Romulus Whitaker is 74 but dodges the lashing tail of the two-year-old mugger with the dexterity of a young pugilist. He is on his weekly visit to the Madras Crocodile Bank and Centre for Herpetology (MCB), Asia’s first crocodile breeding hub.
The 8.5-acre campus is home to 14 species of crocodiles, turtles, snakes and lizards that draw people in droves, since he founded it in 1976. In one of the pens, dust rises as two crocodiles spar while the rest are as immobile as stacked wood. There is a ripple of excitement among the school kids watching them, till they notice Whitaker cradling the mugger like a gun. Adults push back, children forward and a couple of photographs later, the mugger is sent back.
Udhagamandalam 13/02/2018:The 10-foot long King Cobra rescued from a tea plantation in Pandalur by the Gudalur Forest Division. Photo:HANDOUT_E_MAIL
“Muggers are adaptable. We found one in the sewage plant of IIT-Madras, another in a hill stream,” says Whitaker, who goes on to talk about the bite force of the saltwater crocodile, his survey of dwindling crocodile numbers in the 1970s and the endangered gharial. One of the highlights of this journey in the conservation of varied fauna is the award of the Padma Shri to Whitaker by the President of India today.
Whitaker, who was in Maharashtra meeting snake rescuers when the award was announced, says, “Snake rescue in India remains controversial because people do crazy stuff and many have been killed. We had gathered at Mahad with the Organisation for Wildlife Studies (OWLS), senior forest department officers and Khaire who heads the Pune Snake Park... to discuss how to minimise casualties.”
But, it’s not always reptiles that crowd his thoughts or mornings. In his farm in the outskirts of Chinglepet, Whitaker shares time with four mixed-breed dogs, a half-Yorkshire, half-wild pig called Luppy that’s “as huge as a hippopotamus” and an emu named Neelakantan “for his blue throat”.
It’s a throwback to his biophilic childhood in upper New York, where he roamed the countryside with boys upturning rocks in search of spiders and bugs. “I once brought home a non-venomous American garden snake and my mother said ‘Wow, how beautiful’. I was lucky my mother encouraged me and bought me my first book on snakes. Children are always looking to see how parents react. It’s important they get the right impression of creatures,” he says.
When his parents divorced, and his artist-mother moved to India after marrying Ram Chattopadhyaya — a pioneer in colour film processing and son of Harindranath and Kamala Chattopadhyaya — Whitaker found himself in a veritable paradise for snakes. “I met many snake charmers in Bombay. Luckily, I didn’t make any foolish mistakes.”
School was in Kodaikanal and Whitaker walked the woods often. “My first venomous snake was a Russell’s viper that I scooped up with a butterfly net. The science teacher allowed us to keep it in an aquarium. That was encouragement.” It mapped his destiny and left him with an enthusiasm and care for the natural world.
Whitaker briefly went to college in the US before being drafted as a medic during the Vietnam War. He was then apprenticed to Bill Haast of the Miami Serpentarium — a man he considers his guru.
“When I was in Florida, I was trying to pin down a water moccasin, a venomous snake. The log went underwater and the snake bit my thumb. Bill gave me the day off,” laughs Whitaker. However, he considers the incident with the Greenrock rattle snake in Arizona as scarier. “I was far from help and the reactions were severe.”
- At Agumbe, new species are discovered on a weekly basis.
- The Irulas, considered the best snake hunters, were robbed of a living with the Wildlife Protection Act 1972. The Irula Cooperative produces most anti-venom.
- Venom is so varied that it should be collected from the four corners of the country and pooled to treat snake bites.
- There is the need to study the banded krait and Andaman krait that are just as deadly as the king cobra, Russell’s and saw-scaled viper.
- There is urgency to develop awareness in rural India, where 97% snake bites happen.
Living together
Whitaker founded the Madras Snake Park in 1970 and the crocodile bank in the same decade, and has done remarkably well in getting the public interested. “Conservation programmes have their ups and downs. MCB started with 14 crocs, we now have 2,000 and encourage farms to take some. We don’t breed muggers; only gharials. We’ve released crocs in the wild and Tamil Nadu and Gujarat have the highest numbers. People have gone one generation with living without them — our effort now is to teach people to live with or avoid them. With snakes, our focus is on popularising anti-venom and encouraging people to treat snake bites as they would a heart attack. It’s a medical emergency, going to local healers will not help. Fifty thousand people die of snake bite in India every year and many more are crippled for life,” says Whitaker, whose work with snakes and the Irula cooperative has been featured extensively, including in the Emmy-winning King Cobra .
One of the sweetest throwbacks to his childhood was when his son Nikhil, then four, discovered a species of khukri snake on the Kodaikanal ghat road.
It’s an experience now extended to researchers at the rainforest research stations at Agumbe and the Andamans. “The five-acre land at Agumbe was bought from funds my mother willed. It gives researchers a comfortable opportunity to live and study in a rain forest environment.”
Whitaker, who loves rock and roll, jazz and the music of The Band, says ‘snake hunting’ counts as his favourite hobby. Although not a heart-on-sleeve sentimentalist, when asked which animal he longs to see, he says, “Tyrannosaurus rex, of course. Any herpetologist feels he’s born way too late... Now, wouldn’t that be wonderful!”
