The Hindu : `Numbers of large mammals dwindling'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jan 02, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore

`Numbers of large mammals dwindling'

By Alladi Jayasri

BANGALORE Jan. 1. Nagarhole National Park, like most protected areas, is a happy hunting ground for local communities, and six of the nine focal species of large mammals are dwindling in numbers at the heavily hunted site. Poor enforcement capabilities, brazen flouting of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, which bans all hunting, and many socio-cultural factors contribute to the thinning of populations, according to wildlife biologists, K.Ullas Karanth and M.D.Madhusudhan.

A study published in Ambio, a human environment journal published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, comprises a survey of two patches of moist forest, Nalkeri and Arkeri, each about 70 sq km in area, but with vastly different pressure of hunting, conducted by the two wildlife biologists.

Local people from the Kodava, Kuruba, Yerava, Vokkaliga and Moplah communities hunt in the forests of Nagarhole. The researchers found that in Arkeri, the pressures of hunting have been consistently higher over the past three decades. "This is chiefly because until a few years ago, it lacked a wildlife protection staff invested with the exclusive responsibility of controlling hunting,'' Dr. Karanth says.

Besides, Arkeri offered better access to, and therefore, created a greater demand from local meat markets, and showed higher levels of hunting as compared to Nalkeri.

Systematic line transect surveys (a system of walking the forests in straight lines in different directions, and estimating the number of prey animals such as ungulates, and small mammals, and working out the predator-prey ratio, which indicates the health of a forest) were conducted simultaneously in Nalkeri and Arkeri, over a sampling area of 599 km. The line transect helped estimate the abundance of nine species of mammals, the Indian Giant Squirrel, Bonnet Macaque, Common Langur, Barking Deer, Wild Pig, Chital, Sambar, Gaur, and the Asian Elephant.

Estimates by the local hunters and informants indicated that hunting in Arkeri was about three times as intense as in Nalkeri.

As many as 16 of the 29 mammal species of weight over 1 kg in Nagarhole were regularly hunted. Shotguns were the most popular weapons, but tribal hunters were known to use at least eight traditional techniques to hunt large mammals.

The Giant Squirrel, Bonnet Macaque, Langur, Chital and Wild Pig and Gaur are the six species whose density is lowering at an alarming rate in Arkeri. As for the Muntjac and Sambar, both were equally in demand in Nalkeri and Arkeri, while the elephant is the only species occurring at a significantly higher density even in Arkeri.

Patterns of hunting at Nagarhole differed from that of Kudremukh National Park, where hunters mainly catered to the local wild meat consumption. In Arkeri, some hunters "specialise'' in exclusive supply of wild meat to eateries in nearby towns, and sometimes in neighbouring Kerala.

Dr. Karanth's survey and its outcome is the prelude to the drafting of a conservation programme with a "preservationist'' approach, towards a socially acceptable, economically equitable, and morally agreeable ways of minimising hunting pressures on large mammals.

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`Numbers of large mammals dwindling'