It’s an irresistible magnet that lures tourists in droves to Munnar, Kerala’s famed tourist destination. It’s also the hill-resort’s mascot, emblem and pride — the highly endangered and iconic Nilgiri tahr.
The Eravikulam National Park (ENP), just outside Munnar, is home to the largest population of this wild mountain goat, currently numbering around 1,000, thanks to unrelenting conservation efforts over the past 60-odd years. Besides the Parambikulam Tiger Reserve and Silent Valley National Park in Kerala, the tahr is also found in small numbers in pockets of Tamil Nadu’s Anamallai hills and the Nilgiris, from which it derives its name. In the hills of Munnar, the tahr is undoubtedly a living example of the success of wildlife conservation in this part of the Western Ghats.
Gregarious by nature, the tahr is usually found in herds of 20 to 30. They frequent the wide open montane grasslands and craggy cliffs, seldom entering the jungle. Once prized for its flesh, the tahr had been hunted almost to the brink of extinction before local British conservationists stepped in.
Significantly, the tourism zone of ENP is the only area in the country where this herbivore mingles freely with tourists, quite literally. They even allow tourists to pet them — though this is forbidden — as they graze quite unmindful of the humans milling around them. Needless to say, tourists are thrilled by this dramatic display of trust, friendliness and fearlessness.
The origin of this phenomenon dates back to the early 1950s when a local British tea company set aside this area as a sanctuary where no hunting was permitted, and laid out a salt-lick (salt, incidentally, is a tahr favourite). Lured by this ‘delicacy’, a herd of tahr became so tame over the years that they started frequenting the road snaking through the sanctuary, quite unconcerned about passers-by. Soon, motorists had to virtually shoo them off the road.
Old-timers recall Walter Mackay, a veteran British planter, who, while driving through, used to toot his horn to have his car mobbed by a herd of tahr whom he rewarded by handing out biscuits!
In sharp contrast to this man-tahr bond in the tourism zone, the other herds of tahr in the core area of ENP continue to remain extremely timid and wary of humans, fleeing at the very sight of them.
The amazing ease with which the tahr negotiates sheer cliffs — its natural habitat — must be seen to be believed. Even the kids can be seen perched perilously with the adults atop precipitous ridges where they are quite at home. It is this agility that enables the tahr to take shelter in inaccessible ledges and crevices that no predator can reach — and a fall from where would mean certain death. The panther and the wild dog are known to prey on the tahr.
The kids have their own charm. As sure-footed as the adults, they seem to virtually bounce along as if jumping on a trampoline as they frolic around and playfully butt each other in mock fights. Around 70 kids were born this year at ENP, which is traditionally closed to tourists during February-March to facilitate undisturbed calving.
The Nilgiri tahr’s arresting appearance — enhanced in no small measure by its swept-back horns and stately loping gait — makes it quite photogenic. Particularly impressive are the ‘saddlebacks’, mature males well past their prime who develop a prominent grey patch on their backs. During the British era, culling of ‘saddlebacks’ was permitted to reinvigorate the herds and local planters’ clubs still display these trophies.
Tourists are ferried into ENP in the forest department’s fleet of mini-buses. On a recent visit, I saw about 15 adult tahrs nonchalantly grazing on the roadside right next to a check-post, quite unconcerned with the forest department personnel going about their work and tourists avidly photographing them from within touching distance. Today, a visit to ENP is a ‘must’ for nature-lovers who want to see for themselves this uncommon and abiding symbiosis between the tahr and humans, a recurring feature thanks exclusively to the absence of poaching or any sort of harassment.
Given the importance of saving the imperilled Nilgiri tahr from extinction, it was only fitting that the 4th World Congress on Mountain Ungulates was held in Munnar in 2006, a four-day conference of Indian and international wildlife scientists, researchers and conservationists actively involved in saving similar species of tahr in India and across the world.
George N. Netto is a Munnar-based freelance writer with an abiding interest in wildlife and environmental conservation.
