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ReCircle: Young Entrepreneurs Creating a Circular Economy with Waste

~ Lalitha Krishnan ~ Leave a comment

Heart of Conservation Podcast Ep#36 Show notes (Edited)

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0:00: Call of the Collared owlet

0:04: Host: Lalitha Krishnan

I’m Lalitha Krishnan and you’re listening to episode #36 of Heart of Conservation. Today we are going to be talking about how waste management can be a profitable business. Normally when we sort out our waste, it is off our hands and not our problem anymore. But when garbage dumps start growing into hills polluting air quality and spreading disease, we sit up and wonder why nobody is doing anything. I’m speaking to two amazing Clean Tech innovators, Rahul Nainani, Co-founder and CEO and Gurashish Singh, Co-founder and COO at ReCircle, who converted biomining waste into a booming business. It’s not every day we hear success stories of positive change. Let me begin by welcoming Rahul and Gurashish to Heart of Conservation. Thank you both so much for joining me here on this platform today.

1:06:

Guest 1: Rahul Nainani:

Thank you for having both of us.

Guest 2: Gurashish Singh:

Yes…

1:09:

Lalitha Krishnan: My pleasure. So, Rahul, since you are Bombay-based and ReCircle’s headquarters operates out of Bombay, this question is for you. I heard that you both visited the Deonar waste dump which has existed since 1927. It’s the oldest dump in Asia. Legacy waste: waste that is old land fill, inherited waste, not necessarily even created by your generation. So, what did you see in this mammoth garbage pile that inspired both of you to become clean tech innovators? Most people would have run a mile, including me.

via https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/87429/fire-burns-in-mumbai-landfill

1:50:

Rahul Nainani:  No, absolutely, Lalitha, I think, I was as ignorant as the rest of us, before we started ReCircle. And having studied finance, nowhere in my mind did I think I’d be working in the waste sector. But I like to believe that, waste and circular economy, is something that just happened to me, and I think that’s for the very right reasons itself. So, we launched in early 2016 under the brand name of RaddiConnect, which is what we rebranded as ReCircle. But just when we were launching, there was this massive fire that took place at the Deonar dump site. You know, there’s this iconic image that NASA took from space where you could see that fire burning even from space. And it went on for a few weeks in fact. And early in our business when we were just launching, the idea was to find, look at what was happening with our base and we were as ignorant as anybody else. It was more of an out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality. Having lived in Bombay all my life, Deonar was just like, one dump site which you cross on the way to Lonavala. But one fine day when this fire happened, we planned to go down to the dump site and see what went on and why this fire happened itself to start with. So, there were a few things that we found out during this fire. The first thing was that these fires happened regularly. And it’s not just, that one fine day that this escalated. But the only reason in the end, not just us but the entire city woke up is because the wind was blowing towards South Bombay and South Bombay being South Bombay, people started waking up and realising that this was a massive issue. But these fires happen daily. And the dump site, if you look at the map of Mumbai, is pretty much located in the heart of the city, but it has a creek on one side. So generally, when the wind blows towards the creek, you don’t realise the extent of the fire. But this fine day when it was growing towards the city and that’s when we all woke up. The second thing that drove me to take that leap of faith and see how big this problem is and think that we need to work towards a solution was that we worked with an NGO called Apnalaya that works in the Deonar dump sites, in the neighbourhoods surrounding the dump site. And they gave us a very astonishing fact that the average life expectancy of people that just live around the periphery of the dump site–these are again, not the people that work in the dump site, but only live in the slum area next to it–was 38 years of age and, and that was an eye-opening number to me and it helped me realise that if this is impacting the people just living around the downside, how soon is it going to start impacting the rest of the city as well as the rest of the country? This story is not just about Deonar dumpsite in Mumbai, but this is pretty much made with the Ghazipur dump site in Delhi. May be Bangalore, maybe even Kolkata is pretty much the same city, same story across all cities across India. And, together Gurasish and I must have visited more than 50+ dump sites in the country, and the situation is quite dire. So, that helped us realise that of course we need to make an impact in this space. And that’s how our journey began into working towards starting ReCircle.

Rahul Nainani, Co-Founder and CEO, ReCircle

5:12:

Lalitha Krishnan: Wow. God bless you guys, somebody had to do it. Gurashish, maybe you can answer this. So, help me draw a picture of ReCircle’s operation by completing the story. OK? So, I’m a rag picker or a saffai karamchari sorting through a pile of garbage in Deonar. What next? What happens?

5:35:

Gurashish Singh: Overall, let me help you understand how waste flows #1 The lady or the man in the house removes the clean recyclable waste, right? So that’s typically your newspapers and things like that that are sent to a raddhiwalla. Then the house helper–who comes to the house has the first dig at the waste– who will remove bigger cardboard boxes or Bisleri bottles, PET bottles, and things like that. After that, the waste goes to the garbage collector of the building or the person who’s putting the garbage in the garbage truck. Post this, the waste will end up in landfills and oceans. So even though it is a pretty informal supply chain right from the start to the end. One of the most astonishing things is that fortunately, we have a very strong-backbone supply-chain where people are removing waste at so many levels. But the unfortunate scenario, and this is in 90% of the cases, the waste is not segregated. So, if we just segregate the waste, it will make it very easy for this extremely long supply chain of people that are, actually making a living out of the waste that we throw out also. So yeah, that’s actually what happens. And, there is a supply side to the supply chain that works. There are scrap dealers, kabadiwalaas, your house help, the person who is, you know, down in the building collecting the garbage right till that truck reaches your dumping grounds. The bigger problem is people not segregating this waste.

7:31:

Lalitha Krishnan: Thanks for that. Talking of ‘sorting’, one generally hears of sorting garbage into glass, metal, cardboard, wet waste and plastic. In one conversation I heard you mention sorting garbage into 40 categories. I mean I was blown away. Could you share a few examples and which materials are the focus of ReCircle?

7:56:

Gurashish Singh: Sure, let us again start with India, where we’re expected to segregate our garbage into three categories that are dry, wet and hazardous right? And out of the dry waste… if you typically see the four major four or five major categories that are there–paper, glass, plastics, metals, e-waste. In India we are not even supposed to segregate different types of waste. When we travel internationally, we do the paper separately, the glass separately, dry separately, and wet separately. So however, given what is actually supposed to be done in India where we segregate our waste into dry, wet and hazardous, this dry waste then reaches our facilities where we first primarily sort the material into paper, plastics, metals, glass and e-waste. Then, in turn, each of these materials is further segregated. So, say paper is segregated into four categories. That’s white, coloured, corrugated boxes, coloured-corrugated. Your glass is segregated into alcohol bottles, and other glass bottles and then colour-segregated. Plastic belongs to seven different categories, right? That’s number one to number seven. #1 being PET #7 being others. This level is then further categorised into colours, transparent and things like that. And so is e-waste. So, leading to all this, we segregate over 40 different categories of waste. We also connect and segregate multi layer plastics or the 7th category which mainly is the packaging material that is composed of multiple layers of different polymers. And we make sure that this either goes into road making or recycling or energy recovery and waste to energy plants or cement factories, which is all the government-approved way of managing this waste. So, yes, the one category of dry waste that we collect from individuals is then further segregated into 40 categories.

10:11:

Lalitha Krishnan: OK, could you give me an example of what 7-layer packaging is? What product are we talking about?

Gurashish Singh, Co-Founder and COO, ReCircle

10:18:

Gurashish:Multiple layers. An easy example would be probably a packet of any chips that we like to get.

Lalitha Krishnan:

OK.

Gurashish Singh: So, if we notice, the top layer would be plastic, there will be an aluminium layer with it, right? So, there is an aluminium foil if you see it on the other side.  This is basically a merging or a combination of multiple polymers and other materials that cannot be recycled. So an easy example is a water bottle which is PET. If we break that down and granulate it, we are going to get PET granules back. But when there are different layers of either different polymers or different materials, the output is never going to be a single material. That’s going to be a mixture of all materials.

11:10:

Lalitha Krishnan: Thanks. Rahul, how many villages, towns and cities does ReCircle reach? And are any of these remote? For instance, do you cover vulnerable areas of India, like the mountainous areas or islands like the Andaman island where there’s really no extra land for dumping garbage? Having been there–and my last podcast guest was a herpetologist who lives in Andaman—he says Andaman island has a landfill now. I mean, there’s nowhere for the garbage to go. It doesn’t come back to the mainland so…

11:45:

Rahul Nainani: Correct. So currently, our operations span over 250+ locations across India covering major cities like Mumbai, Delhi or Bangalore, but also covering tourist locations like Shimla or Haridwar and also, certainly difficult-to-reach locations in the northeastern area which might be in Assam or Meghalaya, where we are actively working on collection of this material. Having visited Andaman island myself, a few years ago, as I’m an avid diver, I did see the need for waste management over there. But how our business model works is that we work with brands, which is a B2B business. So, we work with brands to help them to offset their footprint. So, when I say this, essentially, let’s say we are working with a beverage brand and they’re selling their brand in India. We collect an equivalent amount of beverage bottles on their behalf. Now, while, our mandate for collection of this material comes from the businesses that we work with, we are covering almost 90% plus of the States and Union territories in India. But in certain areas where we need some additional support from brands where we can do the operations like in Andaman, right now, where we are not working. But we know companies that are working over there. We are trying to maximise our footprint as well in terms of collecting from even the harder-to-collect locations. But here my call to the listeners would be that if you are a brand and are looking at consciously making this effort, please do reach out to us. And we would want to work in harder to access locations further as well …to collect material from where it is difficult to collect these resources. But yes, currently we do have a mix of Tier 1, and Tier 2 rural areas as well, where we are actively collecting this material from.

13:38:

Lalitha Krishnan: Good to know. 250 plus locations is quite something. Considering ReCircle’s reach, you’re providing livelihood to a large number of people. How would you say it impacts their lives?

13:55:

Rahul Nainani: Yes. So,  just to take one step back, the waste management sector in India, as Gurashish mentioned, is extremely informal and fragmented and it has a lot of moving parts involved. Now our purpose or our vision at ReCircle is to bring along ethical circularity. And, the idea is that while waste is an environmental problem, it’s also a massive people problem because there are nearly 4 million waste pickers or people who make an income out of scavenging waste from landfills and dump sites across India. So, our business model was, in a way where we wanted to empower these people and formalise them as compared to displace them. Because, we very well understand, that without having these people clean up the trash after us, there would be no waste management that would happen in our country at all. So, we work with local scrap dealers, aggregators, and waste collectors that work across the country at these 250-plus locations. We formalise them with the help of where we’re working with them on, health checkup camps… connecting them with government schemes and also eventually working with them on additional sources of income. So, in simplicity, we charge the polluter, which is the brand owner that we work with and we incentivise the collectors that collect this material on our behalf. And with that intent,  we’ve directly and indirectly impacted more than 3000+ informal workers. While this is not a big number in the larger context of things, this is where we are currently. At a small stage where and we can do this work. And where either with the help of, you know, social security or with health camp with additional sources of livelihood is where we’ve been able to impact these 3000 plus informal workers that are part of our supply chain. And our vision is to work and increase this number as we scale up our progress in terms of waste recovery. We also want to impact more and more waste pickers in the organisation. We don’t like to call them waste pickers, but we call them ‘saffai saathis’ as there are friends who help us clean up the environment as compared to picking our waste because what is waste for us is a resource for them and they can make a living out of this. So, that’s how our mindset is to personally not call them waste pickers because they’re cleaning after us. We are the waste generators and they are the cleaners. They’re cleaning after us. So, it’s very ironical to call them waste pickers or waste workers in that sense. So, rebranding them as essentially saffai saathis, rebranding waste as a resource to start with, because what’s waste to us is a resource to them and also for our ecosystem. And that’s how we intend to build this inclusive business model where we empower these informal waste collectors as a part of our supply chain as compared to displacing them from the ecosystem.

16:55:

Lalitha Krishnan: Nice. I like that whole positive outlook you have towards your business and to everyone who’s involved. Well, could one of you give us three foul facts about garbage that are India-specific that my listeners may not know?

17:09:

Gurashish: One of the most startling facts that we came across was… did you know that India imports 465 crore plastic bottles annually? We stumbled upon this a decade ago and we found it absolutely unacceptable. If there’s one thing that we don’t have a shortage of in India, that’s waste.

Lalitha Krishnan: Why?

17:41:

Gurashish Singh: The reason for this is two ways. One is that again, going back to one of the first questions you asked me, people do not segregate waste. So a lot of it just ends up in landfills and oceans, right? If we just start segregating our waste, multiple people will remove this and send it to a recycling unit close to wherever they are. So that is one of the one of the astonishing or foul facts as you call it. Secondly, India alone produces a massive amount of 3.4 million tonnes of waste. Again, only 30% of this gets recycled, mainly due to non-segregation of waste. We are the third largest waste generator in the world and if we continue at the same pace, we will be the largest by 2048. That’s the estimate and another one would be a 4 million people make an income out of scavenging waste from landfills and oceans and streets. They are unorganised and unrecognised, and we feel that somewhere they are the only reason for the entire waste recycling and waste infrastructure that is being managed in India as well. So again, it will be a call out to all the listeners here that whoever your waste picker, waste collectors or saffai sathis are, they’re invisible warriors, in this entire shadow supply chain. So, the dignity of work is something that they really deserve.

Lalitha Krishnan: Thanks for that. It’s so true. So could you share three positive facts about garbage that emerges from your business?

19:36:

Rahul Nainani: I think looking at the larger landscape of sustainability and clean tech itself, I feel that I’m extremely optimistic in terms of solutions coming out of this space, especially because there’s been more traction that’s been in this space in the last, let’s say, three years as compared to the last three decades put together. So, there’s a lot of movement in the right direction that’s happening. While, in India, we are seeing small movements that are coming along but I think at the larger levels also, there are somethings that are coming along. Let’s, take the example of Indore, which is a very talked-about town in terms of the cleanest town in India itself year after year. And I think there’s a lot of learning that we can take from there where having visited Indore myself and seeing the case study over there, I think they have reached almost 90% plus segregation of waste at source. And, like how Gurashish has been mentioning, I think the biggest problem is that we are not sorting our waste. And if you’re not segregating, then it becomes waste and it doesn’t become a resource. So, there is a silver lining. Having seen a city like Indore do it, I think there’s a lot that we can learn from them and move towards a more sustainable future. The second thing probably is that there’s a lot of policy shift that’s coming along. With global pressure on plastic pollution, sustainable development goals have come across at the global level. Even in India, the plastic waste management rules were for the first time introduced in 2016—they never existed before–which is part of the solid waste management rules earlier. So that’s bringing around a lot more traction in this space. And then of course, our Prime Minister’s global Swachh Bharat movement, which if nothing, has at least brought in awareness to a very large level of population which is that we need to work towards a cleaner India. So, I think there’s a lot of policy pressure, also external pressure that’s coming along, which is moving towards the right direction in that sense. And then finally, I feel that when we started ReCircle in 2016 and as we sit today in 2024, we have seen this industry evolve so much that earlier clean tech as a sector did not even exist. You know, the sustainability term in large organisations did not even exist. And now we’re seeing that it’s becoming a part of board-level conversations. Also, so many innovators and startups that have come up in this space that are working towards solutions, not just for garbage, but for carbon, water, and energy working towards a more sustainable ecosystem altogether. So there’s a lot of movement and innovation that’s happening in this space and that keeps me extremely optimistic about the future while this has been a large problem in the past, there are people and there are solutions out there. It’s a matter of all of us taking those small steps and picking the right solutions.

I feel that when we started ReCircle in 2016 and as we sit today in 2024, we have seen this industry evolve so much that earlier clean tech as a sector did not even exist. The ‘sustainability’ term in large organisations did not even exist. And now we’re seeing that it’s becoming a part of board-level conversations. Also, so many innovators and startups that have come up in this space are working towards solutions, not just for garbage, but for carbon, water, and energy working towards a more sustainable ecosystem altogether. So there’s a lot of movement and innovation that’s happening in this space and that keeps me extremely optimistic about the future while this has been a large problem in the past.-Rahul Nainani

22:47:

Lalitha Krishnan: Right. Thanks for that. All right, so who are your prime customers? Are they brands that we recognise? Are there labels on recycled, repurposed products that we can look for?

23:01:

Gurashish Singh: Right, Some of the brands that we are associated with and work with are prominent organisations such as Hindustan Unilever, United Nations Development Programme, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, Mondelez. We are one of the sole partners for Tata Starbucks, helping them assist in their sustainability objectives and needs. We also work with brands across all sizes. A lot of brands in the D2C (Direct to Consumer) space as well, such as Phases, a skincare Indian brand, Honey Twigs, which is into honey and one-time use packaging. So yeah, quite a few prominent big and small brands and, and it’s, it’s been a good journey working with them.

Some of the brands that we are associated with and work with are prominent organisations such as Hindustan Unilever, United Nations Development Programme, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, Mondelez. We are one of the sole partners for Tata Starbucks, helping them assist in their sustainability objectives and needs. We also work with brands across all sizes. A lot of brands in the D2C (Direct to Consumer) space as well, such as Phases, a skincare Indian brand, Honey Twigs, which is into honey and one-time use packaging. -Gurashish Singh

23:54:

Lalitha Krishnan: Nice. So, everything you do is really impressive. And it’s on an incredible scale as far as I can see, but it’s almost–I mean since I’m speaking to you, I now know–but mostly invisible to the public eye or backstage almost to speak. So, what does ReCircle do to nip the garbage problem at the consumer level? I’m not sure if that’s a clear question.

24:21:

Rahul Nainani: I think I get an idea, in terms of what are we doing in terms of consumer awareness and the consumer-side work? So, to build a business in this space, we realise that we have to make a large impact, we need to get big brands to start taking action. Of course, consumers need to do their bit. But there’s a while we, our main focus has been on B2B and working with big brands to make that change happen, there’s a lot of work that we do on the consumer level as well. Maybe through a collection drive in the city of Mumbai. And if you want to discard your recyclable ways, we’ve also recently started getting into a textile-based collection as well– your old clothes as well as your dry waste. We have a monthly pickup that we provide to consumers where you can sign up free of cost. And we do a door-to-door pickup once a month. And, the schedule of this is something that is already finalised for the entire year. So, if you simply follow us on Instagram, our handle is recircle.in you’ll be able to see & sign up for our next collection drives.

25:28:

Rahul Nainani: We do a lot of work in the form of ‘Waste to Art’ workshops to spread awareness of how waste is not waste. We conduct workshops either in corporate offices or, even otherwise in spaces where you can sign up to see what you can make best out of waste. So, there’s a lot of awareness that happens there. We’ve worked in the past with the Start Art Festival in terms of setting up installations for waste. So, the Evelyn House installation, maybe Lalitha, you remember seeing it last year. The entire building had plastic bags sprouting out of it. We were happy to associate with the artist who helped design that in terms of spreading awareness. So that’s another thing where we use art as a way in terms of spreading awareness.

Evelyn House Art Project.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CnUUxqZILit/?img_index=1

26:21:

We do have regular clean-up drives in terms of beach cleanups and other stuff that we end up doing as well.

And, finally, we also conduct Zero-waste events. So, events are a massive area where there’s a lot of footfall of people and consumer awareness can be spread. So we work with event organisers to help organise a #zerowaste to landfill event. So may it be a music festival with the likes of let’s say #SoundRise or a #TappedFest or maybe a marathon. So, we’re doing work with the #PowaiMarathon in Mumbai as well. And, the biggest one that we’ve done until now is the #ICCWorldCup matches that happened at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Gujarat, there were more than 1,00,000 people attending each match. We managed to make sure that the entire event was zero-waste over there. More than 1000 tonnes of waste that were generated at all the matches were eventually sent for processing as compared to reaching landfills and oceans.

Managing textile waste
https://www.instagram.com/p/C4x0jXaNtZk/?img_index=1

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s very impressive.

27:27:

Rahul Nainani: So, we believe that consumers need to play a very crucial role and consumers like us and citizens like us, where we try and do a small bit of awareness through the different activities. If you also follow us on Instagram, there’s a lot of awareness material that we put out over there as well. But through these events, through these collection drives, we can touch base with different consumers at different levels as well and thereby, spread the awareness. At the end of it, the idea is that consumers generate the waste, and they also purchase the waste in a way. So, how do we get consumers to become conscious consumers at the end of it? By actually picking brands that are taking action as compared to the ones that are not. So, it is a small, small part of the puzzle that we play. But the idea is that consumers can spread this awareness across different other consumers as well.

Lalitha Krishnan: Right, complete awareness and change in lifestyle. I think you’re doing a great job.

Rahul Nainani: One step at a time. You know, I think the only thing is that it might get overwhelming that you have to do a lot, but take those small steps.

28:40:

Lalitha Krishnan:

Tell me about ReCircle’s initiatives: ClimaOne, Plastic EPR service, and Plastic Neutral Programmes. I don’t have a clear understanding of these things and whether they’ve been included in your earlier replies.

28:58:

Rahul Nainani: So maybe a few of them are something that we did speak about like we do zero waste events. Wherein, if you’re an event organiser, we help you manage the event and ensure that the waste that is generated is firstly reduced, pre-planned, and make sure that the processes are set up. And then, of course, look at managing the waste after the event is closed. We do collection drives for consumers, which is where consumers can participate by disposing of their recyclable waste as well as textile waste now.

But on the B2B side, we have a few services. We have a service where we essentially help brands to offset their plastic footprint. So, in simplicity, let’s say you’re a brand that is selling 10,000 beverage bottles in the market, we collect, sort, segregate and recycle these 10,000 bottles on your behalf and ensure that it’s getting recycled and give you credits for this. So similar to how carbon credits work, we work on plastic credits and within the plastic credit space, we have two of our services. One is our EPR service, which is more compliance based. So as a part of the plastic waste management rules, if you are a big brand, you need to collect back as much plastic as you put in the market. So we help brands offset as well as meet their regulatory compliance requirement. And then we have a similar service for medium and small-sized brands, which currently do not require to do this as a compliance, but are doing this as a voluntary activity where we not only help you offset your footprint under our Plastic Neutral Programme but also help you communicate the impact of this with your consumers. So, your consumers know what are the actions that the brand is taking. At the backbone of this is our clean tech platform called Clima One, where Clima One brings transparency and traceability to this unorganised sector. Where consumers and brands can track what’s happening is that there’s no greenwashing happening, when the material is being collected. So we are digitising and formalising the supply chain with the help of our tech platform which enables us to provide these services to the brand owners that we work with.

31:00:

Lalitha Krishnan: OK. I’m down to the last question. What thoughts would you like to leave with our listeners? Or could you share a word or a concept that adds to you know, our understanding of what you do?

31:17:

Gurashish Singh: For me, it would be segregation of waste. I think that’s where it all starts. That’s where the journey begins. So, to the listeners, it would be like wherever you are, whatever you do, start by segregating your waste. It’s not that difficult. You put segregated dry, wet and you do it the minute you’re throwing your waste. It should be a conscious decision to throw it in the right bin. And that’s what enables a beautiful future for the waste going forward.

Lalitha Krishnan:Thanks for that. I like the fact that you’re emphasising this throughout our conversation and it’s just simply segregate. All right. I hope our listeners remember that. How about you, Rahul?

32:05:

Rahul Nainani: I think, we like to rethink things at ReCircle and one of the primary things of rethinking is that when you look at something as waste, you tend to throw this in a dustbin and you realise that it has no value. But I think what people need to start rethinking is that if you rethink waste as a resource, then you start looking at it from a very different perspective. And, that’s what I want the listeners to take back after this conversation. That, rethink waste as a resource, a resource that can impact the lives of the millions of people who are working in this sector. It can also be a resource to reduce our reliability on fossil fuels and on our ever-depleting resources that we have. So if we use our waste as a resource, we can minimise the requirement of new resources and thereby move towards a more circular and sustainable future.

ReCircle staff at facility. via https://recircle.in/

33:05:

Lalitha Krishnan: True. Thank you so much. That’s being creative with your waste. Think of how you can reuse it like we all did in the 70s but I guess we didn’t have that much plastic to deal with back then.

33:18:

Rahul Nainani: I think being Indians, we’re ingrained with this mindset of reuse and reduce. And if you just look back in terms of what your grandmothers and grandfathers used to do, I think that there’s a lot that we can learn even by just going back to the basics in terms of waste management or circular economy.

Lalitha Krishnan: Thank you so much, this has been great.

Rahul Nainani: Thank you so much.

Gurashish Singh: OK, bye.

Birdsong by hillside resident, the collared owlet.

Photos Credit/Courtesy: ReCircle Podcast cover/label design by Lalitha Krishnan

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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.

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.

Mitigating the Urban Human-bee Conflict: Rajani Mani.

~ Lalitha Krishnan ~ 1 Comment

Heart of Conservation Podcast. On the #Feedspot List of Top 35 Conservation Podcasts Listen or read.

Season 4. Ep# 25 Show notes (edited)

Lalitha Krishnan: Hi there, thanks for listening in to Season 4 episode 25 of Heart of Conservation. I’m Lalitha Krishnan, bringing you stories from the wild that keep us connected with the natural world. You can read the show notes for this podcast episode right here on my blog Earthy Matters. Today I’m talking to Rajani Mani, a documentary filmmaker with Elephant Corridor Films, a Bengaluru based creative agency. Currently, she is working on “Colonies in Conflict” a film that examines the state of wild bees in a fast-developing Indian landscape. Rajini, thank you so much for joining me on Heart of Conservation.

Rajani Mani: Thank you so much for inviting me. I am happy to have this conversation with you since you were quite interested in my work when we chatted. So, I’m quite excited to speak with you as well.

0:56

Lalitha Krishnan: Thanks. Of all the creatures and critters in the world what got you interested in bees?

Rajani Mani: It’s not like I’m an insect lover from my childhood or anything like that. What got me interested was something that was recurrent which I was observing around me and which was bothering me. Essentially it was these big bee hives that you see in the cities and in Bangalore, we have plenty of those on balconies. The management is called for removing these honey bee hives and the way it was being done bothered me. You know, by spraying pesticides and there are so many beehives in these high-rise apartments that I was observing all the time. That disturbed me a lot and I was trying out ways to protect it and I got interested in the story…in the bees. And I started researching them and that’s how I got interested. I love bees, I love insects. But I was like everybody else you know. If you think of insects, we humans are generally not very fond of insects. I was one of those.

Lalitha Krishnan: So not only did you get over the fear you started loving them.

Rajani Mani: There was no fear per se but there was some disgust to be very honest. Insects…for me it would be cockroaches. We are generally disgusted by cockroaches. We try to get rid of them. Bees are there. We understand pollination we studied it in school but come to think of it after all the research I’ve done—we’ve not even touched the tip of the iceberg in schools and colleges when we are taught about pollination. There’s a lot that an average person does not understand. I was one among those. I am actually thrilled to see my own transformation after the process of filming started.

3:25

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s great. So how many species of bees do you find in India? And, apart from the obvious hives, where else do they reside? On the ground, I’ve read. I was surprised.

Rajani Mani: There are over 700 species of bees in India. Here I have to make a distinction between solitary bees and social bees. The bee that we generally see in advertisements or on cute emojis or cartoons is the honey bee. And of the honey bee itself, we have five different kinds in India. The rest of it is all solitary bees. Solitary bees nest in a variety of places. It could be old deadwood, it could be soil, it could be any of the wild spaces you know? You name it, some of them construct little nests with leaves and twigs and things like that. Some of them burrow in deadwood and make little nooks for themselves. The social bees nest in beehives which is what we are familiar with. We see these beehives on balconies, on water tanks, on trees. So, these are social bees and they nest in large numbers. There are tens of thousands of them in one hive. So, this is the first distinction which is that one set is social bees and the other set are solitary bees that nest in a variety of spaces but basically, they all live alone. Social bees live in societies just like us.

As I was saying five kinds of honey bees live in India. We have the apis which is the honey bee. You have the apis dorsata which is the rock bee that most people in the cities are familiar with; they are quite frightened of them because they are quite temperamental. You see these gigantic, two feet by three feet hives. Then you have the apis laboriosa which is found in the Himalayan region and that is kind of a cousin of dorsata. Then you have apis andreniformis in the North East area. Then apis florea which you can find in Bangalore and all cities. Most people don’t notice them that much because they hide in bushes, in trees. They have more round and smaller hives. Then there is the Apis cerana. Apis cerana is in India, traditionally kept for beekeeping. They are the only cavity-nesting bees found in India.

In 1983, apis mellifera which is a European honey bee was introduced by the (Indian) government to promote honey bee farming. So, these are the varieties that are generally found here. The distinction between hive ??? nesting and cavity-nesting is that cavity-nesting can also be used for beekeeping.

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s so interesting. You know we hear of animal corridors and migratory flight paths for birds and more commonly for the monarch butterflies. What about bees? Where do they come from and where do they go from here?

Rajani Mani: Again, if you’re a ground-nesting or a tree cavity, tree hollow cavity-nesting solitary bee species then you don’t really go anywhere. You just stay in that little area and you survive there. They’re not migratory, not as far as I know. Whereas in the case of other honey bees like the apis florea there is no migratory behaviour as such. Cerana is a cavity-nesting bee. I have not heard of them migrating. The only migratory honey bee in this lot is the apis dorsata. Also, the study of bees is at very early stages right now. We haven’t found out how far they migrate, where they go. These are also a): slightly difficult considering the size of these insects. But there is one study if you look online. A scientist in Sri Lanka says that these bees can travel up to 200 km. So, no concrete evidence has happened but there is an understanding that there are two kinds of migrations that the dorsata do. One is short term migrations which are in search of forage. Eucalyptus trees or other flowering trees are in plenty in one season. Once the forage of that season is over, then the bees would migrate to a shorter distance to find more food for their huge colonies. Because there are tens of thousands of them in one colony. They need a lot of food to take care of their progeny and you know, their whole hive. So, they need to constantly find good food sources as well as good water sources. So, they keep moving. They do a long-range migration which is generally just before the onset of the monsoons. And anecdotally, I can tell you that, because there are no research papers on it—there is some work in progress—so anecdotally speaking, we do know that the honey bee colonies in the city…they disappeared just before the monsoon and returned in October. So, from October to about March-end, you would see bee colonies in Bangalore. I talk about Bangalore because it is my city. I understand what’s happening here and I’m sure similar patterns perhaps may be observed in, let’s say, Gurgaon or Bombay or wherever. People from all of these cities do reach out to me and say, “What should we do?” we do know that dorsata colonies are there in urban centres all over India.

You talked about a corridor. So, there is a nectar corridor which—since I’m not a scientist, I cannot speak about in a very informative way—but from my understanding, there is a corridor which is between October to March in Bangalore in the western ghats when all the endemic trees are blooming. There’s a rich source of food available to these bees then. That’s also when they do the colony multiplication and so forth. 

11:36

Lalitha Krishnan: It will be interesting to have an ‘ebee’ just like we have ebird.

Rajani Mani: There is some talk about that somewhat and it has been developed as well but not so extensively and it has not been launched as yet by the NCBS but we are planning to do it. There is some delay on their part. I don’t know if it’s really an ebee thing because, you know, scientists find it difficult to track colonies, to actually monitor and spot the beehive,—when they leave, when they come back—this data would be very important and helpful to the scientist. Some people do put up bee sightings on the India Biodiversity Portal. What kind of bee they have spotted, where they have spotted.

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s the place to go then.

Rajani Mani: Yes, but it’s not as widespread. You are right. I was telling my friend as well. We go bird watching. If we go bee watching, I’m sure we’ll spot so many different kinds of bees and then read up about them. It will be interesting for us as well, you know?

12:52

Lalitha Krishnan: Yes, the thing is it’s about 12 degrees over here, it’s really cold and I’m still seeing bees. Sometimes they’re just trapped in the house. Interestingly, you spoke about them being around from October so I was thinking they’re here in such a cold environment but I guess they’re Himalayan bees.

Rajani Mani: Where are you right now?

Lalitha Krishnan: Ranikhet, Uttarakhand.

Rajani Mani: You must be seeing the local bees of that place whichever they are.

Lalitha Krishnan: Yes.

13:21

Lalitha Krishnan: So, even elephants are wary of beehive activity. In Africa, they actually use bee pheromones to drive away elephants? Tell us why ordinary humans shouldn’t be afraid of bees? 

Rajani Mani: I get asked this question because people think I am out to tell people not to be or be scared of bees that’s your choice. But I just want people to understand and respect them. Because, they are also at heart, wild creatures.

The only way to avoid fear is to try and understand where they are coming from. What is their nature like? What is their inherent behaviour? Right? Once we understand their behaviour and pattern and what they are all about, then we wouldn’t feel this sense of fear like…even a tiger in the jungle. We are fearful but we are also respectful. So, these insects also deserve that degree of reverence is what I feel.

-Rajani Mani

Lalitha Krishnan: Right.

Rajani Mani: They do a lot and just by saying,” Oh I’m scared of bees and they’re going to sting…” Yes. Even a dog will sting if you trouble it right? Every creature which is wild at heart is going to come from a place where it has an inherent response to distress. And bees, are no different in that sense.

Lalitha Krishnan: So ‘respect’ is the word.

Rajani Mani: Yes. Exactly.

15:05

Lalitha Krishnan: Rajani, could you briefly tell us about life in a beehive? I mean, we have all read about it you know? The queen, drones, worker bees which are all female by the way—why am I not surprised? —and their roles, seasonality etc.

Rajani Mani: Yes, it’s a female-centric matriarchal system followed in a beehive. You have the queen bee who is the whole heart and soul of the hive. And everything—all the bees and all the activities taking place in the beehive is taking into consideration her protection. And, her conservation. So, she’s at the very heart. And then you have the worker bees who in their lifetime play a variety of roles. They have roles like nurse bees or roles like guard bees and they have foragers who go out and forage for food and water. Then you have the drones whose only job is to mate with the queen when she is ready for mating. Their life cycle is also very interesting because the queen lives for 3-4 years and the worker bees live for several months, maybe 3-4 months not more. And, the drone dies, the moment mating happens. So, as I said, the queen is at the heart of the whole colony. And that’s why it’s also important that when you have a beehive on your balcony, or on a tree or you are scared—irrationally scared—you have to use methods where the queen bee isn’t affected and she survives. Because if she survives, she can move on and make another hive in a very short time.

17:30

Lalitha Krishnan: OK

Rajani Mani: If the queen dies it’s the end of that entire colony as it stands.

Lalitha Krishnan: Wow. You know according to the WWF website, about 90% of all wildlife plants and 75% of all leading global crops depend on animal pollinators. One out of every three mouthfuls of our food depends on pollinators. I don’t know the latest figures but in Bangalore itself, I know several beehives are removed every day. That’s just one city. It makes you wonder how endangered bees are in India. Whether they are listed by the IUCN? Also, what happens if all the bees were to disappear one day. Is there a cascading effect like how wolves save/change rivers?

Rajani Mani: (Talking about urban beehives). At one time you will have at least 10 hives. One of the things about dorsata bees which are in the wild also together, they build nest aggregates. You won’t see just one beehive on a tree. You’ll see several.

So, in some sense, in the cities, when the dorsata bees make their nests, the city apartments are like nest aggregates for them. It’s like a large tree on which all these cousins are building their nests. So, the one time a bee-hive remover is called, he would maximize his time you know? He would at one stretch remove six of them. So, let’s say there are 20,000 high rise apartments in Bangalore. And, there are 6-8 beehives in the given season. You can just guess how many beehives are being removed during this period. It’s a scary shocking number in any case…the number of beehives that are removed routinely.

19:25:

That’s one part of it. Is it listed in the IUCN?  No. It is not listed in the IUCN. There is no data that says that these bees are under threat. In India, in fact, there is no data at all. There is no data about the number of bees we have. Like, the kinds of bees, the species that we have….it’s incomplete data. Whatever we have, is old, British times data. Now, there are some amazing people like Dr Belavadi –he’s a taxonomist—who are generating data and are collecting all the records. There is a lot of bee species yet waiting to be discovered. I can tell you that from 2015-2021, every year, the number of beehives, I am getting in my society have reduced. I was filming in Coorg and the farmers tell at one time, around February, after Shivratri, the bees start coming. All the forests are blooming at that time. And, at one time you have literally 100s of dorsata bees on a single tree. That’s how they are. They always come back to the same location, year after year after year. Because they have something that’s called site fidelity. That’s the unique thing about dorsata bees.

21:08

And if this farmer says 30 years ago we had 100 hives now we barely see 30 or some years the bees skip altogether like 2020, when I went there, they had skipped altogether. There is anecdotal data that perhaps there is a decline but I cannot say that there is a decline. I don’t think that while the forest and crops are all dependent on various kinds of animal pollination including our bee pollination, how would it have a cascading effect? It would have a cascading effect. In fact, there are a couple of things that are interconnected in this.

Bees are a keystone species. The minute I say they are a keystone species and if I remove-and you would know that if you remove a keystone species and there is a disturbance in the species, the whole arc will fall. This is the same case with bees. Not only honey bees-it’s not only dorsata I am partial to, it’s all kinds of bees.

22:25

Lalitha Krishnan: OK. What do you hope to achieve with your documentary, ‘Colonies in Conflict’?

Rajani Mani: I think, I want people to see bees in a way they haven’t seen bees before. I want them to really notice them. Because people understand what honey is, they consume honey, they consume food, that’s why they survive. All of that is a result of pollination. All kinds of specialist bees pollinate special crops that we are used to eating now. But we don’t understand the input or the value of bee pollination whether it’s our food or our forests. So, I hope that for a moment that this film will make you stop, think, pause and just observe the beauty of the bees and what they do as in what we do to them.

23:20

Lalitha Krishnan: Right.

Rajani Mani: You know there are a lot of films that are made from the human angle of how dangerous it is to hunt for honey. Honey hunters who climb on all kinds of cliffs to harvest honey…

Lalitha Krishnan: I’ve seen those.

Rajani Mani: But this (film) is still is not about honey, it’s about the bees and it’s about the very precious service that the bees give and provide to us.

Lalitha Krishnan: Excellent. And you’ve been filming for quite a few years, right?

Rajani Mani: I’ve been filming since Oct. 2019 but we had a brief pause because of the pandemic and also the shoot is seasonal. I can only film when the bees are around. Like I said, the flow is October to March or April is the period that I can film. During the monsoon, you don’t see bees. There’s nothing I can film at that time.

24:20

Lalitha Krishnan: OK. So could you share a conservation-related word that’s significant to you? It could be bee-related or not be?

Rajani Mani: At the moment, it would be ‘pollination’, you know? Because, I think pollination of our wild spaces, our forests are dependent on insects like bees, whether they are social bees or solitary bees. And, we need to recognise that we have to continue to have forests space, have safe spaces for our animals, for our biodiversity as such. So ‘pollination’ it is.

Lalitha Krishnan: I was hoping it would be. We keep hearing of putting out sugar water for bees in summer. I don’t know if this is a weird question but how can we not kill with kindness? Could you share some guidelines on what not to do?

Rajani Mani: You don’t really need to put out sugar water but what you can do… They will figure it out. The bees are there because they have found food sources close by. If there is no food source, they will not be bees there. So don’t worry about their food source or their forage and feed them sugar water and all that but they do need water. Especially social bees because they build these large hives and they have such a huge population and it gets hot in the summers. They need a lot of water to keep cooling off. So, what you can do is have a shallow bowl and fill it with pebbles and a little water and keep it just like you do for birds, you know, you place it for the bees.

The bees are in your balcony they are there for a very short time; three months, not more than that. So, try and not to use that balcony especially if they are dorsata bees. They are the only ones that build hives on balconies. And, close your window meshes and close your curtains by 4:30 pm because these bees are phototactic. They get attracted to light and they come inside the home. Actually, the ones that come inside the home are foragers.  They are out foraging. That’s when they get attracted by the light and they come inside, and then can’t break away. They won’t sting you. They are you know, in distress themselves. There’s a lot about these dorsata bees which is interesting and crazy…I don’t know if you have the time for all that.

Lalitha Krishnan: Yes, especially in urban spaces it’s good to know what you should do and what you shouldn’t do.

Rajani Mani: So, let’s say, when the bees want to build a hive, a bunch of them will come earlier and they do a recce and they will see if your balcony or your space is suitable for them. And at that space you see let’s say, 50 or 100 bees hanging or festooning on your balcony, you can light a herbal agarbatti and the smoke will distress them and they will think that this is an unsuitable place and they will leave by themselves.

27:50

The other thing you can do is…let’s say you were out on a holiday, you came back and you find this hive and one of you is allergic and you can’t afford to have this thing…what you can do is again light a herbal agarbatti –not a doop—below the hive for a couple of days, like 2-3 days. So, what happens is when the smoke comes it disturbs the bees. So, they decide this is no longer a viable place. And the queen will stop laying eggs. But they will not fly away immediately. They will take about 15 days which is the period they need for all the food and the resources –the entire brood to emerge. Once the entire brood emerges, then the bees fly away to another place. But the queen will stop laying lays once the hive decides this place is no longer viable. Then, it’s a two-week waiting period. Then they leave. So, you can try these things you know? The more conservative ways rather than pest management spraying or taking matters into your own hands because that’s quite cruel.

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s fantastic. Thanks for enlightening us about the bees. It’s been really nice talking to you Rajani.

Rajani Mani: My pleasure. Thank you so much.

I hope you enjoyed listening to Rajani Mani and all about bees as much as I have. Do check out some links about her work and the whole transcript for the show on my blog Earthy Matters. You can listen to Heart of Conservation on many platforms. You can also write to me at earthymatters013@gmail.com I’m Lalitha Krishnan signing off. Till next time stay safe, be kind to bees and do subscribe for more episodes.

Birdsong by hillside resident, the collared owlet.

Podcast cover photo courtesy of Rajani Mani. Artwork: 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.

Useful Links: https://www.elephantcorridorfilms.com/

https://indiabiodiversity.org/

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Intrepid Woman Leader Ep#5

#HeartofConservationPodcast #storiesfromthewild
~ Lalitha Krishnan ~ Leave a comment

Ep#5 Show notes (edited)

Lalitha Krishnan: You’re listening to Heart of Conservation podcast Episode #5. I’m your host Lalitha Krishnan bringing you stories from the wild. Stay tuned for exciting interviews and inspiring stories that keep you connected to our natural world.

In full bloom
Sejal with visitors
Visitor with Viru the guide

Lalitha Krishnan: A 20 min walk from my home is a natural forest that forms a wildlife corridor between the Shivaliks and the middle Himalaya. Over the years, I have seen this stretch of land being converted into the incredible Jabarkhet Nature Reserve. This is the only privately owned and managed wildlife sanctuary in Uttarakhand. It came about thanks to the vision and effort of one woman. She practically commuted every weekend from Delhi or whenever she could get away from her demanding job to make this happen.

I am so pleased to introduce you to the woman who truly needs no introduction. She’s Dr. Sejal Wohra, Programme Director at Worldwide Fund for Nature- India. She has been working for over 25 years of the field of environmental conservation and spearheads a team of over 300 professionals tackling the whole gamut of conservation concerns. Welcome to Heart of Conservation podcast Dr. Sejal Worah. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Thank you

Lalitha Krishnan: My first question to you is, as a woman leader who’s in a very influential and enviable position at WWF India, what has your journey been like through all the years?

Dr. Sejal Wohra: It’s hard to really explain the journey because some things were things I was determined to do and some things just happened in life. I grew up in and around Mussoorie so we’ve always grown up in nature. Ever since I was little, I kind of had this affinity for nature and as I grew up, I knew I wanted to do something. Something that would keep me close to nature and ecology. So I went to school like we all do, I went through university like we all do. Then after I finished my bachelors in Mumbai I kind of looked around for something that would, you know, help me learn more about nature.

At that time in India, there was no university that offered anything in conservation. There was no Wildlife Institute of India. There was no NCBS. It was also a time in the 80s when—I mean nothing has changed today—when people were looking to the US as a future study option. So I said, OK, let me look around. And lo and behold, I was amazed to find that there were so many universities in the US that offered degrees in wildlife conservation. I did my Masters in wildlife conservation. But, I realized, after I finished my Masters that while I enjoyed the courses and the learning in the US I really wanted to do something on the ground. I really wanted to do applied conservation…and I didn’t think I wanted to do it in the US. So I was thinking, what should I do. Should I do a Ph.D.? Should I go back to India? My worry about coming back to India at that time was not that I was a woman in this field but that I wouldn’t get a job. I just thought, who is going to give anybody a job with a degree in wildlife biology, wildlife conservation in those days? Funnily enough, the day I was graduating there was somebody from India who came to give a talk. …in the US, at my university. It turned out that he was the CEO of WWF India at that time.

Lalitha Krishnan: Oh my goodness.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Bizarre. Anyway, he gave his talk and at the end of the talk—he looked at me because I was obviously Indian…I was the only Indian in that class–he asked me, “So, what do you want to do next?” I said, “Well I would love to come back to India but no one is going to give me a job?” He said, “Why don’t you come meet me, we’ll give you a job.” So, I said, “OK”. I packed my bags and landed up in Mumbai.

A week later, I was at the door of WWF India saying, “Here I am, you promised me a job.” Yeah, that was my first job.” My first job really was doing nature education at WWF India in Mumbai. It was great fun. We used to run these nature camps. There were these iconic nature camps that WWF ran in those days. And I think a whole generation of conservationists in India, you know of my generation have come through those nature camps. It is kind of something that has died out.

Lalitha Krishnan: You think?

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Well, it’s happening but in a very different way than what we used to do. But, yes, that was my grounding in conservation. When I came, I was thrown right into the deep end. We used to spend weeks and weeks and weeks in the forests with small kids teaching them about nature. What more do you want?

Lalitha Krishnan: Yeah.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Anyway, I did that for a while then I kind of started getting itchy feet. Again, I wanted to do again, something that would ground me and take me back to conservation. We used to travel a lot in those days with friends; we used to hike and trek in the Sahaydris. There was one place, that caught my imagination. This was a place in south Gujarat called the Dangs which was a tribal district, which was very unique in those days. And I thought it would be fun to spend a few years just studying the ecology of this place. So I managed to get a grant and I went off to…study ecology in the Dhans and that was challenging.

Let me tell you. That was the first time that I felt that—you know you had asked me what it is to be a woman in this field?

Lalitha Krishnan: Right, Yes.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: That was the first time I felt a little bit alone and I felt this is not what I am meant to do in India. Which is live completely alone in the forests with tribals… you know? Spending hours in the forests, driving a jeep at four in the morning, through remote areas, all by myself… People would come and you know, and visit me once in a while, and many of them would remark on this and say, “What are earth is a woman like you doing here sitting here in the middle of the night in a remote forest guest house surrounded by maps and dead insects.” “What’s going on?”

Lalitha Krishnan: In low light?

Dr. Sejal Wohra: In low light, No light. The good thing about it was my family never questioned me. That was the great part. That, despite my doing something very unconventional in those days, I had the full support of my parents and my family which is what helped. Because without that I don’t think, I could have survived those years.

Again it was serendipity. I was sitting in the forest rest house one fine day and a group of university professors from Pune University walked in. And they said, “What are you doing?” And, I told them what I was doing. And they said, “This is amazing work and you have amazing data. Why don’t you register for a Ph.D.?” So I said OK, why not?” So that’s how my Ph.D. started.

Lalitha Krishnan: Oh…Ok

Dr. Sejal Wohra: I registered with the University of Pune. I finished my Ph.D. and then again, I was at a loose end. Believe me, it was not an easy sector to find a job in.

Lalitha Krishnan: Still isn’t, is it?

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Still isn’t. So there I was, with a Ph.D. in environmental sciences and was wondering how what do I do? Funnily enough–so what happened then?– there was an international conference on parks and protected areas. This was happening in Venezuela, of all the places. Someone suggested to me, “Why not go to this conference because your work is really interesting?” “And you should present a paper.” So somehow I managed to get a grant and went off for this conference and presented my paper. A gentleman walked up to me after the presentation and said, “That was very interesting. Would you like to work with us?”

Lalitha Krishnan: Oh wow

Dr. Sejal Wohra: I was like, “Who’s this? Who are you?” “Work where?” He said, “I’m the programme head of WWF in the UK and I would like you to come work with us in the UK and head our Asia team.” I said, “ No, no I don’t want to do that…

Lalitha Krishnan: This is just from your speech…your presentation?

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Yah. Just from my presentation. I said, “No way, I am a field person, I do not want to sit in an office. I definitely do not want to go to the UK. I want to go back and sit in another forest you know? This is what we think in that stage in life because we are so passionate about what we do we think we want to do it forever. Be close to nature. Be close to wildlife. Anyway, a lot of my friends convinced me and said, “You should try this for a couple of years.” “You’ve done enough.” “Why don’t you give it a shot?” “What’s the harm?”

So, I said, “What’s the harm?” I packed my bags and went off to the UK. I spent a couple of years there—about three years in the UK. It was an interesting job but I was just aching to get back.

Lalitha Krishnan: Really?

Dr. Sejal Wohra: I just could not handle…it was fun…but I just thought, one more miserable winter in the UK and I’m just going to die. So then, I wrote my own proposal. By that time, I realized that I was very interested in capacity building, training, and teaching. So I wrote up a proposal, I got a grant and then and I moved to Bangkok.

Then, I spent five years in Thailand but it was more of a regional hub and at that time I was working in 15 different countries. It was amazing.. so everything from Pakistan to Fiji.

Lalitha Krishnan: Sounds like a dream.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: It was. It was really interesting and really, really fun. I saw so much conservation. I got so much experience in learning what goes on in different countries. But then, once again I realized that I had had enough after five years and I always knew that I wanted to come back to India. It was never in my mind that I would stay away from India forever. I had been away by then for more than 10 years. I felt like if I don’t go back now I am going to be out of touch. I don’t know what’s going on in my own country. So, I packed my bags. I came back to India and landed up in Mussoorie, which was home. I worked out of Mussoorie for several years. I was doing consultancy for the UN; I was travelling, I was working in India…  After three or four years of doing that I again started getting a little bit of, you know, this feeling, that I’m doing great stuff, I’m doing well as a professional, I’ve got a good career but am I making a difference. I’m doing lots of little things, I am advising a lot of people on how they should do things but what difference am I making to India, to a place or to a people? Again, the WWF India job just happened. It was something that people have been telling me for a long time, saying, “You’re in India, you know WWF, why don’t you go and work for WWF India? I said, “No way I’m going to be a manager, I hate management, I have never been trained in management. I’m a conservationist. What do I know about people management?” But all that was in vain. I got into the job and I have been there for over 10 years. We have a great team. I am proud to say I built up a fantastic team and a great programme. Today I feel pretty satisfied that I have made a difference not just in the people I have trained…anywhere in the world, it’s amazing. I go to so many places in the world and people come up to me and say, “That training I did with you changed my life”.

Lalitha Krishnan: Really? Wow.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Or “changed my career or changed the course of my thinking”. And that is an amazing feeling. Also in WWF, I think we have gone on a long journey. Things have changed a lot. Finally, my little project in Mussoorie, Jaberkhet, it’s been one of the most satisfying projects in my life.

Lalitha Krishnan: We will definitely talk about that a little later.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: So that’s my journey. It’s been fantastic and I’ve never really felt hampered being a woman in this journey. Except when I came back to India and didn’t have grey hair. Because people would not take you seriously. But now that I have grey hair and I look kind of experienced.

Lalitha Krishnan: Haha, you are experienced

Dr. SejalWohra: The woman factor doesn’t come in the way and people take me more seriously.

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s pretty incredible. You were talking about your journey in the last 25 years. What has changed since you started and what is the state of conservation in India?

Dr. SejalWohra: Let me talk about the good and not so good. On the good side, what has changed is just the sheer number of people in this sector. As I told you when I started, I didn’t know where I would go, what I would do. There were so few people who were in this sector and most of us were wondering what would be our future. My parents, my relatives would get a lot of pressure;. “What is your daughter doing?” “How is she ever going to get a job?” “Just get her married off.” Because this is a crazy field to be in.

But today, it’s amazing. The number of universities offering this course in conservation and wildlife biology…the number of young people opting for this and the amount of cross-fertilization that is going on… It’s no longer a sector in conservation and wildlife biology… it cuts across everything. It cuts across law, communications, policy… The sector has exploded in a very positive way. There are lots and lots of people and lots of momentum. Lots of good research going on…lots of activism, going on. That part to me is the good part in terms of what’s changed dramatically.

I think the challenge is that we are not winning too many battles. That sometimes gets frustrating. In the last 10 years I’ve started feeling a lit bit –what should I say, depressed is not the right word—a little bit less optimistic than I used to. This is a sector in which you have to feel super optimistic. You have to keep telling yourself that every little victory is a battle won. And that whatever you save, whatever you delay, wherever you can get a small win, you have to celebrate it. Now we are finding that even the small wins are getting harder and harder to get. All the news that you see today is negative—it’s depressing…it’s how much we are losing. Certainly, on some fronts, we are doing well but overall the picture is not looking great for India.

The challenges are just starting. For a country that’s on an economic precipice, where things are going to boom, one just wonders how we are going to balance the conservation requirements and ecology with the development that we need. I am not saying that we don’t need that development.

Lalitha Krishnan: Is it because we are not highlighting the positive? Is it because media tends to just highlight the negative? Do you think that’s (one of) the reasons?

Dr. Sejal Wohra: It’s a bit of both. Yes, media, of course, like sensational stuff. And usually, sensational stuff is negative. Very often and I can tell you this. When we’ve tried to put out positive stories, and we’ve tried to put out positive stories, and we put out a lot because nobody wants to hear gloom and doom all the time we are often told by the editors of the newspaper said, “this is too boring”. “It’s too bland.” But, the minute there is a negative story we get approached by a hundred of them saying, “Give us a sound bite, tell us what’s going on?” And the other problem is nobody wants to hear the story. Everybody wants a sound bite. And sound bites are often negative. Or they don’t tell you the story. When you try to connect the dots, they cut out all the stuff. So really we do not understand the full picture… we do not understand the complexity of what’s going on. We are just working on sound bites and single sentences and twitter and stuff like that.

Lalitha Krishnan: Right, and we tend to believe what we hear or see (on social media).

Dr. Sejal Wohra: That is a challenge I think. Trying to tell the story in a smart way. This is what we keep telling ourselves. We challenge ourselves to say in this era of short attention span – where everyone has a short attention span – how do you grab the attention but also sustain it? We need to get smarter too. We need to get smarter at how we communicate. I think we conservationist haven’t learned the art of communicating with today’s generation. Unless we do that, we are going to lose their interest.

Lalitha Krishnan: I would have thought today’s generation is more aware than our generation.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: They are more aware but they also want short-term solutions

Lalitha Krishnan: True.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: It’s like …we do this ‘Earth Hour’ thing, every year. You’ve heard about it? It’s a single action.

Lalitha Krishnan: Yes.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: You switch off your lights and you feel good about it. Stop using straws and you will feel good about it. Give up this and you will feel good about it. Which is all good and they’re very quick to pick those up. Those are snappy messages that you can send out on social media and stuff. But really, it’s about a lifestyle change.

Lalitha Krishnan: And that’s hard for them.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Yeah, that’s hard And the danger is by giving people these short fixes you make them feel that they have done their bit. And that’s enough.

Lalitha Krishnan: OK

Dr. Sejal Wohra: So, there is a good and a bad side to it as well. The good side is that people are doing something. The bad side is they think it that is enough. Unless we tell the whole story.

Lalitha Krishnan: OK. You worked in over 20 countries in south-east Asia, thePacific and East Africa.  Can you tell us your most unforgettable experience? It could positive or tell us positive and negative? Do you remember (them)?

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Let me start with the negative. I am not sure if it was negative but it was shocking. If you’re in the conservation field and in your sort of formative years, one of the places that make an unforgettable impression on your mind that you read about and you dream about is obviously rain forests. Rainforests are the thing. And, Borneo is another place we all dream about. We have this picture of Borneo in our heads. I got a chance– of course as part of my travels in South East Asia– to go to Borneo. I was excited beyond belief. I was so thrilled to be going to Borneo. I had this image in my head. I had read all the books, seen all the movies. There I was, landing in Sabah. We were driving, actually, to a very remote village where we were working with the community there. So, I was excited. This was the place on the border of Sabah and Kalimantan as deep in Borneo as you can get. And, we drove for something like seven hours on makeshift roads mostly. And it was probably one of the most depressing drives of my life.

Lalitha Krishnan: Why?

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Because the only thing you saw was logging trucks. The only thing you’re so was logged over forests. Or burnt forests. Or forests, that has been converted to palm oil. And literally, I must’ve counted thousands and thousands of trucks with these enormous rainforest trees…

Lalitha Krishnan: Oh nooo. Your dream must have just shattered.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: I just thought… Frankly, I don’t think I have recovered from that. And I never wanted to go again. I’ve been since to other parts of Borneo–they are amazing and remarkable –it just made me realize that there is no stopping the amount of resources that humans need.

Lalitha Krishnan: How long back was this?

Dr. SejalWohra: About 20 years ago.

Lalitha Krishnan: And, they’re still at it?

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Yeah, still at it. And it’s relentless. I think that was my wake up moment to the reality is that going on. Of course, I realize that there are so many issues. We work on logging, all kinds of issues related to logging but at that time, I was just starting. And it was an eye-opener.

In terms of something exciting and really positive… I sort of shifted my career a little bit in terms of pure conservation to working with people and communities and looking at the interface between social issues and conservation. That was very interesting for me… something I was deeply interested in.

So as part of that, we were working in Thailand with the fishing community. The problem here was there was a small fishing community, which was heavily threatened by trawlers. So the trawlers were coming in and scooping up all the fish and destroying the entire ecosystem small fishermen were just being left out in the cold. And we wanted to work with them to devise strategies on how we could help them conserve their resources and you know, deal with the trawler menace.

It was amazing. We were sitting with these fishermen… they would go out fishing all day and come back dog tired at the end of the day. Then we would start a discussion with them. Literally, we would sit through the night— they were Muslim fisherman, in southern Thailand —they would go, say their prayers, come back and we sit and sit and sit, talk, drink coffee and talk, drink coffee and talk all the way into morning until they had to go for prayer again. Literally, we would spend night after night sitting down and devising strategies and thinking about how we could solve the problem. And to me, just this incredible connect this community had with their issues, their resources… and how eager they were, how committed they were to solve their problem made me realize that the solution to conservation problems doesn’t lie with governments, doesn’t lie in policies, doesn’t lie with conservationists but it lies with the people.

Lalitha Krishnan: With the people.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: And again, that was an eye-opener for me. For me, it is just a career, a job but for these people, it’s their life. It was a mind-blowing experience for me to spend a week just talking through the night and coming up with a solution. I still think that was one of the most successful projects that I have been associated with.

Lalitha Krishnan: So that must have been hard because I’m sure none of them spoke English and you needed a translator. But over and above all of these issues, you still managed to solve the problems.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Yeah. We had an amazing team in Thailand. Some people were very connected. I learned over those years –those five years in South East Asia to do a lot through translations. I did speak a smattering of Thai… and you realize when you work in different cultures how quickly you start picking up body language, how quickly you start picking up words, phrases, tones…

Lalitha Krishnan: It’s not really a barrier in the end.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Yeah. Exactly. If you’re on the same side then actually you can communicate without languages.

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s amazing.

Lalitha Krishnan: Dr. Wohra, the Himalayas, I know, is a big part of who you are today. You grew up here as a child; you worked here as a young professional in the past and even now you continue to be passionate and immersed in projects in and around these hillsides. I was wondering if you had any apprehensions at all or concerns about the future of these beautiful mountains we are living on.

Kind of Thistle
Saussurea obvallata
Fan Kamal

Dr. Sejal Wohra: The Himalayas are of course unique. You and I both know this and we live here because we love the place. I genuinely think that in India, we don’t realize the value of the Himalayas although; we pay a lot of lip service to the Himalayas. We talk about Himalayan ecosystems… there is a number of missions. The Ministry of Environment has a mission on the Himalayas. NITI Aayog has a sustainable Himalayas sort of mission as well. We have tourism things that focus on the Himalayas. We have adventure people who are focusing on the Himalayas. We have so much that in theory is dedicated to sustainable development or sustainable tourism. The word sustainable…

Lalitha Krishnan: The most commonly used word.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Every time they talk about the Himalayas they say it’s going to be about sustainable development. But the actual development that you see in the Himalayas, particularly in Uttarakhand I should say, is anything but sustainable. I mean anyone can look around these mountains–not just Mussoorie, but anywhere you go– and see that and neither is the road building sustainable, neither is the infrastructure sustainable. And by sustainable I don’t just mean ecologically, I also mean from the human point of view. Neither is our river management sustainable. Neither is our tourism sustainable. Absolutely, to my mind, this is a disaster waiting to happen, you know? The sad part to me is that disasters are happening- both small and big; annually, yearly. But that does not seem to change the paradigm or the trajectory of development.

So what saddens me the most is actually when I look at the formation of Uttarakhand – and you and I were probably both here when it was formed from UP—the battle cry at that time for Uttarakhand was around ‘Jal, Jungle Zameen.’ It was all around resources. You know the ‘Chipko’ movement started here. This was a watershed movement in Indian environment activism. So this is the home of resources and resource management, and people’s activism. And today when you look at what’s going on; today when I actually look at people sitting in dharna to be allowed to cut hundreds of trees; to be allowed to build roads…I am not denying or saying we don’t need roads. But isn’t there some way to balance the kind of development we are doing? Shouldn’t we give some leeway to the future generations? Shouldn’t we think about what it is going to look like in 15 or 20 years if we trash every piece of these amazing mountains that we’ve got?

Today, I looked out of the window and saw another big part of the mountainside being gouged out… just literally being gouged out of the mountain to build another huge development. Just in front of my eyes on a steep slope.

Lalitha Krishnan: It’s already packed with this. There is hardly any ground left to build on.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Every hill slope that I’m looking at is now just a series of buildings. Again, this is unsustainable. This not good for people, or for the environment. The challenge I think, which we face in the Himalayas is, on the one hand, we say we need to treat these mountains differently because they are different from the plains—that was the whole argument for getting different mountain states but the development that we are doing in the mountains is no different from the development we are doing in the plains. The greed that we are seeing in the people of the mountains to make as much money as quickly as possible is no different from what we have seen anywhere else. So I think this whole pride that separated us—and we felt, you know, we are from the mountains and we are different—to me is a tragedy. Frankly, it’s just a tragedy.

So if there is one thing that depresses me more than anything else it is the seeing the way the way Himalayas are being destroyed systematically in front of our eyes.

Lalitha Krishnan: And you’re talking about the whole Indian Himalayas? Or you feel its worse in Uttarakhand?

Dr. Sejal Wohra: I’m talking of the western Himalayas more. The eastern Indian Himalayas are still, of course in a better shape. We work in Arunachal. It’s still very different.

Lalitha Krishnan: It’s hard to get there.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: It’s probably the reason, right? Sikkim is interesting. Second is an interesting model. Because Sikkim always claimed they have a different development paradigm. They have a different form of tourism. But if you look at Sikkim today — look at Gangtok— it’s no different, right? Gangtok looks no different than Darjeeling or from Simla– Again, another urban disaster in the making. Some parts of cleaner, it may be better managed but at the end of the day, it looks like in an urban disaster in the making. Sikkim has just opened its first airport. We know what happens. I saw Ladakh change dramatically in the last 20 years once the flights started coming in and it is unrecognizable today.

So, with all the good intentions…Ladakh had probably the strongest tourism sector. It had a really good association of tour operators who were really trying to keep Ladakh special and separate. It’s gone.

Lalitha Krishnan: It’s gone. I hope it doesn’t happen to Spiti.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Spiti, is on the way. Arunachal is on the way. Because there’s a big push to move tourism into Arunachal. They want to open up more areas in the Himalayas – they want to open more peaks for mountaineering, they want to open more areas for adventures sports. Trekking tourism, you know, it has taken off in such a big way but unmanaged.

Lalitha Krishnan: There’s hardly much to trek to, I remember we used to take two days to get to (specific) villages, Now the road reaches there. And also there are new rules about not camping on bhugyals  (meadows).

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Not camping on bhugyals is interesting. It’s a reaction to really, bad management, right?

Lalitha Krishnan: I know.

Sejal Wohra. I agree that bans are bad but they way they have treated our bhugyals…

Lalitha Krishnan: We need to give them a chance to revive.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Nag Tibba is right next to Mussoorie. It’s a place where we used to hike when we were kids. It was pristine. I went to Nag Tibba recently and I was shocked. It is a garbage dump. It is a garbage dump. Why are we not able to manage tourism in this country? I do not understand.

Lalitha Krishnan: Yeah, but there are operators who take 50-100 people at one go and if you now go to some of the places I used to (trek) to or have been to, its full of dug out toilets pits…

Dr. Sejal Wohra: And toilet paper everywhere.

Lalitha Krishnan: There are no places to really camp. It’s ruined. And we used to go there to see the flowers in the monsoons.

Dr. Sejal Wohra:  So this is the problem. We have a regulatory regime but we are not able to regulate. So we swing from over exploitation to bans. And that is not the way to handle things.

Lalitha Krishnan: For sure.  Like we were discussing in our country, we live in close proximity to wildlife and we read about human-wildlife conflicts all the time. What are we doing to mitigate or intervene or even empower communities that live on the edge?

Dr. Sejal Wohra: This is again a very big challenge that we are going to have to resolve if we want conservation to have a future in India. We live in a crowded country which is both crowded with people and with wildlife. And if you were to ask me one positive thing, I said so many negative things, what amazes me and especially amazed me when I came back from Southeast Asia to India is that we have so much wildlife in our country.

Lalitha Krishnan: That is so true.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: In South East Asia it’s the typical empty forest syndrome. They have amazing forests, beautiful rainforest. Birdlife is pretty good, in some places but you don’t see mammals. You don’t see large mammals. You come to India and you see just about everything. I know my friends from Southeast Asia die to come to India. This friend of mine worked for years on elephants in Thailand and she saw maybe one herd.

Lalitha Krishnan: One wild herd.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: I have colleagues who have been working on tigers in Thailand for 15 years and have never seen a wild tiger except on camera (traps).

Lalitha Krishnan: Oh my goodness.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: So given all that, we are blessed. In many ways, we are blessed and there are many reasons for this. One of the many reasons for this is the famous tolerance of Indians that people talk about which we absolutely should not take for granted.

Lalitha Krishnan: Even animal tolerance no? They also are being tolerant.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Exactly. People rubbish the word coexistence but I can tell you that even in this little forest of Jaberkhet, that we’ve got next door-it’s right in the middle of Mussoorie; there are all kinds of things going on there. There is a clear co-existence that you see. Because we know that there are large animals there who are watching us or behaving in a way or altering their behavior in a way that doesn’t come into conflict. So I think there is a lot to be said for tolerance, coexistence but as I said we can’t take it for granted. But there is a whole generation of Indians who are growing up with a disconnect. Even now, I have heard older generations of villagers – they have seen elephants rampaging through their fields, they see a leopard taking their life stock livestock and they will still be quite philosophical about it. They will say, “Well, it happens. We’ve lived through this”.

Lalitha Krishnan: Animals too, need to eat. That’s usually the response.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: It’s a kind of risk you take and manage in those kinds of areas. But the younger generation doesn’t want to. The want that leopard shot, they want that tiger killed, they wanted it captured. That’s going to increase and that’s how it is in most countries in the world. Where you’re not going to tolerate dangerous animals. When it comes to a choice between humans and animals it’s always going to be humans. So, we are reaching that stage. Unless we find smart, effective, efficient, rapid ways of dealing with conflict, this is something that is going to come back and bite us. Because people were just one those animals eliminated. We may save the species, maybe but individual animals will definitely suffer as a result of it.

So we’re working a lot on the conflict at multiple levels. Conflict needs to be addressed at three levels: one is immediate and short-term. People need to see an immediate response to conflict. Very often we do that through giving immediate relief or giving a small amount of compensation – immediately after the conflict or having a rapid response force that makes people feel the lives are valued, the crops are valued, their resources are valued. That’s the short-term response

But we need a median-term response as well which starts looking at: What are the physical barriers? What can we do in terms of cropping patterns? Can we grow alternative crops? Can we have you know, the right kind of barriers in the right kinds of places to actually _____create physical distance between humans and wildlife?

The long-term solution or long-term solution issue really is space. It’s all about space.

Lalitha Krishnan: Which is almost impossible, isn’t it?

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Which is impossible but not quite. One of the things we have been fighting a lot for is corridors, right? So you leave those corridors, you leave that space. Even agricultural fields, for example, are forming a buffer for a lot of wildlife. So, we need to understand the role that land use mosaics play in mitigating conflict and not have these hard barriers. We need softer measures to deal with how animals disperse. We need a better understanding of how they disperse and when animals and people come into conflict.

One of the things I hear a lot from a number of people is that numbers are increasing. There’s more conflict because there are more leopards. There is more conflict because there are more tigers. There is more conflict because there are more elephants. In pockets, there have been increases but part of the reason there are conflicts are that we are encroaching into their space. We are blocking corridors. We are blocking passages. So, we are coming much more in proximity to those animals. It is not necessarily that the animals that are coming and deliberately attacking us but we are increasingly in their space and there are behavioural issues. You know, another interesting factor we are seeing is leopard attacks. Villagers in Uttarakhand have lived with leopards all their lives. They know what to do and what not to do. They know that you don’t go walking out in the dark in the nallas with the dog. They know there are certain behaviours that you avoid. But with so many settlers coming in, labourers coming in, people coming in from the outside, who have absolutely no clue how to live with wildlife, they are doing things you would not normally do if you lived with wildlife. And a lot of the conflict is happening to these people. So, there’s a huge amount of education and awareness to be done as well because it’s like having a highway next to your house.

Lalitha Krishnan: Right.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: You had a two-lane road and that road has become a highway. You tell your children how to behave when there is a highway next to your house. Similarly, you also need to know how to behave when there I wildlife living next to you.

Lalitha Krishnan: True.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Dangerous things are all around us. It’s not just wildlife, that is dangerous. Cars are dangerous. So, I think we got to put it in context and not overreact sometimes.

Also, the media plays a role in this, I am sorry to say. Sometimes the way these stories are portrayed. It’s always, “Killer on the lose”, or, “rampaging tiger”, or “marauding elephant”. So, it’s also how this is portrayed. There are so many things we can do.

Lalitha Krishnan: You’re right. We don’t know how to behave when we see wildlife. There were two leopard spottings in this area. One was right near the school gate.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: I heard that.

Lalitha Krishnan: There was this driver coming up and there was a leopard sitting on the edge. He has taken this video and his passengers are shouting and this tolerant leopard just sat there for 15 minutes and then turned around and walked away. So, we don’t even know what to do. It’s horrible.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: What I think is amazing is that how little conflict there is. Because, if you think about it, these leopards around Mussoorie are living with us all the time. They are all around us whether you like it or not.

Lalitha Krishnan: They’re seeing us even if we don’t see them.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Exactly. So, the thing is if they were as blood-thirsty as they are portrayed to be, we would be having problems every day.

Lalitha Krishnan: Sure.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: The fact is they are avoiding us and we are only coming into conflict when it’s unavoidable. To me, the story is not about conflict, to me, the story is really about coexistence. That..look it’s amazing. That actually we are living with these wild animals with so little conflict.

Lalitha Krishnan: True. Closer home, all of us in Mussoorie feel so proud and privileged to live close to Jaberkhet Nature Reserve. Could you briefly tell us the before and after story…because I think everybody should know this. It’s been such a success and a wonderful thing.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: I don’t know if there’s a real before and after but I think I’ve told this story in different ways at different times. I’ll try and encapsulate it. We grew up in Mussoorie. We’ve been coming here since 1962 or 63. My sister was in Woodstock. As you probably know, Flag hill, as it was known…

Lalitha Krishnan: Yes

Dr. Sejal Wohra: …was a regular haunt of Woodstock students for hiking, picnics…

Lalitha Krishnan: Still is.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Along with her, my sister, we used to go to Flag hill and hike and camp and really loved the place. But when you’re a child it’s a different context. And we always thought that this was the most amazing place on the planet. Then, of course, I grew up, I went away…I told you my history. Then, I came back to Mussoorie after 15 years or so and went back to Flag hill. It was like a, you know, a Flag Hill revisiting. I was actually quite shocked. Because it looks very different when you are an adult. Also, because by that time I was in conservation, an ecologist…so I was looking at it from the eyes of an ecologist. And I thought, “My God, this place is in a mess”. Not just because of the trash and physical manifestation but it was heavily degraded; it was badly overused. Also, at that time, I realized, the whole of Mussoorie had changed. And there was so much development as I told you. Every hillside was being eyed by developers for building, constructions, resorts etc.

I just thought, you know, “Here I am, I have spent the last twenty years of my life telling the rest of the world how to do conservation and I come back home and I see this situation.” You can’t just sit back, you can’t keep quiet.

Lalitha Krishnan: Yeah, you can’t.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: You can’t turn a blind eye to it and say “I’ll tell everybody else how to do things and I won’t try and sort out my own mess”. So then, I thought we must do something in Mussoorie or Mussoorie was just going to be another sad case of bad development. So, Flag hill or Jaberkhet as the area is known as, was something that I really felt strongly – that we could turn it around. We had no idea how to do it. I didn’t even know who owned it. I didn’t even know it was a private forest actually, at that time. I just thought, here’s a place. It’s one of those things you don’t question, right? You don’t ask those questions…in those days.

My sister then had a Woodstock reunion and I think it was the class of 72 or some such thing. Anyway, she went for this reunion. I think Steve was in that reunion. This guy called Vipul Jain turns up at that reunion and he’s a businessman from Bombay. My sister gets chatting with him and then he says, “I own Flag hill”. Then she says, “Oh my God, we’ve been looking for you for 30 years. Please talk to my sister”.

Lalitha Krishnan: What a breakthrough.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: I think my life has been a series of chance things. Nothing has been planned. Anyway, Vipul and I got talking, and he narrated to me, how his father had tried, in many ways to, do things in Jaberkhet. They tried to have an orchard, they had tried flower fields, and they tried growing vegetables but nothing had succeded. He had also planted trees. At that time, the forest was also being worked. They were actually cutting the trees and selling them as well. Earlier on, this entire forest was used for making charcoal for the brewery in Mussoorie. It’s not like the forest had not been used for a long time. Now they were just open access. They were not just being used but they were being misused. Anyway, he and I started talking and I kind of said, “Since you got this land and you are not using it, why don’t we do something we can actually leave for future generations? Something that you can be proud of… your father’s memory and I can use the skills that I’ve learned all these years and do something for Mussoorie. Credit to him, he agreed and put it in my hands. He said, “Ok fine”. In a way, “Show me what you can do”. And so we started the journey.

It was me, and Rajender. Rajender is the guy who brings milk from a village that is 10 k away. He walks 20 k every day. He and I started this little project to figure out what we could do.

Lalitha Krishnan: A two-person team?

Dr. Sejal Wohra: A two-person team…a lot of villagers against us. A lot of people basically not understanding what we were trying to do-thinking we were privatizing the place…and we were just going to make a lot of money out of it. So we had lots of meetings, lots of discussions with villagers. People would come and break my walls, they would break my fences…

Lalitha Krishnan: Really?

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Yeah, they would write nasty things about me… a whole history of…

Lalitha Krishnan: I didn’t know that part.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: The toughest part for me was managing the use by the people from Jaberkhet and Bhatta Ghat…mostly the cows being grazed.

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s hard.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: You know, it was a free for all forest. You could come and cut trees. You could come and do whatever you wanted. And suddenly here’s somebody saying, “Well, you can’t do that anymore as you want it. Now there are going to be certain rules.” I kept trying to explain to them, that, “This was going to good for you in the long run. That people will come. They will appreciate the place. Jobs will be created. There will be mann (status) for you. People will talk about this place. Right now you’re not on the map. It was a long journey.

For three years we struggled away, did the restoration, cleaned it up, somehow managed the cows, somehow managed to get the community on our side, creating jobs, employed the local people…did this, that and the other.

We then trained the local boys to become nature guides and that was quite a turning point for me.

Lalitha Krishnan: And for them, I think. Don’t you think so?

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Well, the funny thing was we had this training and I got 12 local boys from surrounding villages to come. We did this three-day training for them to say here’s an alternative career option rather than becoming a taxi driver or working in a restaurant or going off to Dubai which is what these kids aspire to do. This is a job that will give you name and fame and be satisfying. When I asked, “Who is going to come work for me?” No, none of them were interested. They all wanted to go work in hotels and stuff. Out of the 12, no one was interested except for this one young kid who was actually the quietest of the lot in the class. And, the one who t I thought had the least promise. He walked up to me and said, “I am willing to do the job.” And I turned around and said, “Nah, not really.”

I am so glad I took him on. Because I had no choice. He was the only one I had. Virender, is, of course, the find of the century. He has turned into this amazing naturalist and bird watcher. He has won a national award. He is like the star. Everybody who writes comments on Jaberkhet writes about Virender. The great thing is that he’s become like a rock star in town. Everybody wants to be him. So now all the young boys are coming to me. Their mothers are coming to me. Women, who are dead against me are now saying, “Can you give my son a job?” Now I have four of these young boys working for me.

Lalitha Krishnan: I was thinking, it must look to them like when you started off in conservation by saying, “What am I going to get out of this?” Now they see the difference and see that there’s a future here.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Yes, Some of the boys here, like Vipul, he used to work in a restaurant here in Bhatta Ghat. He’s left that and become a nature guide. According to him, this is a much more satisfying job than slaving behind and making bun omelettes and Maggie noodles for tourists.

Lalitha Krishnan: Yes, I would think.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: If you ask me what’s been one of the most satisfying things, Jaberkhet, of course, has been a great story. We are now on the map. People come all the way from Bangalore, Pune, Mumbai…forget about Delhi and Mussoorie…people are coming from far away just to see the place and learn about the story.

The other nice thing and what I really wanted it to be is a model. And that’s starting to happen because people are coming to me from Hyderabad, from Sikkim…

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s so good.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: …saying, “I have a patch of forest. Can I do this with my forest? I say, “Yeah, please do it.” So people are seeing it as a model.

The third thing that I’m really keen on is, you know, Uttarakhand has a whole bunch of van panchayats which are community owned forests which are scattered all over the state. These forests are under great threat. Because, there are roads being built through them, they’re being cut down, they’re being decimated. And these van panchayats have a huge potential to become a network of nature reserves. Increasingly the van panchayat leaders are coming. Recently, we had 20 of these van panchayat leaders come to Jaberkhet to say, “How can we actually set up something like this in our villages?” So I think if this little experiment that we have set up in Mussoorie can become a model for the whole state, then I start seeing some hope for Uttarakhand.

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s amazing that they even know about it.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: There is hope for these small patches of forests. The other thing I would like to say about Jaberkhet is that— and I’m now speaking again as an ecologist, rather than anything else—initially I thought, “What’s a hundred acres?” Jaberkhet is a 100 acres but it’s surrounded by much more. It’s got Woodstock forests on one side, it’s got cantonment, it’s got the reserve forest, and other private forests…so it’s quite a large area. The vision and the hope that I have is that one fine day we will be able to connect all of these into one large defacto protected area.

Lalitha Krishnan: We’ll all cross our fingers for you.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Let’s hope that happens. But even a small patch can make a difference. The story of Jaberkhet is the story of two or three things. One is that individuals can make a difference. You don’t need the state…you won’t need large amounts of money. I’ve invested some money but it’s not an unimaginable sum of money. It’s something I could afford and wanted to do so it’s not a lot. Success breeds success. And the other is that other private forest owners who are much more commercial-minded have been watching very carefully. And I am exaggerating the success a little bit…

Lalitha Krishnan: No you’re not. It’s such a healthy…

Dr. Sejal Wohra: For them, it’s not the health of the forest. It’s about how much money you are making.

Lalitha Krishnan: OK.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: They’re interested to know if it is a viable business model. The minute it becomes a viable business model conservation will start becoming something that they will do. Otherwise, they just see the forest as a liability. My fervent hope is that we start actually doing well as a business not because we want to make money that because I hope that it will encourage other forest private forest owners to say, “Hey, it’s a moneymaking model… It’s not just one crazy woman doing her hobby”.

Lalitha Krishnan: I see what you mean. But we are also proud of you and so privileged to have Jabberkhet next to us.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Such a fantastic story and it’s been the support of everybody around. I should say that the initial hostility that I had has completely turned around. And we have so much support from everybody right from put stuff to people living around in the community to the taxi drivers, to the restaurant owners… everybody sees this, you know, just as we had hoped. That it would be something to be proud of rather than to be something to sneer at or say that this is a crazy idea. Yeah, let’s hope it goes from strength to strength. My dream is that it becomes sustainable and the locals can manage it themselves and I can step back and leave it to them.

Lalitha Krishnan: Really? Wow. That’s really ambitious but I’m sure it will happen.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Let’s hope so.

Lalitha Krishnan: You must have so many stories Dr. Wohra. Do you think you will ever write a book?

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Oh gosh, this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while…

Lalitha Krishnan: Really?

Dr. Sejal Wohra: First of all, you need time to write a book. I need to stop this frantic pace of things that I am doing and the travel, and the work, and pause and take a deep breath. I shouldn’t say this but I’ve been kind of looking around and saying everybody is writing a book. So, why the hell am I not writing a book? I think people with less interesting lives with me are writing a book. Certainly, I can write a book.

Lalitha Krishnan: Yes, please do write a book.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: But it requires a certain temperament and at some point — I have never made notes–I have never actually kept notes of the journey or incidents or stuff like that.

Lalitha Krishnan: You’re a strange conservationist. I thought they always made notes.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: I have all those books but there are all technical. So they all notes about meetings and field visits and this and that but I haven’t captured the anecdotes. The stuff that makes a book interesting is the anecdotes.

Lalitha Krishnan: I guess with time you will remember.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: They’re all there in my head. Sooner or later I should put it down. My hope is that I will retire soon and maybe that’s a good project to take up.

Lalitha Krishnan: I look forward to that.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: If not a book at least something.

Lalitha Krishnan: Jottings… memories

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Good point. I should. Thanks for that idea.

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s great. I request all my guests to share a scientific term or word that they like or think is significant. What’s yours?

Dr. Sejal Wohra: It’s not necessarily a scientific term but I think the term of great importance in the conservational and environmental movement, which is ‘consumption’. To me, the future of this planet lies in us individually and collectively as human beings, to really question whether we need so much. I am as guilty as anybody else on that.

Lalitha Krishnan: We all are.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: When I look around and see just stuff— I think do we really need all this? If all of us humans lived with what we need this would be a very different planet. Unfortunately, the model of development that we have today is geared entirely towards consumption. It’s about getting people to consume more.

Lalitha Krishnan: True.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Economies and countries thrive and build their economies on consumption rather than on sustainability. My dream is that we actually start questioning the whole concept of: “ Do we need to consume so much?” And we’ll have a different planet.

I’m going to make a plug here for some friends of mine who have started a very interesting venture. It’s called, ‘We share’. And the idea is to not buy stuff but to share stuff. They are going to set up a web platform where it will be a platform for sharing. So, it’s things that you buy but you only going to use once. Or you might just need now and then. And you can share it with others. So everybody starts buying less stuff and start sharing more stuff.

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s great but I guess it would work in a city rather than a place where you have to walk two miles just to meet your neighbour.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Yeah, and that’s where the consumption happens.

Lalitha Krishnan: OK

Dr. Sejal Wohra: So even if people start thinking along the lines of, “I’ve bought this but I’m not going to use it for another year…

Lalitha Krishnan: Or it is lying in my cupboard for the past six months even.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Exactly. We’ve started a little thing like that in our office as well Where we have a corner in the office where people leave stuff that they either don’t want or are willing to share. And people just keep exchanging things and this can be done by anybody… any community can do this.

Lalitha Krishnan: I know people do that with books but it’s the hardest to give away.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: I feel we should do this with everything. So, I think the more we change our mindset about things and stuff. I need this, I need this. We have to get away from that…the more we’ll change society.

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s a wonderful word – a wonderful concept. Thank you so much Dr. Wohra. I really enjoyed speaking to you. I think we have lots more to talk about. Hope you’ll join us again someday on another episode.

Dr. Sejal Wohra: Thanks. It was a pleasure. It’s always fun to talk to somebody who understands what you’re talking about so thanks for being a good listener.

Lalitha Krishnan: Thank you.

Lalitha Krishnan:. I hope you’re enjoying the conversations about conservation. Stay tuned for news, views, and updates from the world of conservation.

If you think of someone interesting whose story should be shared write to me with details at earthymatters013@gmail.com

Birdsong by hillside residents

 

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.

Dr. Pasang Sherpa: the only Sherpa Person with a Ph.D. in Anthropology Studying the Sherpa People and Climate Change #1

~ Lalitha Krishnan ~ Leave a comment

Welcome to Heart of Conservation Podcast

Show Notes (Edited): Dr. Pasang Sherpa:Episode #1                                                                                                 

I am Lalitha Krishnan and I’m speaking to Dr. Pasang Sherpa, a young and passionate cultural anthropologist, from Nepal. She is the only Sherpa with Ph.D. in Anthropology studying the Sherpas. We are at the Hanifl Centre for Outdoor Education and Environmental Study, in Landour, Uttarakhand, India. Dr. Sherpa is here in the capacity of Professor for Pitt in the Himalaya study abroad programme.

 Her research areas include human dimensions of climate change, indigenous people, and development in the Himalaya. She has worked as a lecturer in the department of anthropology at Penn State University from 2013 till 2015and is currently serving as co-director of Nepal Studies Initiative (NSI) at the University of Washington.

I’ll start with the basic question: What made you pursue cultural anthropology?

Dr. Pasang Sherpa: I was born and raised in Kathmandu. Growing up I was always fascinated by the differences in my grandmother’ s lifetime, then my mother’s lifetime then mine. I was always interested in learning more about the Sherpa culture and wanted to know how my grandmother lived in village herding cows, farming potatoes and my mother as a young bride came to Kathmandu. Then looking at my own life how I was attending English medium schools and speaking Nepali and not having not having any Sherpa friends actually. So, all of that fuelled my interest in the Sherpa culture and I felt that cultural anthropology would be the right academic discipline for me to learn more.

The Sherpa people are often misunderstood or misrepresented? As a Sherpa would you, agree?

Dr. Pasang Sherpa: Yes absolutely. Many people think when they use the word Sherpa, they think it means a trusted guide… and that is how a lot of people use it. Including the assistants to policymakers at important policy meetings like the G8 summit. There’s actually a meeting called Sherpa Meeting for the G8 Summit. The word is also used to mean porters and high altitude guides which is how these occupations are being referred to. But the word ‘Sherpa’ actually comes from the Sherpa language ‘Sherwa’ which means ‘People from the east’ and it is a word that describes our ethnic group.

In your website, you mention being based out of Kathmandu during your Masters and completing a thesis on the Indigenous people of Nepal. Thereon your study progressed to the climate change in the Himalaya. Could you tell us what fuelled your interest in the environment and about that progression?

Dr. Pasang Sherpa: In 2008 when I was working on my Masters’ thesis–this was the time when Nepal was becoming a new Nepal as in abolishing the royal Hindu kingdom– people were very excited about rights and equality and freedom of everyone in the country. That led me to look more into social inclusion and indigenous movements.

But then for my Ph.D. what I quickly realized was instead of taking a more national broad view and trying to understand it in that way it was more important for me as an anthropologist to be more specific to a location, a site, and an issue. And, because at that time I was the only Sherpa person studying Sherpa culture–and I think I still am the only Sherpa Ph.D. in Anthropology studying the Sherpas–it was very important for me to understand what the Sherpas were facing. I come from the Mt. Everest region.

By 2009 when I was starting my Ph.D. programme, in the Everest region, we were hearing a lot about the potential glacial lake outburst flood. This was quite scary actually because if the glacial lake—which was what the scientists and researchers were talking about—if it would flood and if it had flooded my mother’s village would be wiped out. So, this was something very personal to me also. As the first anthropologist from the region but also as somebody who is concerned about my homeland, it was very important for me to look at the climate change aspect of the Sherpa people.

What was the most challenging part of your research?

Dr. Pasang Sherpa: The most challenging part of my research has just been who I am actually. Surprisingly. When I began my work, I thought as a Sherpa person, as a Nepali woman it would be easy for me to meet people, collect information and data and all of that but what I quickly found out again as I was doing my fieldwork as a Nepali woman – and I do look young–if I look young now imagine 10 years ago– many people would just dismiss me as a young woman or not find me as important of a person to talk to. I think those things affected my research but in a different way, opened new ways to be creative about my fieldwork approaches. For example, most of the Sherpa research on Sherpa people previously were focused on men; also men who are very powerful. But most of my work, looking at Sherpa perceptions of climate change in the Everest region and also how various institutions have responded to climate change effects, I ended up looking at people who were previously ignored. Villages, that were not very popular and not very easy to reach for researchers and scientists-which is why they were being ignored.

I also was able to spend a lot of time in the kitchen with my aunt, helping her cook meals for tourists and clean. I was not a good cleaner nor a good cook but I tried my best but I think it did open more opportunities for me to listen to actual farmers who go to the fields and who work day and night with potatoes, cabbage and whatever they were growing at that time. And also, I was able to meet with herders–who are very few now–in the Everest region. So in a way, me being a native Sherpa woman in Nepal opened new doors and helped advance Sherpa studies in that sense but on the other hand, it was also extremely difficult for me to work as a female researcher. Not just in the Everest region but more so when I was in Kathmandu, trying to meet with high-level officials. So that was my experience.

You partly answered my next question…which is how difficult is it to be a woman researcher? I understand your point about people not take you seriously or thinking that you’re too young. I wonder if this is typical across Asia or it’s the same story the world over. Also, are there a lot of women researchers out there? 

Dr. Pesang Sherpa: It’s very interesting, to me – everything is interesting because I love learning and knowing. Being a researcher here in South Asia and a young professional in the US has been very interesting. I think India is different because I am only beginning here and I have been meeting people in different capacities as professionals. So not speaking of my India experience but focusing on my Nepal experience, I definitely experienced what a lot of women researchers do – being dismissed and that just comes with the territory. Also, cases of sexual harassment while in the field, it’s a given. You just have to deal with it as a woman researcher.

 That being said, there are quite a few women researchers in ‘Nepal and Himalayan Studies’. In fact, most of my mentors in ‘Nepal and Himalayan Studies’ are females. But, looking at native Himalayan people, there are extremely few women researchers. I wish more people would become professional researchers. There are very inspiring young, youth leaders in the field of environment and conservation so I think in the next ten years we will see more females leading conservation and environmental work in the Himalayas.

You work must have taken to you to exotic and lesser know regions. Is there one experience that stands outs for you?

Dr. Pasang Sherpa: The thing that comes to mind happened a few years ago. The Everest region is very popular. It’s one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. Now, in 2018, I think it’s a well-established tourist destination so it’s very easy to have a comfortable time in the Everest region. I want to talk about my experience in west (Nepal), which a lot of people consider remote and rural. Again, ‘remote’ is just a perception. What do you consider rural?

That being said, I remember this one time when we had walked for 16 hours. Some of my colleagues and I wanted to look at old trading routes of northwestern Nepali people going to Tibet. We wanted to see what the route was like…how they travelled and all of that. At around 6:00 pm our vehicle broke down in a flat area with no trees, no shelter or house or anything for kilometers. We had to cross two rivers with no bridge. We’re talking of crossing glacial rivers and icy cold water coming at high speed. We tried to fix the vehicle but it wasn’t happening. Eventually, we gave up and as a group decided to walk. I don’t remember the actual distance but our camp was 17 k away. I do remember—and this is the only time, I’ve done something like this—because there was no bridge, the water was cold and coming at high speed, we had to form a human chain to cross the river. Firstly, we took our clothes off as we didn’t want to get wet and cold. It would be impossible to walk in the night with wet clothes on. We would get sick. So the best idea for us was to take our clothes off, form a human chain and cross the river. And we did that twice. Mind you, we had no food. We were hungry, it was cold, it was windy so I started collecting horse and yak dung to burn in case we needed to start a fire. That was my brilliant idea. We kept on walking. I think some of my friends may have gotten altitude sickness. Another colleague and I were the first to reach the first herder’s hut at 10:00 pm. Luckily it didn’t rain that night and also there was a full moon. We were very lucky with that. Everyone at the herder’s hut was asleep so we had to wake them. I was so grateful to them for giving me butter tea that warmed my body. That experience always stands out for me. We reached the camp at 2:00 am. We got good food and I really enjoyed that dal bath.

Why is what you do you important? In the sense, how does it or will it translate it for ordinary citizens?

Dr. Pasang Sherpa: One thing I have always been very conscious about is making sure of the way I speak, the way I use my professional experience and to present myself in a very relatable and accessible way. What I mean by this is that I try to stay away from theoretical jargons and big academic ideas—not because I think they aren’t important but because I want to be more relatable to the everyday ordinary person outside academia.

I am an academic person and I do continue to pursue academic work and I do continue to write literature but on the other hand, I also actively and consciously, in my day to day life, try to be relatable.

Earlier we were talking about my Master’s research, which was looking at indigenous issues and indigenous concerns in Nepal. Secondly, for my Ph.D. work and postdoctoral work I was looking at climate change and just environmental changes and how it was affecting the people in the mountains. All of these research questions actually come from the experiences of everyday Himalayan people. I am not going after the big, new, theoretical perspective or idea. I am not pursuing those theoretical ideas from within anthropology, the discipline, but rather I find my research questions from the local people or from local experiences. This is why I was led to looking at climate change–which is not something I started with– but later became very important to me just because that is where I am coming from and those are the issues are matter to me as a person.

Dr. Sherpa, where are you at in terms of your own goals?

Dr. Pesang Sherpa: After I finished my education, I worked as a lecturer for two years at Penn State University. I really wanted to be back in the mountains and do more research and so I joined the new school as a postdoctoral fellow and that is where I was able to visit a lot of places in the India, Nepal and the Chinese area some people know as the Kailash sacred landscapes. That is where I spent my most recent time.

In terms of what’s next for me, I am exploring ways to connect to people in different ways. Not just as an academic person but also as a researcher whose work involves what’s relevant to the Himalayan people. I am trying to think more about sustainability and climate change adaptation from the perspective of local people. This year I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I would like to do next. Some of the things, I think, might be very helpful and useful in bringing my research findings to the local communities would be using a different medium. That is why I am so excited about this podcast experience.

I want to start a blog and share some of my research findings immediately. The first thing I would be sharing would be my research findings and work on the Sherpa diaspora. Along with Jim Fisher–another senior anthropologist who studied the Sherpas in the 1960s and built the school where my mother attended–I spent the last few years looking at the Sherpa communities in New York, Colorado

Seattle, India, Nepal trying to understand what Sherpa culture is actually. What Sherpa is and what do we mean by it? Because we’re no longer just in Nepal. The first blog that will come out next year would be focused on that project.

Dr. Sherpa do you have a favourite conservation word or term with us. help us improve our conservation vocabulary.

Dr. Pasang Sherpa: I don’t think it’s my favourite word necessarily but I have been thinking about it a lot lately. It’s the word ‘Anthropocene’. The word ‘Anthropocene’ comes from the ancient Greek word: ‘antropose’ meaning human and ‘cene’ meaning recent. This is referring to the geological epoch and talking about current times when human activity is dominating the earth’s systems. The reason I’m interested in that is that I am spending a lot of time thinking about the Himalayas and why it is scared for us Himalayan people.

I’m also trying to connect this notion of sacred Himalaya with the ways people are thinking globally in terms of anthropocine, the new geological epoch. To me, this is interesting because,  first of all in the Himalayas, nature, and human have always lived together. I don’t think humans are perceived as more important or above the natural world, which is the case for the western way of thinking where humans are considered above nature and control nature. From those ways of human nature relationship, I wonder what and how we can think about ‘Anthropocene’ and how it might be relevant to the Himalaya we know. So I‘m also wondering if it’s relevant. On the other hand, living on this planet-if, we consider ourselves global citizens-it might be important for us to think about what ‘Anthropocene’ is and where the conversations about the Himalayas fit in these larger global discussions of this new geological epoch. So those are the kind of questions that are in my head these days. That’s my word contribution to you.

If you’d like to read more about Dr. Sherpa’s work visit: http://www.pasangysherpa.com/If you think of someone interesting whose story should be shared write to me at earthymatters013@gmail.com

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