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The Art of War with wildlife

Psychologists know this, I believe: if you are angry at something, your response to situations coming your way is likely to be violent. The term ‘conflict’ puts us in a violent disposition. We have just published a paper (here) on the appropriateness of the term ‘conflict’ (as in Human-elephant conflict) in wildlife management. Our view […]

A child could tell you

I was invited to discuss with 5th standard children at Hebron, Ooty, about the elephant corridors of the Masinagudi-Sigur Region. I was surprised by this choice, but many children live in and around Ooty and are familiar with the difficult issue of maintaining passages for elephants. Their teacher asked them to define an action plan […]

If you think India has a population of 2000 tigers, you are mistaken

I follow Conservation Bytes (https://conservationbytes.com), a blog maintained by Dr. Corey Bradshaw, an Australian scientist. He specializes in mathematical modeling of ecological processes, in particular, that of population genetics. In a recent post (https://conservationbytes.com/2018/04/03/why-populations-cant-be-saved-by-a-single-breeding-pair/ and https://theconversation.com/au), he warns that animal (or plant) populations should not become too low, otherwise the species will be lost, even […]

Human wildlife conflict: a perpetual state of emergency

A paper (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cobi.13099/abstract;jsessionid=3DF215276B3C5DAEDB135ED3C6C99422.f03t01) recently published in Conservation Biology caught me by its title: “The perpetual state of emergency that sacrifices protected areas in a changing climate”. The paper says that some protected areas in the USA will be used to alleviate farmers’ problems due to climate change. The question one might ask is: “why can’t […]

Plastic pollution in the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve

Mr. Rohan Premkumar, journalist for the Hindu, was kind enough to ask our opinion about plastic pollution in the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. Here is the article: http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Coimbatore/garbage-strewn-inside-mudumalai-tiger-reserve-poses-problems/article22699639.ece It must be noted that ITC (the Indian Tobacco Company) in Ooty has a huge facility where they store plastics. The plastic wastes are then sorted, cut into […]

Forests of the world

We recently participated in a scientific article published in the prestigious journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the USA” (www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1714977115). The paper entitled ‘a phylogenetic classification of the world’s tropical forests’ was about the classification or relatedness of trees in the tropical forests of the world. For most of us, a forest […]

Human-elephant peace

We have been busy with house repairs this year. Fifty years of weathering and termites (and elephants) have had an impact. Now we are as good as new. Elephants have seen and approved the repairs. Their way of doing so may be questionable. Repaired, the Trust will continue to be a place of peace for […]

Protected areas: speed limits for show!

The road between Masinagudi and Ooty crosses the core of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. The speed limit is 30 km per hour to avoid accidents with protected wildlife that includes the endangered tiger. But it does not make any difference. People do what they like. It takes 11 m to stop a car going at […]

Do or do not. There is no try – Yoda

Political ecology, to my knowledge, does not exist in India at least in the mainstream parties. It exists in France but the (supposedly) democratic decision-making process, personal ambitions and the theoretical hair-splitting differences have neutered the movement. To manage the environment better, politics doesn’t work and education doesn’t perform much on this front: we are […]

A better future

When you go to work today, you will be believing in a better future. Your job slowly pulls you out of poverty, you live in a decent neighborhood and you made your flat or house a little paradise where it is good to come back in the evening. Your children will be well educated, will […]