Creatures of a lesser God

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Janaki Lenin: Nov 14 2010, 23:49 IST

Tags: Man-Animal Conflict | Mega-mammals

Elephants and tigers—charismatic, sexy mega-mammals—are the mascots of wildlife conservation. Use them as umbrellas to protect a range of less-popular species, said the wise ecologists. The amount of effort, publicity, concern (and millions of conservation dollars) elicited by these popular 'umbrellas' is several orders of magnitude larger than any other creatures. We accept this inequality of the haves and have-nots just as easily as we accept it in human society. Today, however, in the grip of the tiger crisis, and with new research on a range of species from leopards to frogs, it appears as if the umbrella plan isn’t holding up. In some quarters, these are fighting words.

Take the long-snouted, fish-eating gharial. This crocodilian is extinct in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Myanmar and found only in India and Nepal, where we are down to under 200 breeding adults. Put differently, there is no other large animal so close to extinction in India today! The gharial’s only hope of survival seems restricted to the Chambal and Girwa rivers. There is no mega mammalian umbrella here; the crisis is so dire that we urgently need to address the threats to this riverine species head on.

On the other hand, the wet forests of the Western Ghats and the north-east were declared biodiversity hotspots not because of the relatively sparse mega-fauna, but the numerous little creatures. A myriad species of frogs, snakes and other small fry are found in isolated valleys and are not known to live anywhere else; extinction is

... contd.

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