If you ask Purna Barjya about any particular tree in the Chahala division of Odisha’s Similipal National Park (SNP), there is a high possibility he will lead you to it. Barjya (47) has been patrolling the Chahala range of Similipal North division on foot for almost three decades now. He is one of the Protection Assistants (PAs) recruited from the villages around the reserve, which covers almost the whole of Mayurbhanj district. Barjya has information about all the trees in his care — which one is healthy, which one dry, partly dry, broken at the top or falling apart. He is always on the alert not just about trees but also animals — no carcass or hunter’s trap ever escapes his gaze.
A villager crosses Similipal during last year’s forest fire | Photo Credit: BISWARANJAN ROUT
Not tired of following this monotonous routine year after year, Barjya heads to the forest every morning, accompanied by two other PAs. He walks along forest roads, sometimes uncharted ones, in the Chahala section, making note of new flowering, tree felling, carcasses and signs of forest fire. He scrupulously enters data in his mobile phone loaded with the MSTrIPES (Monitoring System for Tigers: Intensive Protection and Ecological Status) app that uses GPS to keep track of the distances covered on patrol, crime scenes with geo-tagged photographs and important observations made by field staff on duty.
“Unless one has passion or a sense of ownership of the forest resources, he cannot perform the tedious patrolling duty,”says Barjya
A sense of ownership
It is mandatory for the PAs to cover 10 km of forest roads every day, the painstaking patrolling earning them ₹315 per day. Barjya rarely visits his village Barsia, 12 km from the Chahala office, where his wife and four children live. “Unless one has passion or a sense of ownership of the forest resources, he cannot perform this tedious patrolling duty,” he says.
Poaching, hunting and illegal tree felling have always been major problems in SNP, which is spread across a vast area of 2,750 sq.km. It’s only in recent years that the incidence has come down. And this is largely due to the PAs, employed by the forest department since 2002 with initial help from a local NGO, Sangram. “Similipal National Park has been divided into hundreds of grids measuring 2 sq.km. each. The PAs have been assigned to cover all the grids, which means every inch of the park is patrolled by our committed force of 700 PAs,” says M. Yogajayananda, Regional Chief Conservator of Forest, Baripada. The 700-odd PAs of SNP jointly covered 75,146.95 km in January this year, making Similipal one of the most intensely patrolled tiger reserves of India.
Dousing fires
Vanoo Mitra Acharya, general secretary of Sangram, says, “Recruiting PAs or volunteers from local villages fulfils two objectives. It reduces the pressure of unemployed villagers on forest resources. And the forest department gets skilled manpower since the villagers know the jungles like the back of their hand.”
A Protection Assistant inside Similipal biosphere. | Photo Credit: BISWARANJAN ROUT
Last year, Similipal had one of the worst cases of forest fire. “I had not slept for four to five days at a stretch trying to detect fire spots,” says Chaturbhuj Soren, another PA deployed in Similipal North. He joined Jamuani section under Barehipani range as a foot soldier six years ago. “It was difficult to douse fire on a hill which had no source of water. Fire personnel could not trek the hill. So the responsibility fell on our shoulders,” he says.
Loving the forest
The dangers in the PAs’ lives include the very animals they protect. In his 30 years of duty, Barjya has been attacked by a leopard, wild boar and bear on three occasions. “Once while I was on a regular patrolling duty, I spotted a bear with her cubs strolling near Chahala. The mother bear suddenly veered towards me. I confronted her with a lathi (baton). At one point of the duel, the bear and I were holding the same baton. Fortunately, she ran away when others came to my help,” Barjya says.
Peacocks and spotted deer at Similipal National Park | Photo Credit: BISWARANJAN ROUT
Each year, on the day following Pana Sankranti, which falls in April-May and marks the first day of the Odia calendar, the tribal people of Mayurbhanj hold a ritual called akhand shikar (mass hunting) where they venture deep into the forests to kill animals. The PAs, most of whom also belong to the tribes, raise awareness about the harm the tradition does to protected species. Thanks to their efforts, the indiscriminate killings have stopped now, with the tribals making do with token hunts. “People still resort to hunting smaller animals like the giant squirrel or barking deer. We try to talk them out of it. At the cost of antagonising fellow villagers, we report them to the forest department,” says Soren.
Outside SNP, women of Mandan, a tribal village, have been at the forefront in protecting 423 acres of village forest, ensuring that the Similipal forest remains contiguous. “Since 1975, we have been protecting our forests. Neither outsiders nor villagers can fell trees. All the 92 families of the village have been assigned to protect the forests on a weekly basis,” says Anapuruna Tiria of Mandan.
satyasundar.b@thehindu.co.in
