15 years now and yes, it’s been working pretty well for us. Now the projects we feel are of relevance, we can support those and replicate those across Spiti.

11:39

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s really been a great journey. Even in Uttarkhand, almost every home has a homestay.  If you drive down a road, there are homestays of all sizes… I too feel that it gives tourists a different cultural experience compared to a standard hotel. Regardless of the class of the hotel.

12:09

What are the challenges you face today that perhaps weren’t such a big deal before? How do you mitigate those?

 12:16

Ishita Khanna: if you look specifically in terms of tourism, for instance, there are a lot of challenges now. I  mean if you don’t look at Ecosphere-specific but you look at the region-specific, there are a lot of impacts that are having now on the area because Spiti suddenly opened up. It suddenly came on the radar of a lot of people so in the past 4-5 years we’ve had a huge influx of travellers coming in and of course with that, there is a huge amount of garbage generation that is happening in Spiti. And, the garbage dump which was a small tiny little thing has grown into a humungous garbage dumping area which is very sad to see. The other thing now which is becoming a challenge, especially in the urban centres which are the tourist hubs, is water. This year was really very bad in general for Spiti in terms of water. We didn’t have adequate snow so the crops practically failed in most of the villages of  Spiti. To top that up, we have a huge influx of travellers coming into Kaza. As I said, we have 100 hotels now which are all very water-intensive hotels. So as a result, there is now no water in Kaza. In the supply line, there is hardly any water coming in. Every hotel has to buy water which comes in from the neighbouring villages. If you happen to have a vehicle you send the vehicle up along with a tank every day just to ferry in water. And some hotels have to do this four to five times a day just to bring water. So this is a huge rising challenge in Spti because even though the government has plans of tapping into the groundwater but the point is that even if they do that it will be a temporary solution to the water problem. Because, eventually, the groundwater will deplete because at the rate it’s being sucked out we will not be able to recharge it because we are not getting the kind of snow we used to get in earlier years.

14: 35

Lalitha Krishnan: Most of the villages don’t have piped water. Right?

14:43

Ishita Khanna: yes, none of the villages has piped water. In Kaza as well it’s only the hotels that have a piped water supply coming in. Till now, the homes don’t have piped water. They still have like common spaces where you fill up your bucket or you fill up your can.

15:07

Lalitha Krishnan: I like what you do at Spiti Ecosphere in terms of encouraging people to bring refill bottles and you supply water. Is that still on?

15:16

Ishita Khanna: Yes, that is still on. We set up water refill points at some of the key destinations of Spiti as well. We’ve been offering free filtered water for donkeys of years, maybe 10-12 years now at Sol café – A taste of Spiti, in Kaza. We’ve had a lot of people coming in to refill the bottles, especially international travellers because they are more sensitive to these issues as opposed to domestic travellers even now. They do come regularly to fill up. We also set these (refill points) up at Key monastery, Dhankar monastery and up in Komic which are visited by travellers to try and encourage travellers to refill as much as they can. Then, in 2017 we set up a huge life-sized installation made of plastic bottles called ‘I love Spiti’ to try and raise awareness of this rising issue. It’s an ongoing challenge, it’s an ongoing issue and there are people now as well working on issues like these to try and sensitize the traveller about the impact that they have. But still, it’s a minuscule number of travellers who are actually conscious about their footprint. Most don’t really care about garbage or…

16:47

Lalitha Krishnan: But the very fact that you’re doing this…simple and generous idea… that you’re letting people refill, that itself should tell them something. They should see that one-time plastic bottles are not welcome in the desert at such high altitudes that too.

17:09

Ishita Khanna: It’s a kind of mindset, a kind of background.

17:14

Lalitha Krishnan: (You won the Sierra Club ‘Green Energy and Green Livelihoods Achievement Award’  in 2009 and the Virgin Holidays Responsible Tourism Awards 2010 for Best in a mountain environment?) You explained how you went from being a donor-supported to a self-supporting organisation.  Today as we speak, how many villages/lives are impacted by Ecosphere’s initiatives?

17:33

Ishita Khanna: we have been working on different initiatives in Spiti for the past 20 years and it’s been a gradual journey for us as well. We started with seabuckthorn and went to look at community-based tourism and responsible travel. From there we started looking at some of the other challenges in Spiti. For instance, it gets very cold here in the winter months. Temperatures dip to -30 C  here and you have to burn a lot of wood to stay warm. So, we looked at how we could use the sun’s heat and solar passive techniques. So we adapted their winter room so that they could heat up using the sun’s heat. We also looked at solar electrification because there’s a lot of sunshine that we get here, even though it’s very cold. We looked at how we could use the sun’s warmth to grow vegetables so we developed local mud greenhouses. So, you know over the years, we’ve looked at various challenges and how we can solve them.

18:38

Another one of the problems we’ve been working on recently is to do with water and climate change. The groundwater is depleting, the springs are drying out so we worked on building artificial glaciers and contour trenches to trap as much of the surface runoff and the snowfall to try and absorb it into the groundwater so we can try and recharge these springs which are the lifeline of most of the villages of Spiti, especially the highland villages.

Water is a big challenge as I mentioned, especially drinking water in the winter months. you know, because of springs drying out, they are also now freezing up in the winter months with reduced flow. As a result, people have to walk more just to get drinking water. So we are trying to tap into springs which have a good flow—usually close to the river bed—and pump that water up to the village. Otherwise, it’s an arduous journey down for local communities in the thick of snow just to get a 20 L can up on their back.

19:47

Over the years, of living there you understand what the challenges are. Another one of our initiatives is to do health care.

We started working on oral health in Spiti and just recently we did an assessment in one of the schools. We were thinking of putting sealants onto the kids’ teeth to prevent caries/cavities from setting on to the permanent teeth. Unfortunately, that can only be done on caries-free teeth. We assessed a local school and out of 60 students, only two were cavity-free.

20:35

In young kids nowadays you can put what is called sealants onto the tooth so that it creates a layer around the tooth so that the child’s tooth does not develop a cavity but it can only be done on cavity-free teeth. We held a camp recently in a school and out of 60 kids, we assessed only two kids who didn’t have cavities or caries in their teeth.

So, oral health is bad so now across Spiti we’re holding a free dental camp and we’re going from village to village because it’s such an ignored area. People just ignore their oral health. They don’t brush their teeth. Brushing twice a day is unheard of. Brushing once a day is unheard of. People might brush their teeth once a month at times or not at all. So by the time they reach 40, their teeth have all fallen off, because, they don’t give any importance to it and it just decays and the tooth has to be taken out. People in their 40s now require dentures, unfortunately.

21:45

Lalitha Krishnan: I guess if we had to carry our water to brush our teeth every day and hike two miles for it we might be also as casual about our oral health.

21:53

Ishita Khanna: Right, we could associate with that but yes, over the years we’ve been working on a wide range of issues and initiatives. And Spiti has a population of about 15,000 people now spread across about you could say, 65 villages. Each one of our initiatives has impacted the population in one way or the other.

22: 32

Lalitha Krishnan: Right. How can we as individuals be better tourists? There is no ideal.

22: 38

Ishita Khanna: Ideal is a very difficult word. There is no ideal tourist or an ideal person. We are all on a journey. I think in general if a traveller can, to sum it up, be a responsible traveller – to be responsible about the way you travel, to be sensitive, I would say. Be conscious of the impact you leave on the place. How much are you taking out of the place, how much are you giving back, you know? To try and create a kind of balance with that I would think.   

23:17

There are a lot of conscious travellers out there who really are mindful about how much garbage they generate when they go to an area, they try and minimize that. Even simple things like what we’ve been trying to do are encourage travellers to refill bottles. To try not to buy so much of plastic bottles. And if you do buy bottles and chip packets and things like that, be slightly more mindful as to how you throw it. A lot of us Indians unfortunately think that the entire roadside or the entire Himalayas or wherever we travel, we can dump our garbage anywhere. To be slightly more mindful as to where you dump it.

24:05

In Spiti,  I tell people  “Carry your  garbage out with you.” It’s not always possible but “At least find a dustbin and dump it in that.”

24:18

Lalitha Krishnan: Right. What about tourists’ interaction with locals? Is there something that needs to be improved or are they good about being respectful of locals?

24:34

Ishita Khanna: I think that is also part and parcel of how one can travel slightly more mindfully. OK, there are different tourists around. Some people are interested in local culture, some people are not. Even if you’re not interested in local culture, you can at least not disrespect the local culture. So, at least try and be mindful of how much noise are you generating. Do not be rude to people from that area.

25:06

              A lot of people of course would love to interact and hence people like that go to homestays and that’s a very enriching experience because you’re staying with the local family. They’re hosting you and people in Spiti are very, very hospitable. But not everyone wants that experience. I feel that even if you don’t want that experience, if you’re interested in local culture and things like that, please be respectful. Don’t be rude, don’t be loud.

25:37

Lalitha Krishnan:  Do you think community and government inputs are required in initiating, low-impact tourism? We only have suggestions. Do you think we need more laws perhaps instead of just signs?

25:56

Ishita Khanna: Yes, I think, there are policies and laws in place but there’s very little implementation of it. Definitely, I feel these policies and laws could be enhanced. For instance, in places like Himachal, they have a common policy for homestays. It has to have a room with a common toilet with hot and cold water. But in a place like Spiti, that’s not contextual. If you’re going for a homestay, you’re staying in a local person’s house, they don’t have common toilets themselves. So, to expect them to provide an attached toilet which has running water? In the houses, they don’t have running water.

26:41

Traditionally in Spiti, they had dry composting toilets. You’re forcing them to convert to flush toilets when there’s not enough water for agriculture here. So definitely, policies like these definitely need to be looked at contextually. They need to be developed more contextually.  Of course, there are signboards that you see all over the place but how many travellers really look at those signboards that are telling you to travel in a certain way? ‘Don’t’ throw your garbage. I mean, there need to be amenities that we provide, right? O.K. Yes. At one level, you do need to raise awareness, at another level you need to have facilities which are well maintained and that travellers can use regularly. Be it for dumping garbage, be it public utilities like toilets. Water refill points, you know? Places like Himachal should have these all over. Or even in the hills, it should be everywhere that it’s a norm that one refills a bottle as opposed to buying one. The thing is that for a traveller if they are given a choice, and with a lot of drilling into their heads, they would finally start using these facilities. But, these facilities aren’t there and they aren’t well maintained.

28:03

Lalitha Krishnan: Right.  Ecosphere is part of several networks like the Green circuit. Could you mention some more groups Ecosphere is a part of and what you achieve by working together?

28:19:

Ishita Khanna: Yes, many years ago we were part of the Green Circuit. The idea basically was, that it was travel enterprises similar to ours who were trying to do travel differently, in a more responsible, mindful manner. And, we felt that if we join hands, then we’d have strength in numbers. Otherwise, it’s like just one person working in one remote part like us in Spiti or another person working in some remote part in Nepal, another one in Kerala, another one in Orissa… So, we felt we could share our learnings and challenges and also try and join hands to try and market these various initiatives and trips that we had on a common platform.

Lalitha Krishnan: OK.

Ishita Khanna: So that was the idea which initially led to the formation of the Green Circuit but it’s been challenging in itself. Especially also during the Covid pandemic, to stay in touch or to have regular meetings and updates, and things like that. We haven’t been able to as such travel to the different areas or do it at the level we wanted to.

Lalitha Krishnan: Understandable.

Ishita Khanna: so definitely, these kinds of platforms are useful, are very useful but the pandemic has had its impact on anything related to travel or collaborations like these.

29:56

Lalitha Krishnan: True. Now I’m going to ask you a personal question but I sort of know the answer seeing how happy you are.  How has living and working in Spiti changed your life after all these years?

30:09

Ishita Khanna: For me, it’s been a way of life you know? Because I came here when I was very young and I was never ever enamoured by city life and a regular 9-5 job. So, when I did get the opportunity to come and work in Spiti, for me, it was something I always wanted to do, in the hills. I think working here for so many years, it’s taught me a lot definitely. There have been a lot of challenges along the way, especially working in a place like Spiti, so far away with such limited infrastructure. For me, I think it’s made me into a much more patient, and humble person. For me now, going back to the city now…I even imagine life, living in a big city. So yes, this has become a way of life for me and it’s definitely changed me into becoming a better person. You don’t take things for granted which one often does in city life. Especially at least you take basic amenities for granted. Out here even those basic things are a luxury. It’s very common here not to have electricity here for days on end or water. So, you adapt and develop patience…

31: 29

Lalitha Krishnan: What? Swiggy hasn’t reached Spiti as yet?

31:32

Ishita Khanna: No, no Swiggy! Internet just came here last year and that in itself has changed things drastically.

31: 41

Lalitha Krishnan:  I think you live a very simple but fulfilling life. Of course, it has its challenges. My last question to you and I think this is important. Could you share a term or a word or a concept that’s important to you and perhaps improves our understanding of what you do?

32:03

Ishita Khanna: It’s hard to put it all into one word or phrase.

Lalitha Krishnan: it could be either a word or a concept or even just what you believe.

32:12
Ishita Khanna: I feel as individuals, as humans, as travellers, we need to be mindful, basically.  Mindful of our day-to-day actions that even encompasses when we travel. It all just boils down to trying to be a better person. That only comes from mindfulness. Being aware of the impact that we’re having on another individual, another community, the environment, this earth, on animals, you know? So, how can we reduce the impact and burden we have on the outside?

32:57

I think every individual has a choice that they can take. We have great power in our hands. We can change things very easily if we just tweak our lives by being slightly more mindful. I believe and hope that if more and more people become more mindful of their choices, the way they travel or how they speak to people and try and build more kindness and compassion, you know, automatically, the world would become a much better place.

33:34

Lalitha Krishnan: Right. I like the way you said, “tweak your life with a little mindfulness”. It makes it sound easier than it actually is.

33:43

Ishita Khanna: You know, like one small little thing every day. If one can do one small little thing. Change one small little thing; be slightly more mindful in your workplace or in how you brush your teeth. Turn the tap off while you brush your teeth. That itself is being mindful and not wasting water, right? If everyone starts doing small little things, it will have a huge impact. Look at our population. If everyone starts doing one tiny little thing, being mindful of their impact or being mindful of how they live, I think it will spiral into a huge impact.

34:22

Lalitha Krishnan: Absolutely. I was just teasing you but I like the words: tweak of mindfulness. Thank you so much Ishita. This was so good.

Ishita Khanna: Thank you Lalitha.

Lalitha Krishnan: Hey, I hope you enjoyed this episode of Heart of Conservation. The transcript for all episodes is available right here on this blog.  Do check out the Spiti Ecosphere website, especially the list of awards they have won for ecotourism. In the meanwhile, be mindful. I’ll catch you next time. Bye.

Birdsong by hillside resident, the collared owlet.

Podcast cover artwork by Lalitha Krishnan

Disclaimer: Views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the podcast and show notes belong solely to the guest featured in the episode, and not necessarily to the host of this podcast/blog or the guest’s employer, organization, committee or other group or individual.

Seena Narayanan Tells us About the Secret Life of Dung Beetles in Less than 20 Minutes.

Beetle (Terracotta) by Lalitha Krishnan
~ Lalitha Krishnan ~ Leave a comment

Heart of Conservation podcast. EP#28 Show notes (Edited)

Hi there, I’m Lalitha Krishnan and you’re listening to Season 4, Episode 28 of Heart of Conservation. I bring you stories from the wild that keep us all connected to our natural world.

We hear of people following the butterfly trail,  or kids chasing frogs and catching worms, but beetle watching isn’t a thing as far as I know. But my guest on this episode is passionate about the real dung beetles so much so it was the topic of her PhD research. Three new species of dung beetles have been discovered and named by her. I’m speaking to  Seena Narayanan, a Senior Research Associate & Assistant Museum Curator at ATREE. She has prepared species pages for the Scarabaeine dung beetles of the Indian subcontinent and manages a growing insect collection at the ATREE Insect Museum in Bangalore. Seena thank you so much for joining me on Heart of Conservation.

0:59

Seena Narayanan: It’s a pleasure. Thank you, Lalitha.

Lalitha Krishnan: Now, according to Wikipedia, there are 400,000 beetle species which constitute 40% of all described insects and except for the sea and polar regions they can be found anywhere on earth. And yet, we know so little about them.  Seena could you start with defining a dung beetle? So, what makes it different from other beetle species?

1:27

Seena Narayanan: The beetles are the largest order among all insects. They belong to the order Coleoptera. ‘Coleos’ means sheath-like and ‘tera’ defines wings. It’s Greek. So, for most of the insect orders, you’ll find ‘tera’ in their names. Why beetles are successful, why they are in such huge numbers is because of elytra which are the forewings which protect their transparent underwing or their body as a whole. Around the world, we find 6000 species of dung beetles. They’re different from other beetle species because they mostly feed on dung. We’re talking about Scarabaeinae today which are True dung beetles. Scarabaeinae is a subfamily of beetles and they belong to the family Scarabaeidae. This Scarabaeidae family has many subfamilies. Scarabaeinae is one among many subfamilies.  

2:48

Lalitha Krishnan: How many species of dung beetles can we find in India?

2:53

Seena Narayanan: In India, we’ll find around 500 species of the 6000 species of beetles worldwide. When I say 500 species, I am particularly talking about Scarabaeinae, the True dung beetles. So, in North-east India, we recently published a paper and we have recorded around 206 species. All over India, there are around 500 species.

3:24

Lalitha Krishnan: You discovered three species and named them. So, tell us about those.

3:30

Seena Narayanan: As the name indicates, these were mostly found in dung. They will provision their young ones also with dung but some beetles were found on other resources. I was studying these dung beetles which were found on millipedes and some mushrooms. Most of the species I discovered were from these millipedes. We got two species from the Western Ghats and one from Northeast India which was found feeding on a dead snail. These were from Onthophagus which is the most specio genus—‘Specio’ means most of the species are found under this genus. So one is called Onthophagus jwalae and the other, Onthophagus pithankithae. These two were found on millipedes and Onthophagus tharalithae which were found on snails.

4:34

Lalitha Krishnan: When you say, they are feeding on millipedes, are they feeding on dead insects or latching themselves to live ones?

4:41

Seena Narayanan: There was this particular species that was found running behind a live millipede which we found in the forest of Southern India. So, it need not only be dead millipedes that dung beetles feed on. It can even feed on the tissue of a live one. So when we got that millipede to the lab we saw that one adult was inside the body of a millipede which was alive. There are many predatory dung beetle species. Even though these millipedes produce defensive chemicals, it’s found that these dung beetles are attracted to these defensive chemicals because of the smell. The smell attracts them from far away and they come to the site.

5:35

Lalitha Krishnan: What is the dung beetle dance? I’ve read about it…

5:39

Seena Narayanan: Prof Marcus Byrne and Dr Mary Dacke were doing a series of experiments on Roller beetles. They saw these beetles rolling away from the dung balls. Let me explain. These dung beetles have different functional groups. Some of them will roll away the dung balls. These are the Roller beetles. Some will tunnel under the dung pat; these are the Tunnelers and some will just dwell in the dung pat. So, in this process, they will take away the resources to avoid competition from other beetles. Among the dung rollers, (Prof Marcus Byrne and Dr Mary Dacke) did some experiments in Africa and they saw that the Dung beetle, each time they roll a dung ball, it will climb on top of this dung ball and they will turn around and orient itself. What they’re doing in this dance is they are looking for the sun. According to that, they will orient themselves and push the ball in a straight line. They also saw that there is some kind of thermoregulation. They will rub their face in between while on top of the dung ball. This is to keep themselves cool on that hot sand. The way they orient themselves on the dung ball is called the dung beetle dance.

7:30

Lalitha Krishnan:  Lalitha Krishnan: You did mention how they nest? But could you elaborate a little more?

7:36

Seena Narayanan: As I said, this nesting is different for different functional groups. There are these tunnelers; among the tunnelers themselves, the sizes will vary. There are large tunnelers and small tunnelers. The smallest one might take the dung into the soil just under the dung pat, just some centimetres down. The largest ones like the Heliocopris dominus, the Elephant dung beetle can take the dung a meter deep. In the case of tunnelers, they take the dung under the dung pat and they tunnel under the soil. So, there can be different branches in that tunnel and what they do is they nest at the end of these branches-the tunnels. So, they will make many brood balls inside and the male and female will mate inside this tunnel and lay eggs inside these brood balls. That’s how they provide for the young ones.

8:43

And in the case of the rollers, they will just roll the dung ball some metres or feet away from the main resource and again, they will tunnel under the soil and bury these dung balls.

9:02

In the case of dwellers, what they do is, lay brood balls in the dung pat itself and lay eggs in these dungballs.

And young ones are called grubs.

Lalitha Krishnan: Grubs. Of course. Birds love them.

Seena Narayanan: They feed and change instars and pupate.

Lalitha Krishnan: What are instars?

9:28

Seena Narayanan: Instars are the different stages. So, in the end, they will produce a pupa and the adult will emerge from that. After the summer showers, once the soil gets a little wet, they will emerge. This is the time, starting of June when they start to emerge.

9:53

Lalitha Krishnan: This is also the season when birds are still feeding their young with grub for instance. You know you mentioned dung beetles feed on millipede apart from the dung of course but what else constitutes a dung beetle’s diet?

10:13

Seena Narayanan: True Dung beetles;  because they provide their brood also with dung and also they feed on dung, they’re called ‘True dung beetles’- Scarabaeinae subfamily. The adults can take in the liquid form of dung; their mouthparts are modified for even tiny particles of dung. And grubs can feed on solid dung material also. Other than that they also feed on—as I said before—the tissues of millipedes, snails, dead decaying substances and also on decaying fruits.

11:12

Lalitha Krishnan: Interesting. Earlier you had spoken about the beetle dance but I just want the audience to know that even in Egyptian mythology, the dung rolling beetle was associated with the god of the rising sun who was believed to roll the disk of the morning sun at daybreak. Scientifically, it has been proven that migratory birds, seals and other creatures too navigate by the stars. But that’s also been said of the dung beetles. Is it true?

11:44

Seena Narayanan: Yes. The experiments which Prof. Marcus Byrne and Dr Mary Dacke had done–were awarded the Noble Prize for this work. There are diurnal beetles and nocturnal beetles also, so, it’s not just in the daytime you find beetles, they’re active during the night also. You’ll find some species rolling the dungballs at night. When there is no sun, what they do is, follow the stars. That’s what the experiment results prove. They will follow the light of the milky way/stars.

12:31

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s amazing. And, like birds, do you think they get disoriented by street/building lights?

12: 39

Seena Narayanan: So, even on cloudy nights, they get disoriented according to the experiment results. When they spot the polarised lights they will get attracted to the light and keep moving. They can be some effect of street lighting etc which is very bright.

13:08

Lalitha Krishnan: What threats do dung beetles face?

13:11

Seena Narayanan: So, most of the threats are anthropogenic. There is deforestation and habitat loss. There are species-specific dung beetles like the elephant dung beetle I was talking about earlier. These specifically feed on elephant dung. As mammals reduce in number, it affects the population of dung beetles also. They have to find the resources. So, when there are lots of trees cut down,  deforestation happening, and lots of buildings coming up, there is no pasture lands for cattle to graze. All these things affect dung beetles.

14:08

Lalitha Krishnan: True. We see birds care for their young and other animals do the same of course but when it comes to insects, we don’t know much about their parental care. Perhaps, because we don’t see them too much or we don’t observe them too much.   How do beetles care for their young?  

14:30

Seena Narayanan: In the insect world there are many insects which give parental care like the Giant water bug which carries its eggs on its body to protect them. The Spittlebug produce spittle which protects the eggs kept inside. Similarly, the dung beetle provides their young ones with dung. In some species, like the largest species which lay eggs only once a year, the female will protect the young ones for a while. They stay around the nest, near their brood balls. So, in the case of larger species like the dung beetles, you’ll find some parental care.

15:24 Alright. Now Seena, would you like to tell us something about your current role at the Insect museum?

15:29

Seena Narayanan: The collections at ATREE Insect Museum are curated according to the projects and according to the insect groups the PhD students are working on. Whatever we collect from these projects and their fieldwork are part of the collections at the ATREE Insect Museum. Insects are named, labelled according to which place they are collected from, and curated. We create a database. Right now, we have two projects that are DBT funded projects for monitoring the diversity of ants and dung beetles of Northeast India and another is for edible insects of Northeast India. We have collections from most states. The second phase of the project will be coming in a couple of months. The recent collections we have are of ants, dung beetles and edible insects of North East India.

We also have parasitic wasps i.e. these wasps which belong to the Hymenoptera order. We have many new species being described.

16:52

Lalitha Krishnan: Are these from the Northeast?

16:55

Seena Narayanan: All over India. We have collections from the Western ghats. The person who recently joined our lab is working on those collections from the Western Ghats and from Northeast India.

Lalitha Krishnan: How many of you work at the Insect lab?

Seena Narayanan: Currently we have two Research Associates and four JRFs.

17:18

Lalitha Krishnan: Could you share a word or concept that will improve our understanding of dung beetles?

17:32

Seena Narayanan: As beetles are very important to the ecosystem, and they help in many services, I would say it is ‘Eco-system Services’. Through the process of relocating dung and burying them, they help in nutrient cycling and bioturbation which means the porosity of the soil increases. Then there is this secondary seed dispersal—whatever seeds are present in the dung are dispersed. And, there are some parasites which get suppressed and beetles also help increase nutrients in the soil. So, many ecosystem services are provided by dung beetles even reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

18:25

Lalitha Krishnan: Thank you so much, Seena. What you do is so important and so interesting. And I love all the stories about dung beetles.

18:35

Seena Narayanan: Thank you Lalitha. Each insect has its own story.

18:40

Lalitha Krishnan: I hope you enjoyed listening to Seena and hearing all about dung beetles. Do check out the ATREE website. Heart of Conservation is available on several platforms. Do subscribe and watch out for more episodes and please spread the word. Bye for now.

https://www.atree.res.in/users/seena-narayanan

https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/insect-play

Birdsong by hillside resident, the collared owlet.

Podcast cover artwork by Lalitha Krishnan

Disclaimer: Views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the podcast and show notes belong solely to the guest featured in the episode, and not necessarily to the host of this podcast/blog or the guest’s employer, organization, committee or other group or individual.