Archive for category: Blogs

If you are a chain smoker, heavy drinker, eating only junk food, no exercise, then your health is comparable to that of todays protected ecosystems. Ecologists and conservationists are like those foolish doctors who advise a drastic change in lifestyle for improvement in health. But no action is taken before it is too late. If you believe everything is good in nature, change your attitude: here is the view, I bet, most biologists will share¹.

Myth: forests are huge areas protected for the questionable benefit of the conservation of nature.

Reality: 6.5% of the Indian Territory are wildlife reserves, the rest of the forests are production forests, hence meant to produce resources for the industry. Most of the wildlife reserves actually suffer from severe exploitation: overgrazing by cattle, wood harvesting, illegal hunting, illegal trade and export of material. If cattle were prevented from grazing in wildlife reserves, as the dung collection feeds organic agriculture, it is possible that it could induce the collapse of organic agriculture in some regions.

Myth: redistribution of reserved forest land to tribal people helps alleviate poverty.

Reality: it may in some cases. Tribal people need to be compensated when their land has been taken over. However, the land given to tribal households is often sold or leased to investors. Once the land is privatized, the new owner can do whatever he/she wants with it. Significant portions are immediately purchased at very low cost by wealthy persons who vociferously support the redistribution of forest land, having only their economic interest at heart.

Myth: allowing harvest helps the poor.

Reality: the poor rarely harvest for subsistence. Harvested forest products most of the time enter the market, for the more significant benefit of wealthier people. Wood collection for example, is hardly exclusively for the household but for buyers such as restaurants and resorts who therefore illegally acquire heavily subsidized energy.

Myth: natural ecosystems are nature at its best.

Reality: most of the forests are heavily degraded and pristine forests are extremely rare and isolated. Most of the forests seen from the window of a car, from a resort or during a trek have suffered or are suffering huge degradation in the form of harvest, cattle grazing, tourism, fragmentation by road, water pollution and waste. Most forests near villages do not have tree saplings, indicative of lack of forest regeneration. They are invaded by alien plants such as Lantana and Parthenium. Domestic animals such as dogs spread diseases to other carnivores (hyena, jackals, etc.), and livestock such as cattle to wild ungulates.

Conclusion: nature is in a really bad state, our health, economy, enjoyment rest on it. It is not as if we had two planets. Our personal responsibility is to understand what is at stake for us and our children, and act in the right direction. Now.

Jean-Philippe Puyravaud

¹The September 2016 IUCN Congress highlighted both good and bad news for the global environment. Although conservation efforts can save species, the number of imperiled species and habitats is growing daily. Many ecosystems are being eroded and stripped of their most iconic species.

We recently wrote a paper in Oryx¹ showing that a model proposed to cull elephants was flawed and should be discarded. This model was used to justify culling, giving it a sort of scientific imprimatur: “it is okay to cull the Asian elephant – theoretical biology says so.” Whatever. When we distributed our Oryx paper, some of our colleagues warned: “we must speak the same voice”, meaning: you publish what you like, but the correct attitude of (serious conservationists) is to be easy on culling in order to satisfy the public. Of course, we have no intention to change our tune which is: “let us manage the environment properly.”

Little did we know that at approximately the same time, a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society², said that culling DECREASES tolerance towards wildlife. The lesson is: gather information and make your own opinion.

The superb picture of wolves (culled in North America) was from Science³, where the Royal Society paper is also mentioned.

Jean-Philippe Puyravaud

¹Jean Philippe Puyravaud, Priya Davidar, Rajeev K. Srivastava and Belinda Wright. Modelling harvest of Asian elephants Elephas maximus on the basis of faulty assumptions promotes inappropriate management solutions. Oryx, available on CJO2016. doi:10.1017/S003060531600003X.

²http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/283/1830/20152939

³http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/legal-culls-don-t-buy-goodwill-wolves

The remnant of nature at its best

I searched on the Internet for a “resort” in this region, and a travellers’ website caught my eye with its assessments. I opened the page, expecting sadistically to see abysmal evaluations on a “resort” I know. Darn, the resort (without quotes this time, because I developed some respect), got very good reviews mostly, with “nature at its best” form of literary appreciation.

I must be coming from another planet and a bit of soul searching was necessary at this point, which carried me twenty five years ago.

When I came to India, I saw in a newspaper the prize winning drawings of a painting competition for school children: “nature at its best”. Most drawings represented two hills, with a sun rising, probably inspired by the DMK’s (a political party) emblem. This was cute, it revealed lots of innocence, but I found it worrisome because all children had drawn what is ecologically a wasteland: ecosystems degraded to bare ground except for a few remaining trees.

Now, the resort I was looking at on the internet, is in the middle of heavily degraded forests where plastics are discarded wantonly by tourists, and plastic rubbish is everywhere. The resort has bonfires for tourists from wood harvested illegally from the Reserved Forest. It has dug bore wells without permission. It has destroyed most of the trees on its land (and surrounding lands) and it represents a hotspot for invasive plant species. The “waste management” is a pit. Tourists flash powerful spot lights at night. The constant noise coming from the village loudspeakers was of no concern for the proponents of the oneness with nature. Does this deserves “excellent” and “very good” in the hospitality industry?

The medical profession is in the same pit as ecologists. Two or three generations earlier, the normal person weighted say, 60 kg (I did not check, so don’t start a diet on this). Today, the normal person weighs around 65 kg, for example. The problem is that our reference point has shifted due to the obesity epidemic. Same for the environment. It is so degraded that anything remotely green looks pristine, in the same way an overweight person will seem to be in good health compared to an obese person. But in absolute terms, our natural ecosystems have been mostly destroyed. Alarm bells are ringing internationally on the state of our planet.

The least we know, the more we are likely to reach a wrong conclusion. I personally won’t be so sure about the “nature at its best” thing.

Jean-Philippe Puyravaud