At 73, Romulus Whitaker has led a wildly exciting life. “My mother got a picture of me from when I was four years old, holding a snake,” says the man who set up Chennai’s Snake Park and the Madras Crocodile Bank
Born in New York, Whitaker moved to Mumbai when he was seven, where his stepfather set up India’s first colour motion processing laboratory. Whitaker grew up close to Bollywood, watching actors like Vyjayanthimala and Dev Anand waltzing in and out of the lab. He is a naturalised Indian, with an American passport, which he gave up to travel to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to study cobras.
Whitaker’s conservation work started in the 1970s, when the field itself was just coming to the fore in India. “I came out with Common Indian Snakes: A Field Guide to let people know that we have so many great snakes here,” he says. “But, of course, people did think I was crazy and didn’t shy away from saying so.” As the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust turns 40, Whitaker looks back at how it all came together.
You travelled the world as a seaman and served in the U.S. Army before you did your groundbreaking conservation work in India. What was your plan when you started out?
I had absolutely no plan; I still don’t. Things dropped into my lap and I just went with it. But honestly, it feels like I’ve been prodded by something — from inside, or maybe, out — and I’ve pursued all these interests with a great deal of passion. I was a merchant seaman because I needed to earn a living when I was 20. I had just returned to the U.S., and I was basically an Indian boy who didn’t even know how to use a soda machine. I tried college for a year and couldn’t do it. Once I gave up on it, I was naturally grabbed by the U.S. Army because the Vietnam War was going on and anyone who wasn’t in college was fair game. Maybe it’s because they figured I wasn’t the kind who’d have shot anybody that they made me a medical lab technician and sent me to Japan, which was entirely out of the war zone.
When did snakes slither into your life?
After the war, I had the opportunity to work with Bill Haast of the Miami Serpentarium Laboratories, which was the largest venom production centre in the world. I’ve always been fascinated with venomous snakes… the whole idea of an animal with toxic venom [grins excitedly]. Working with him gave me a work ethic that stuck with me: keep going doggedly at whatever I wanted to do. But it also gave me a model for something to do in India, which was to set up as a snake park, which I came back and did in 1970. And then, six years later, the Crocodile Bank came to be.
The snake park was popular. In a few years, we had a million people a year visiting. At that time, we got two crocs: one from the Madras aquarium and one from the marine biology department of Porto-Nova [a port on an inlet of the Gulf of Guinea]. We put them together and they started breeding. We thought, with more space, we could breed them in captivity and release babies back into the wild. I wasn’t making this up myself; I was in touch with people in Africa and America who were doing similar stuff way before we began doing it.
Now that it’s 40 years, how are you marking the occasion?
In the 70s, I had done surveys around the country and found that gharials [fish-eating crocodiles], salt water crocodiles and mugger crocodiles were on the verge of extinction. Now, we have a surplus of 1,000 crocodiles, and we are willing to give them free to anyone who wants to set up another bank somewhere else in the country. We also have an international gene bank: 2,100 animals of 17 different species, including crocodiles, turtles, tortoises, snakes and lizards. We still want to revamp the place to make it a world-class destination. We are looking to host more underwater exhibits, painted murals on the wall, gushing water and other exciting things for people to see.
What are you more fond of, crocodiles or snakes?
My interest in reptiles began with snakes, and even now I am working on sensitising people on how to deal with snake bites. Snakes are dangerous and admittedly beautiful: other than butterflies, there are very few creatures that have as many colours and patterns as these creatures. They move in a wonderful and mysterious way, and people don’t know too much about them. But, crocodiles are fascinating animals as well. They are so intelligent that you can communicate with them, train them and even relate to them.
What’s keeping you busy these days?
My work takes me pretty far these days. I have a king cobra project in Kalimantan (Indonesia), and a crocodile project in the Sundarbans. There are also the field stations we set up in the Andaman islands, Agumbe in the Western Ghats, and one on the Chambal river in Uttar Pradesh, which are for studying gharial. So, in a way, I still have a finger in all these pies and a deep interest in all of it, of course.
