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FIGHTING DESPAIR, CHASING HOPE: CONSERVING WILDLIFE IN INDIA

India is home to more than a billion people and half a billion livestock; every fifth human and tenth farm animal on the planet is Indian. Over two-thirds of India's people reside in rural areas and depend significantly on natural resources for their living. At the same time, urban engines of India's growth, with an expanding footprint over natural resources, have catapulted the country's economy among the world's fastest growing. Countrywide, natural habitats are in retreat and even India's national animal, the tiger, is in precipitous decline. If conservation were the goal, this would hardly seem a scenario that inspired much hope.

While the challenges to conservation in India are many, so too are the opportunities. The largest global populations of several wild species, such as the Asian elephant, and significant stretches of many important ecosystems lie within India. There is also considerable cultural space for conservation in the ethos of its people: to most Indians, the rights of non-human species to exist are simply self-evident. A mature and stable polity founded on a democratic constitution, India considers conservation a fundamental duty of every citizen. It has enacted strong conservation laws and become a signatory to many global conservation conventions, based on which nearly 600 parks have been created across varied biogeographic zones. On critical issues such as logging, encroachment, and destruction of forests by industry, the judiciary effectively has upheld India's constitutional commitment to conservation. Across the country, there is growing involvement of civil society groups in conservation issues.

Yet such vast potential alone cannot win the day for Indian conservation; we need clear, replicable examples that deliver this promise into reality. It is this quest for working models of conservation across India's landscapes that has motivated us at NCF. At the heart of such a quest, we believe, is a good scientific understanding of two complex entities, wildlife ecology and human society. For an organization that is somewhat averse to being bound by definitions, keeping science at the core of our conservation efforts is perhaps the closest we come to a unifying approach.

Based largely on the individual expertise of highly motivated professionals, our modest portfolio encompasses a wide range of research themes related to India's wildlife and natural areas. These include assessments of threats such as hunting, livestock grazing, and habitat fragmentation; impacts of climate change; understanding human-wildlife conflicts; status surveys and conservation assessments for endangered species; and exploration of India's biological frontiers; as well as fundamental research into animal behavior, ecology, and evolution. Our work spans diverse social and ecological settings, with programs in the rain forests at the Himalayan foothills, in the trans-Himalayan cold deserts, in the forests of the Western Ghats, and in the near-shore marine and coastal environments of the mainland and the oceanic islands. Each program is founded on sound research, based on which we have built small but closely monitored programs of on-the-ground conservation and management. We also have sought to bring about wider changes through education and policy outreach.

Even today, the wildlife wealth of many regions in India remains unexplored. Over the last decade we have undertaken a number of expeditions to identify important areas for conservation in Himachal Pradesh, Jammu, and Kashmir, several states of northeast India and along the Western Ghats hills. Our surveys in northeast India have led to the discovery of fascinating species, including the Arunachal macaque, a primate new to science described in 2005; many mammals hitherto unknown from India such as the leaf deer; and more than a dozen new records and rediscoveries of amphibian and reptile species. Our work has helped to identify potential regions for inclusion in the protected area network and establish a Biosphere Reserve in the high elevations of Arunachal Pradesh in the Eastern Himalaya biodiversity hotspot.

In the tropical deciduous forests of southern India, our studies found that hunting, livestock grazing, and biomass removal lead to significant alteration of habitat, declines in wild mammal abundance, and the spatial exclusion by livestock of wild grazing herbivores such as elephants and gaur, even within protected areas. Our research on livestock-killing by tigers and leopards and crop-raiding and human deaths due to elephants helped to identify measures to ameliorate the conflict. In the trans-Himalayan cold deserts, our research on pastoral communities discovered serious overstocking of rangelands with livestock, decrease in livestock production, consequent competition with and local extinction of wild ungulates, livestock depredation by snow leopard and wolf, and their retaliatory persecution by local people--a bleak conservation situation. Over the last decade, our conservation program established participatory livestock insurance programs, incentives for good herding practices, local capacity development, and student research projects. NCF also is collaborating with central and state governments to develop a comprehensive wildlife policy and action plan for the region, Project Snow Leopard.

At the other end of the Himalaya, in the rain forests of Arunachal Pradesh, hunting by indigenous communities seriously affects species such as hornbills and large mammals. Without access to even the most basic health care, education, sanitation, or means of livelihood, the survival needs of these marginalized people completely overshadow conservation concerns for the region's wildlife. While keeping the focus squarely on wildlife conservation, NCF's program in the region is addressing people's welfare needs, and, in the process, mainstreaming conservation as a central concern in this traditional hunting community.

In many parts of India, wildlife survives tenuously in severely exploited or fragmented habitats. In areas ranging from the rain forests of the Anamalai hills to the high-elevation pastures of the Himalaya, our efforts have focused on restoring degraded lands and reviving their wildlife populations. A related endeavor is a recent program to establish no-take areas in the coral reefs of Lakshadweep to revive fish stock while achieving marine conservation goals. These restoration efforts have involved unique partnerships with indigenous people and artisanal fishers, as well as business houses.

In every one of our programs, we recognize the importance of nurturing conservation leaders at every level, from every quarter. In particular, NCF's newly initiated Ph.D. program is fostering students to gain a well-rounded appreciation for India's variegated conservation needs while keeping science central to their quest.

To receive SCB's Distinguished Service Award merely a decade after we began is a tremendous honor. One the one hand, there is gratification that our efforts, small though they are, have had some significance and impact in a wider context. On the other hand, in our circumspect moments, we wonder if we enjoy the perverse advantage of a somewhat maverick institution in a setting where conservation problems outnumber conservation professionals by several orders of magnitude.

Nature Conservation Foundation
Mysore, India

The Nature Conservation Foundation (India) received a 2006 Distinguished Service Award from SCB for the scientific rigor, focus, and imagination that they use to affect sustainable conservation and for a vision that is leading to the addition of mature scientists to the region's workforce of conservation biologists. The award will be conferred on the evening of Saturday, 24 June at the 2006 annual meeting.

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