Goa’s youth and wild life: Enemies or friends?

 

Nowadays wildlife conservation talk is common practice. Thirty years ago, my father tells me, people, young people especially, didn’t think twice before shooting a bird or gunning down an animal. They didn’t have to bother because there were hardly any laws protecting wildlife, and the animals were a lot more in number. There was no awareness either.

At that time ‘development’ was measured only in terms of population growth and polluting industries. Thanks to that, young people today find themselves living in a highly polluted and dirty environment, cut off more or less completely from nature and wildlife. This has had the paradoxical effect of stimulating their interest in wildlife and its conservation. Larger numbers of youngsters are ready to work to save wildlife from harm or extinction.

For instance, a lot of youth today prefer to do bird watching or camping in the forest, instead of visiting zoos, or keeping birds in cages. In Goa sometime ago the only people able to catch snakes were a few illiterate snake charmers. Now Goa has at least fifteen young men able to handle and rescue snakes when the latter enter people’s homes.

There are basically two wildlife groups in Goa. The first is Green Cross – established by Nirmal Kulkarni and Sunil Korajkar. Their group has been in action for about seven years now. Their activities include snake shows in schools and villages, wild life awareness camps held in the forests of Goa, documentation of native flora and fauna of different sanctuaries, raids on people keeping or using wild animals illegally, and snake rescues.

The second group is called Southern Birdwing – founded by Neil Alvares and Harvey D’Souza. This NGO has been in operation since 1997. Neil and Harvey have made wildlife their profession. They own a boat, with which they conduct crocodile trips in the mangrove area between Zuari and Banastarim. Their trips are highly educational, and one gets to see a lot of rare endemic birds on this trip as well. They also conduct a lot of bird-watching trips, snake talks and like Green Cross also run a snake rescue operation.

Both these groups have been doing a substantial amount of work, and what I really admire about it is that almost all of it has been self funded. Their motivation has also been their own. They all come from different backgrounds, and none of them has parents as tolerant as mine! Yet they have all managed to follow their interests, and their drive for protecting wildlife has remained undiminished.

Nirmal told me some time ago that they had finished over 150 snake talks in schools, colleges, villages and clubs. That’s a very good number, and so is Southern Birdwing’s record which crossed a hundred recently. I can assume that thanks to these shows, a good number of people will be less frightened and more tolerant of snakes.

Camps and nature trips also held by both these groups add to the awareness and interest about wildlife among the people of Goa. I know Southern Birdwing has been organising trips to Dudhsagar frequently. So has Green Cross, which has even had the fortune of sighting a King Cobra on one such excursion in the Forest. Whatever special wildlife they come across they document.

Goans are notorious for keeping wild animals in cages as ‘pets’. Recently I was taking a walk in my village and outside one house I happened to see a rabbit housed in a cage, 1 foot by ½ half foot in dimensions. Some people can have no feelings whatsoever. Keeping parrots and squirrels in tiny cages is a common practice still found all over Goa.  

On one occasion, we conducted a raid on a person who had confined a crocodile inside a fibre glass water tank. The crocodile had long since out grown it, and was forced to remain curled inside the circular tank. The list of cruelties is unending, but thanks to the raids conducted on such people by wildlife groups, a lot of these animals have been seized, rehabilitated and released back in the wild.

Green Cross used to even tackle circuses. Because of their resistance, hardly any circuses now come to Goa. Snakes have been given a new lease of life due to the periodic raids maintained by Green Cross on snake charmers in Anjuna and other places in Goa.

But we do have our problems.

Starting with the issue of raids on snake charmers – though these raids have lessened the number of snake charmers at the flea market – we have never had permanent results. The reason: though the snakes were confiscated, no action was ever taken against the snake charmers themselves. The whole act of raiding in the end became so routine that the snake charmers began to recognise us from a distance. By the time we approached them some of them would even have their snakes ready and neatly packed up for us! If some of these snake charmers were to be jailed for even a day by the forest department, all snake charmers would have been discouraged from this cruel and illegal practice. The snake charmers couldn’t care less. I estimate the average cost of procuring the snake to be not more than Rs 100, whereas their earnings for just one day at the flea market could easily fetch them a Rs 500 net profit. In fact I am beginning to think that the whole exercise backfired in a way because though the number of snake charmers decreased, the turnover of snakes in the baskets of the remaining guys, probably increased.

Our root problem, everyone agrees, is lack of organisation. Living in Goa one drawback is that timings of appointments are never kept. Trying to organise one single raid often involves the entire day. Once I was part of a raid that the forest department organised against a person who had kept a crocodile and a number of birds at home. By the time the forest department vehicle was available for the raid, it was noon. By the time we reached the place it was early evening. Nothing was organised, right from who was going, which vehicle we were supposed to be using, or what we needed. Though I have often blamed the forest department for its lethargy, I have realised that the lack of initiative is very often not due to laziness but is a passive response to constant pressures from ministers and higher authorities above. Forest officers are therefore reluctant to take any severe action against any law offenders.

Neil also mentions that too many activists are involved in too many activities. Yet no one is specialized in a single field. Organised division of tasks would greatly improve our efficiency.

One other issue that is hidden away like a skeleton in the closet is rivalry. Most of the groups stick to themselves, are secretive about the information they have and about the activities they carry out. This I attribute to individual insecurity. Each person/group fears that if information is shared, the other will get the better of them. Very often groups contain individuals dominated by one religion only.

I find this really silly. First of all we are still so few in number. So to be divided leaves us with even less strength. I strongly feel that we should put our differences aside. We could still have our own separate identities, but that shouldn’t mean that we stop helping each other. All groups in Goa should be organised and linked together, supporting one another. Together only we can make a difference.