Vision of Life; by Sanjay: Wandering Tigers, Dying Leopards, Vanishing forest & Insensitive Humans!

“The time I spent in the jungles held unalloyed happiness for me, and that happiness I would now gladly share. My happiness, I believe, resulted from the fact that all wildlife is happy in its natural surroundings. In nature there is no sorrow, and no repining. A bird from a flock, or an animal from a herd, is taken by hawk or carnivorous beast and those that are left rejoice that their time had not come today, and have no thought of tomorrow”… Jim Corbett.

Well, percentage wise speaking out of my hundred articles about forests or wild life, in nearly ninety articles I have used words of this man as starting quote & needless to say he is one of the best person who has lived forest as being part of them as then only such words can come from a person, so was Jim! Reason of this sharing is some recent news which as usual were not headlines but at least was bold enough to capture attention of many readers! One was about a tiger T1C1 (frankly I don’t like calling a tiger like some serial number of a robot in Star Wars R2D2) from Tipeshwar forest in eastern part of Maharashtra State has travelled nearly 1800 km & settled back again in Tipeshwar. The tiger was radio collared a technique by which a collar is attached to the tiger’s neck & via satellite (just like GPS) you can keep the location track of the animal. This technology is used to ensure safe keeping of the tiger (as its endangered species) within its habitat. Just like we all have a habitat mean the periphery within which we travel for our daily living needs, a tiger also has a habitat. For e.g. I live in Pune city & my habitat is western parts of Pune city where I live as well go to work or go mostly to shop or dine. Only difference is a tiger need not have to go to shop or work as his sole work is to find a prey as well get a partner to mate i.e. a tigress! And here is the problem as unlike humans, tigers don’t have a society or laws, they have only one law & that is survival of fittest! So in one habitat i.e. periphery within which a male tiger moves for hunting or mating is called as its territory & reason mainly known that a male tiger getting out of territory is pushed away by another male tiger or getting separated from mom tigress & making its own territory, which is applicable to even a female i.e. tigress! And this territory thing isn’t just for male tigers, it’s for female tigers, for leopards, for even wild dogs, for eagle & well even male frogs has their territory!

And then there was news which is now common for news papers in Pune District & it’s about leopards attacking farmers as well some leopard getting killed in road accident by some vehicle. It’s happening mostly around Junnar/ Ambegaon towns in Pune district. In one of the recent road kill a leopard got hit by some speeding vehicle & the impact was so hard that the poor leopard got thrown away for nearly hundred feet & needless to say died on the spot & the vehicle fled from the spot! Well, in a country where nearly one lac fifty thousand people i.e. humans die in road accidents every year, who has time to care for a leopard being hit & die on road! And then as it’s a leopard a big cat supposedly endangered that’s why at least it makes to news-paper headlines (though in some inner page) but thousands of other animals such as hyenas, wolves, deer, snakes & many more are not even that lucky to make even in news! And then these are just road kills, we haven’t yet reached to birds dying due to power lines or wind mill blades or fish dyeing in thousands because of river or sea pollution.

Now if you are wondering, isn’t this all routine stuff & you are actually bored reading about animals & the way death meets them in hundreds of ways (though we the humans only makes this meeting possible), well on this background you will understand the importance of the 1800km journey by the tiger T1C1 from some forest in eastern Vidarbha (a part of State) to a west of Vidarbha & in process crossing State’s boundary twice & get settled finally at the very same place from where the journey has started, miracle isn’t it? As during all this journey as even if a tiger can walk say 40 to 50 odd kms per day (actually it night) then also it makes some forty plus days to complete all this journey & not even once it attacked any human or got caught neither it’s been hit by some vehicle while crossing many roads including national highways, not got electrocuted by some open power cable or electric fence, not even got food or water poisoned by our created pollution! Indeed this guy must be a Super Tiger & that’s why to study its journey is very much important as it may revel many miseries about not just tigers but all such other species which we are trying hard (at least showing) to conserve or protect from our own selves! As till today we don’t know many things about animal’s behaviour & again who cares as we don’t even bother to know about behaviour of our kids or elder people at home or at our colleagues working under us in office, so to expect from us to care for studying about animal behaviour is bit too much, isn’t it!!

Yet there are people fool enough (its sarcastically said please) who spend time & money to study about behaviour as well life style of animals & it’s because of them C1T1’s such long journey could be documented & being studied, thanks to forest department’s role in it! Usually forest dept is hailed for its non-doing & reactive (never proactive) role about wild life but that’s not true as actually its ignorance from our rulers (Mai Baap Sarkar) is the main cause for such image of the dept. All such studies & analyzing study’s outcome needs lots of man power & money, which is never provided to the forest dept is a bitter fact! Imagine keeping track of an animal like a tiger which mostly moves at night & you don’t know where it will go & the same time you can’t go too close to it as it’s dangerous for the animal as well for the observer. And then you have to protect that animal from the local people (read as humans) as they may get sacred, exited & any time some disaster or mishap is at platter! And this is about just one tiger, there are nearly three hundred tigers (known) in this State & then it’s not just the tigers but leopards, sloth bears, deer, wolves, snakes & the list is unending of the animals we need to protect from humans & for that we need to study them in detail!

Coming back to the news of leopard being hit by speeding vehicle in rural part of Pune & getting killed, well there are many other news also the leopard attacking humans as well their cattle! Most people (humans) will ask a leopard killing many cattles, sheep & threat to human isn’t that important than the news of some leopard gets killed by vehicle & then the leopard has come on road, right? The vehicle hasn’t gone in forest to chase the leopard & kill it by colliding in it at speed! Well, humans will ask this question as they can speak, they can write, they can protest, they have laws, they have cars, they have traffic rules being taught in schools (yet they break it every day),they can build roads in the forests & they have got insurance also if they get hit or get killed in the accident! But a leopard can’t speak, it hasn’t come on road in the city (well that day is not long) but on a road which cuts its home that’s forest & nobody has taught him in school not to cross the road without looking to left or right for a speeding vehicle!

Actually where on one side FB/ Insta are full of leopard sightings where some humans pay thousands of rupees to go in forests to get one click of a leopard, it’s amazing that on other side we ignore a leopard (many actually) getting killed by our own interference in its habitat. And I do agree, it’s easy to write a blog on leopard’s death or post images of a leopard clicked by sitting in gypsy car but having a small mud hut in some remote place in forest & go out at night to water the farm where some hungry leopard is roaming around, well I won’t definitely love leopard or will think of its conservation! Here is where forest dept (read as govt), some sane people (who can think on behalf of a leopard) & society should come together & find a bridge between the leopard & the locals which are agitated by its presence. Indeed we are encroaching the leopards as well other species, a leopard has canines & claws so it can retaliate but not all other animals, birds & reptiles are that lucky. All they do is just surrender (read as get extinct) & move away for another place for survival, which is not that easy to find among all the humans around! Think of using leopard’s sightings as mean of tourism, give them some reserved space & food of their own & I am sure it won’t come looking for MacDonald or Pizza in your towns! Agreed, in a country where land is gold, it’s not that easy to make space for the leopards or the wolves but ask ourselves are we the only & rightful owners of this land which we measure & get on our name via some document names 7/12 or property card? Just as a tiger or leopard don’t have revenue dept or city survey with them; they can’t claim some piece of land for themselves, isn’t it?

Just other day on my morning walk I saw a person throwing garbage collected from his home in to Mutha river from the Rajaram bridge near my home, well, it’s a common sight I see every day & I felt like asking that how he will feel if some fish or frog throws their left over in his kitchen while he is having his lunch or on his bed while he is sleeping at peace in his bed room! We just don’t care & we only cry that rivers are polluting & fish are dying, Hippocrates we are! In 2019 nearly 110 tigers & 491 leopards have been died across the country & that’s enough to tell the story about fate of other animals & birds & water species!

Guys, it’s not about a C1T1 tiger travelling 1800km or a leopard getting hit by unnamed truck; but who made that tiger to travel so much just for its food or home or who made the road right in the heart of the home (forest) of that leopard & what we are doing about that “who”, is the only question I will ask to every that person who calls himself or herself a human!

(* In a small awareness effort, we at Sanjeevani, decorating the lift cabins in our all projects with wild life images with a message "save wild life")

Sanjay Deshpande

Sanjeevani Dev.

Please view my sharing about real estate in Pune at U-Tube link below..

https://youtu.be/al0NZ-7Zhq0

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https://visonoflife.blogspot.com/2019/11/infrastructure-development-real-estate.html