They increased forest cover by planting thousands of trees. They risked their lives to protect endangered species from being poached and ending up as exotic dishes on up-market dinner table. They generated employment through wildlife tourism. Sangeeta Yadav brings some such heart-warming stories of men of the wilds
Brahma putra
He has created a habitat for wild animals by turning a sandbar of the river Brahmaputra into a forest reserve. He has planted thousands of trees of different species making it a green valley. He has fought with the villagers to ensure that they don’t cut trees. Meet Jadav Molai Payeng, a Padma Shri Awardee from Jorhat, Assam — the forest man of India in the truest sense. The Molai forest covering 1,360 hectares has been named after him and is home to many elephants, Bengal tigers, one-horned rhinos, deer, rabbits, monkeys and several varieties of birds, including a large number of vultures.
His journey began back in 1979 when 15-year-old Payeng from Mishing tribal was returning to his birthplace Aruna Sapori after completing his Class X from Baligaon Jagannath Baruah Arya Vidyalaya in Jorhat. “I remember that year very well. Flood had hit Assam and washed up the snakes to the sandbars. Since it had no tree cover, over 100 of snakes died. I was shocked and sad to see this. In my school, we were taught the importance of wildlife and forest. The stark reality hit me and I realised that what we learnt from the book and our teachers is not been followed in reality,” Payeng says who was recently honoured with RBS Earth Hero Award.
He wanted to help and went to the nearby Deori community where villagers told him that this was a regular feature. Floods meant animals dying. They also told him that the solution lay in planting bamboo as it grows faster and can be used as sandbars. “They gave me 15 bamboo seeds and 25 saplings which I planted,” Payeng tells you.
Coming from a very poor family which eked a living by selling milk, Payeng decided to dedicate his entire life for the betterment of Nature and mankind. He left his studies and started working as a labourer with the social forestry division in Golaghat district to plant trees on 200 hectares at Aruna Chapori. After the completion of the project, it took five years, all the workers left but Payeng chose to stay back in the jungle to look after the plants and continued to plant more trees on his own. The downer was that wild animals started having a conflict with the villagers as they would enter the farms and destroy their crop.
“In 2008, around 150 elephants entered the Aruna Chapori village which is 1.5 km away from the forest and destroyed the crop. Angry villagers gathered and went to the jungle to cut the trees and destroy the forest. There were over 1,000 people. I told them that if they wanted to cut the trees, they had to cut me first. I will go to the wildlife department and Ministers for a solution but not let you cut any tree. I asked them how they would survive with no treesIJ Without trees, there will be no oxygen and no oxygen means no life on Earth. The incident grabbed a lot of attention. The media came and saw three rhinos and a herd of 115 elephants. It became a hub for the researchers, wildlife activists and conservationist who were surprised to see this man-made jungle,” Payeng says. He has since then called for various wildlife conferences in schools and colleges across the country to give a talk.
At the age of 39, he got married to 25-year-old Binita and started living in a small hut in the jungle. But after the birth their first child, they moved to Jorhat in 2011. He has cattle and buffalo on his farm and sells milk for his livelihood, his only source of income.
Wild animals mean poachers. In 2012, the first case came to light. “Before leaving for one of the conferences, I told the forest department to take care of the new-born rhinos and but they couldn’t find any of them. When I came back, I looked for them and found their dead bodies. I broke down when I saw the rhino’s horn, tail and nails gouged out. I couldn’t eat for a couple of days. The baby rhinos were like a family member. I felt that I failed to protect them,” Payeng tells you.
For his work, he was awarded for the first time in 2012 on Earth Day and honoured with the title of the Forest Man of India by JNU vice-chancellor Sudhir Kumar Sopory. He was honoured with Padma Shri in 2015 by former late President APJ Abdul Kalam.
While Payeng may not live inside the forest that he has so painstakingly created, but he still spends hours roaming it and ensuring the animals and the forest are safe.
Saving the Grey Ghosts
Imagine co-existing with the endangered ‘Grey Ghosts’ aka snow leopards in a village situated in the middle of a Wildlife National ParkIJ For the two forests guards Khenrab Phuntsog and Smanla Tsering, who were born in one of the 21 villages at the Hemis National Park in ladakh, their passion to work for wildlife conservation encouraged them to take up the responsibility of 3,350 sq km Hemis National Park which drew many wildlife enthusiasts from all over the world — to see the Grey Ghosts of the Himalayas that were on the brink of extinction.
“Snow leopards enter the villages, attack humans and the livestock as they are easy prey. It was a huge loss for the villager since livestock is their only source of food. They were left with no option but to kill the leopard. Not just that, the poachers started selling leopard skin and other body parts in the international markets. Since there were only four conservationists, it became next to impossible to prevent the killings and enforce the law across the villages. The area is huge and manpower little. Therefore, the villagers like ourselves decided to volunteer and protect the animal,” Khenrab says who was awarded RBS Save the Species Award.
“It is very nice for us to admire snow leopard but it is very difficult to love a predator especially when your livestock is killed. I met a man who has lost 43 of his 48 livestock by a pair of snow leopards. But today, this enemy has become an asset to the villagers as it has increased tourism,” Dr MK Ranjit Sinh, wildlife conservationist and chairman of Wildlife Trust of India, opines.
To create a habitat where man and beast can co-exist, protect the endangered species and also generate other means of earning, Khenrab and Smanla, who have been doing this for over 17 years, came up with an eco-tourism project.
“It took us years to make the villagers understand how important these animals are. We used to go to each villager and tell them not to kill the snow leopard. We introduced the concept of eco-tourism where we asked the villagers to develop an infrastructure to host tourists and make everything available especially for the trekkers who used to hire horses, tents and other things from outside the National Park. The homestay facility directly benefited the villagers and gave employment to the local women who made traditional handicrafts like souvenirs to sell. The youngsters became guides and provided transportation service,” Smanla explains.
No just snow leopards, the Hemis National Park is also famous for wolves, lynx, wild dog, red fox; four species of wild ungulates – Bharal, ladakh Urial, Tibetan Argali, Ibex and around seventy-three species of birds. Now when villagers see a snow leopard in their house or inside the village, they say that they will not kill it as it brings them good luck and money. Rather they immediately call the rescue team to catch the leopard so that it can be re-released in its habitat.
Through this project, the duo has not only managed to double the population of snow leopards that stood at 60 in the entire region to nearly 300, they have also shown the villagers that there are other ways to make a living.
Over the years, since the two began their work — 2000-01, they have managed to rescue 27 snow leopards out of which 17 were released in the wild. Ten, unfortunately, died due to injuries, old age and illness.
Recalling one of the rescue missions, Khenrab says: “There was an eight-nine-month-old cub that got separated from his mother and reached a village. People saw the cub entering one of the houses and called us. We caught the cub without tranquilising him, showed him to the veterinary doctor and when he was given an okay sign, he was released back into the wild. But it was a cub and we were worried. So the next morning, we went back to the spot where we had released him. We traced the pug marks and found out that he was united with his mother. When we rescue a snow leopard from a village, we try to release it in the forest near the village. This, to avoid conflict with other snow leopards. We still lose livestock to these ‘Grey Ghosts’ as they are called but the killings and hunting have gone down. We get to hear of one or two cases a year, today.”
Green warrior
The jungle has its own rules and so do the Idu-Mishmi tribals of Mishimi Hills in Arunachal Pradesh. Here, killing a tiger means killing your brother and would result in a month’s exile in the jungle. On his return, there is a big religious ceremony where he has to feed the entire village. Killing an endangered Florican bird, and other animals like Sambar deer, rabbit, Takin goat-antelope or Pangolin will debar you from sleeping with your wife, meeting your family and not eating onion and garlic for five days. SurprisedIJ These are some of the taboos that are followed by the tribals to stop hunting, especially the rare Bengal Florican. Today, there are 300 to 1,500 of these birds left in the wild.
To put an end to hunting which was an ageold practise in the jungles of Arunachal Pradesh, 52-year-old Ipra Mekola, head of the Mekola clan and Idu-Mishmi tribe, a historian by profession, left his job to become a wildlife conservationist.
“It is difficult to enforce wildlife conservation law in the jungles of Arunachal Pradesh. Therefore, we came up with taboos through which we managed to spread awareness amongst tribals about the ill effects of killing the wild animals. I tell them that by killing one Florican, you could earn only Rs 500. But if one tourist comes and pays you Rs 500 to show the bird, imagine how much you can earn from ten tourists. Tell your men not to shoot the wild animal,” Ipra says who has also started bird watching tours in the region.
Ipra has been working as a conservationist since 1995 in four villages and has come up with sustainable solutions to the societal issues. One such project was broom grass cultivation through which he increased women employment and also managed to Mehao Wildlife Sanctuary.
“The traditional practice of hunting with bow and arrow has now been replaced by high-end guns. Due to the advent of commercialisation, poaching of rare species has increased as they command a huge price in the international market. The killing of animals and birds were increased by leaps and bound. Earlier, hunting used to be the main occupation and men were the breadwinners of the family. I thought why not involve women in broom grass cultivation so that they can also become financially independent. Many women participated in the project held at the barren lands near the river bed of Mehao Wildlife Sanctuary where Floricans are spotted in large number. Within a year, they started earning Rs 50,000 to Rs 1lakh a year and the region came under protection. Tall trees are harmful for the Floricans. Their prey sits on tree tops and eats their chicks. To protect them, we cut all tall trees and created a grassland,” Ipra explains.
Apart from Floricans, the dwindling number of Hillock Gibbon due to poachers and wild dogs was worrisome as well. “There were only a few forest canopies left for the Gibbons. When they would fall, wild dogs would eat them. I decided to rescue them and sent them to the Sanctuary which had good forest canopy. I went to Wildlife Trust of India in Delhi to seek help in rescuing them. I met Vivek Menon who helped me organise a team of veterinary doctors and transportation facility. So far, we have managed to rescue 19 eastern Hillock Gibbons,” Ipra says, who has also created a jungle by planting over 1,000 trees in the barren lands in Mishimi Hills due to which many elephants and birds started coming in. The only problem was that every time the elephants destroyed the villagers’ crop, fingers would be pointed at Ipra.
He has also been instrumental in fighting off poachers, active in the Kayala Pass area near Indo-China border in 2000. “There was some group of poachers who used to shoot Floricans during the day and rabbits at night. Once I caught them with 16 dead rabbits. I had a scuffle with a few. One of them said: ‘I can shoot you like a rabbit’ and shot me. But I survived,” Ipra recalls who has been a pioneer in the formation of the Biodiversity Management Committee of Mekola and People’s Biodiversity Register of Gimbo village.
Working as a Wildlife Trust of India’s field advisory member at Dibang Valley Conservation project, arranging for finances has been a great challenge. “Who likes to do a job that doesn’t payIJ I am doing it because of my love for the Nature. I am not in the department but still, I have managed to do so much. That is satisfying. I have more than 500 cows and sometimes have to sell some to get money to buy salt and other basic necessities. But the biggest difficulty comes in changing the mindset of the people. They don’t follow rules unless there is a benefit involved. Thus, we have to make a chain of conservation to prevent the eco-system and generate better ways of earning for the tribals. When I go to schools for lectures, we need to give something to them so that they feel happy. But I don’t always have resources. Sometimes I have to ask for a donation,” Ipra says.
For his work, Ipra was recently awarded Green Warrior award by RBS Earth Heroes and is also honoured the National Innovation Award during National Conference on Social Innovation for community conservation.
Talking about his future plans, Ipra says: “Till the time I am alive, I will work for the conservation of the environment and betterment of the society. I don’t do this work for money and reward but for the sake of preserving wildlife. I challenge myself to be the change that I want to see. I warn people by saying that no matter how much money you can earn if you are unable to conserve the environment which provides fresh oxygen for survival, you are not living for the true purpose of living.”
