Road Kills, Wild Life & Human named Demons!

 

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“Humanity can no longer stand by in silence while our wildlife is being used, abused and exploited. It is time we all stand together, to be the voice of the voiceless before it's too late. Extinction means forever.” …  Paul Oxton.

Paul is founder of Wild Heart Wildlife Foundation & their mission is, “The Future of Wildlife is in Our Hands’ Located in Johannesburg, South Africa, Wild Heart Wildlife Foundation is a small Non-Profit Organization (registered with the Department of Social Development), doing all we can to make a big impact. We live for helping the wildlife most at risk. We love working hands-on with the animals, and we do our utmost to help every animal we possibly can.” And I have used wise words of Paul not once but many times especially when subject of sharing is wildlife & this topic is also not exception! Well, though the topic is road kills but the reason for the topic is my recent tadoba trip & as usual many (read as non-wild lifers) will say, “Oh no, again, tadoba!” Guys, can’t help it as lockdown even after new new normal has made travelling a bit difficult especially out of our State & then my friend anuj khare & myself wanted to explore new gates of tadoba forest so I decided for tadoba & a road trip from Pune to tadoba is always dear to me as I can take darshan (no right word in English) of Shree Gajanan Maharaj at Shegaon on way to tadoba!

Tadoba which is mostly known by now to all the wild life lovers (and non-lovers too) as tiger centre because very rarely the visitor returns from here without seeing the yellow black stripes such is the success story of tiger conservation here! I too wanted to click the tiger on the greens which you can get in tadoba at its best in the monsoon season & then I have never been to tadoba in the monsoons i.e., rains to experience how the landscape looks with vitamin rain! So, with all such background myself & anuj reached to tadoba’s aliganja gate which is accessible from Chimur side & close to Kolara gate of core area. Now tadoba has nearly fifteen plus gates for core & buffer though in rainy seasons only buffer gates are open for tourism, again something I don’t understand as why we can’t keep open core area also in rains only on motorable roads & tadoba core has got enough of such roads! Already we need more & more people to visit forests & places like tadoba to make life of people living around sustainable with tourism as the way wild life tourism charges are being increased by the govt (all State’s), it’s now restricted to few riches for regular visits & fun oriented people for just one visit & both categories do nothing for wild life conservation! Sad part is, the category of the society which can conserve or help in conservation of wild life can’t afford to visit repeatedly forests such as tadoba such costly affair it has become & by opening more forests & in all seasons we can reduce cost of existing gates which will be big boon for wild life conservation in totality (somebody from govt please read & think)!

At the same time if we are thinking keeping park open in monsoons affects wild life privacy (read as tigers) then in buffer tigers are breeding & are healthy & happy so the logic doesn’t apply for disturbance of privacy to the tigers & wild life by keeping forests open in rains, is what I want to put forward! Now coming to Aliganja gate, let me tell you tadoba was never much famous for beauty of the forest (with due respect to tadoba lovers) the way Kanha or Corbett has wide & rich diversity on scale of plants, flowers, birds & insects. But after visiting Aliganja gate I am sure this opinion has changed as this part of forest of tadoba one must visit just to see how rich tadoba forest can be as at one time our gypsy was surrounded by hundreds of butterflies (a rare sight than tiger actually) making me feel like acting in some Disney animation movie & that is sure sign of richest biodiversity of the forest! At the same time there is old Shiv (Mahadev) temple backdrop of a water-fall, making a pool at its bottom & the scene was right from some Hollywood movie like Indian Jones, what more one needs to forget the city life & concrete jungle as this is why one should be out in nature some time & this is what we want to protect & for that more & more people must be allowed to be here at affordable costs!

Ok, enough of tadoba & let’s come to main subject the road kills of wild animals & reason why once again I have to take this aspect of wild life is because on way back from tadoba to Nagpur via varroa road which goes through many small villages & non reserved forest & farms we saw a Civet Cat dead on the road, needless to say got hit by some speeding vehicle. Nobody was paying much attention as for a common man’s eye it looks like as domestic cat & in a country where nearly a million human lives meet their end in road accidents, who cares for a dead cat on road even if it’s a Civet Cat!  Well, the readers who are not wild lifers, let me tell you, I have been travelling to the forests for nearly twenty-five years & in all these years I have never seen a Civet Cat in live though I have seen a tiger at least five hundred times. Now you can imagine how rare this animal is, as then only you will know why I got so disturbed with the sight of the dead Civet Cat in road accident or road kill! Civet Cat is nocturnal animal i.e., it comes out of its hiding only in darkness to hunt or to feed & no wonder the lonely road with flood lights of a vehicle would have been blinding for the poor Civet & then there is no school which teaches traffic rules to any other species than humans though what difference it makes as humans with all teachings & rules themselves doesn’t follow any traffic rules for fellow humans so who bothers for other species like Civet Cat, right?

Rather this road kill which I witnessed by myself was apex of what has been told or shared to me in tadoba trip from the locals. In any trip to forest, one should keep chatting with guides, gypsy drivers, local food joint runners, resort crew as they feed you with many stories about forest which never reach to social media platform. One such story was about a tiger named Chota Mataksur which has been driven from his territory from Kolara gate side by another young male tiger (one of the zones in tadoba forest) & now this Chota Matakasur named tiger is killing many cattle from nearby village to such extent that in a single incidence this tiger has killed six cattle at a time! While returning from one safari on Moharli Chandrapur road which passes through dense forest around & on which many animals are seen, one car of local number plate zoomed past us honking all the time like it’s been participating in race. Our guide cursed & said “saala in logoki wajahase hum logoko bhugatana padata hai, raatko bahar gadi nikalane nahi dete forest wale hume gharse aur ek mahineme 1 tiger, 1 leopard aur 2 chital mare hai in Chandrapur wale gadiyoke niche”! What it mean is, its the nearby town number plate cars (read as car owners) which are real menace as its such local peoples rash driving makes forest dept apply stringent norms for the villagers around the park while they do foolow traffic norms! Actually, there are road signages all along the roads around tadoba forest to Chandrapur of drive carefully & slowly & watch out for wild animals crossing but if animals can’t read the signages we the humans turns blind eye & deaf ear to such traffic signs, making us dumbest specie (rather useless specie) on the earth. But the what we forget that it’s our dumbness which costs life for many other species, is an unfortunate fact!

And the scene is not just on highways where at some place near forests for e.g. Nagpur-Pench stretch, there are crossing corridors for wild animals & causeways (under-pass) has been provided & indeed it has helped to save lives of some animals. The problem is, smaller internal District or State roads like Nagpur-Varoa- Moharli (tadoba) road which is being used by locals or tourist vehicles commuting from nearby hubs to the park. These are less travelled roads without any road signs (except at few places), the roads are narrow, not much traffic is there so whatever vehicles are using it they are mostly commercial transports or locals & both doesn’t care much about authorities or wild life & outcome is a dead Civet or a dead Jackal or a dead Porcupine & snakes, I have stopped counting in road kills (just sarcastic)!

Few things are a must if we want (if) to reduce if not stop the wild animal’s road kills & they are, first install CC TVs at regular intervals & watch them & find the vehicle speeding & fine them heavily. Second is, speed guns, hidden on the roads passing through forests or outside of forests. Third is a continuous patrolling squad with good vehicles & arms on these roads with basic medical supplies as well a mobile medical van for first-aid of injured animal as well to prevent speeding vehicles & punish them on spot. Fourth is we may not have under passes build for smaller roads but we can create Road Crossings Zones on same level of the road with different surface material as well defused lighting around it so the vehicles will know (hope so) to slow down in these zones. Last but most important an all the way round awareness campaign, especially for commercial & tourist vehicle’s drivers & owners about caring for wild life while they drive. There can be stickers on the car’s wind shields “We Care for Wild Life” to road shows on these roads with the help of local NGO’s & this will be ever going initiative.

Just remember, it’s not the rules or laws which assures a safe & peaceful life but its what we think of our laws is what makes it possible & Road Kills are no exception for this basic law of human behaviour, till then God save the wild animals from the monsters named vehicles & the demons (read as humans) which drive these monsters!

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Sanjay Deshpande 

Sanjeevani Dev.

 

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