Mumbai is regarded as the financial capital of the country , its a city that never sleeps and has many more tags. I wonder when it is the richest city , why are so many things going wrong within. There are some serious issues which reflect some serious problems that the city is facing , the city forest is under great threat which is having an adverse effect on the environment. The green patches of the city include small forests , mangroves , and a national park which is surrounded by suburbs.
All these green areas are homes to thousands of lives which includes insects, reptiles, birds, and animals both land and aquatic other than different species of plants and trees, thus a threat to these greens are automatically a threat to the lives which it supports.
Today we all know the term human-wildlife conflict , which is very commonly used for a leopard attack or a snake bite or something else caused by a wildkind to humans, but we never try to understand the complex meaning behind the term or are miss using the term as we can read write and explain.
I m not expressing what wildlife and nature feels about and i m not a wildlife expert or something like that, what i m trying to do is express what i feel as a human being.
Human-wildlife conflict for me is everything because of human errors both intentional and unintentional on various levels , which have led to a very big threat for both wildlife and humans , for humans it will be felt or experienced in the long run.
We have always exploited the forest and the lives that is supports , from cutting a tree for wood , hunting an wild animal to taste to encroaching on the lands that belong to them. Other than this there are many problems which have been experienced all because of improper planning and management. This is not to point fingers or play the blame game but this is simple criticism done on the basis of analysis and experience acquired while performing and participating in various tasks for conservation and protection of the wildlife of the city.
The current status of the wildlife is under such threat that immediate actions , decisions , new laws and their instant implementations - in short a modification of the current system is required.
There has to be awareness amongst the people regarding various things which should be known by them , maximum people don't know the basic rules, regulations and protocols which are implemented since ages. Wildlife conservation is something which has a very big scope but more important is the need of practicing it with proper ethics. You don't need to be someone special , trained , experienced and so on to contribute and participate in conservation. The mantra for it is the feeling and believe in co existence with wildlife , this land belongs to both the man and the wild. The SGNP (Sanjay Gandhi National Park) is regarded as the lungs of the city as it provides so much of fresh oxygen other than the fresh drinking water which quenches the thirst of the dense population of the city's human and animals.
But today very few of us know the problems faced by the park one of the major problems is the encroachment which has disturbed the wildlife within , there are many other issues which too contribute to the problems. There are so many NGOs and firms that are trying to participate and contribute in conservation but at the end very less amount of success is achieved , this is because the numbers of individuals and the quality of information and awareness has to be enhanced in a simplified way so that it reaches the common man so that he clearly understands and accept it. Other than this are the group of biased individuals and the influential pressure groups who dominate the system here and also support the illegal and unethical practices for personal profits which acts as a barrier for many activists to perform their work and duties for the betterment of wildlife.
From declaration of buffer zones to permissions to enter into the national park is controlled by politics and politicians, constructions have emerged on areas which should be buffer zones, plastics and garbage is littered in and around the park by the visitors , speeding vehicles of the big shots of the city have killed and injured so many wildkinds that the real number has never come up and will never.
This is a never ending topic on which i can keep on writing , almost every day there is a new story in front of me where there is human-animal conflict , but i find that the animal is not at fault as it does not understand the funda of boundaries and borders defined by humans , but still we can make out the difference how it behaves when it visits human habitat and how we behave when we visit their wild habitat.
Go to the forests and see how the monkeys and longoors run away after spotting a human and go to a location where a monkey has visited outside forest how people surround it , start clicking , teasing , feeding , chasing and disturbing it. And then i get a call for a distress situation created by the monkey ( actually by humans who provoke the wild animal) and i m requested to catch , take away , remove the animal from there. Wildlife is already unpredictable we cant make out whats going to be the next reaction of the animal and thus the curious human mind provokes the monkey to start somethings that seems to be entertaining which is very disturbing.
The leave me alone call for tiger conservation and protection should be implemented for all the wildlife, today the national animal is endangered and on a verge of extinction, tomorrow the whole nations animals will be in threat.
And a small information on the leopard attacks of 2012 and 2013 - majority of the attacks on humans were when they were sitting in the dark for relieving themselves at the night time, thus the leopard can not be blamed when someone in and around his territory is sitting in such a position that the cat miss identifies it as a prey like a monkey , langoor or a dog. Majority of the locations where human life was lost was either encroachment or a forest area where leopards are living since years. An other reason contributing to it is the accumulation of un-managed garbage which attracts rodents and srtay dogs and cats which are easy prey to the leopards and thus a center of attraction.
I was a part of all the rescue and trap operations undertaken by the forest department and concluded with the whole write up is on the basis of my observation and no doubt with the references and thoughts of the experts of this field.
All these green areas are homes to thousands of lives which includes insects, reptiles, birds, and animals both land and aquatic other than different species of plants and trees, thus a threat to these greens are automatically a threat to the lives which it supports.
Today we all know the term human-wildlife conflict , which is very commonly used for a leopard attack or a snake bite or something else caused by a wildkind to humans, but we never try to understand the complex meaning behind the term or are miss using the term as we can read write and explain.
I m not expressing what wildlife and nature feels about and i m not a wildlife expert or something like that, what i m trying to do is express what i feel as a human being.
Human-wildlife conflict for me is everything because of human errors both intentional and unintentional on various levels , which have led to a very big threat for both wildlife and humans , for humans it will be felt or experienced in the long run.
We have always exploited the forest and the lives that is supports , from cutting a tree for wood , hunting an wild animal to taste to encroaching on the lands that belong to them. Other than this there are many problems which have been experienced all because of improper planning and management. This is not to point fingers or play the blame game but this is simple criticism done on the basis of analysis and experience acquired while performing and participating in various tasks for conservation and protection of the wildlife of the city.
The current status of the wildlife is under such threat that immediate actions , decisions , new laws and their instant implementations - in short a modification of the current system is required.
There has to be awareness amongst the people regarding various things which should be known by them , maximum people don't know the basic rules, regulations and protocols which are implemented since ages. Wildlife conservation is something which has a very big scope but more important is the need of practicing it with proper ethics. You don't need to be someone special , trained , experienced and so on to contribute and participate in conservation. The mantra for it is the feeling and believe in co existence with wildlife , this land belongs to both the man and the wild. The SGNP (Sanjay Gandhi National Park) is regarded as the lungs of the city as it provides so much of fresh oxygen other than the fresh drinking water which quenches the thirst of the dense population of the city's human and animals.
But today very few of us know the problems faced by the park one of the major problems is the encroachment which has disturbed the wildlife within , there are many other issues which too contribute to the problems. There are so many NGOs and firms that are trying to participate and contribute in conservation but at the end very less amount of success is achieved , this is because the numbers of individuals and the quality of information and awareness has to be enhanced in a simplified way so that it reaches the common man so that he clearly understands and accept it. Other than this are the group of biased individuals and the influential pressure groups who dominate the system here and also support the illegal and unethical practices for personal profits which acts as a barrier for many activists to perform their work and duties for the betterment of wildlife.
From declaration of buffer zones to permissions to enter into the national park is controlled by politics and politicians, constructions have emerged on areas which should be buffer zones, plastics and garbage is littered in and around the park by the visitors , speeding vehicles of the big shots of the city have killed and injured so many wildkinds that the real number has never come up and will never.
This is a never ending topic on which i can keep on writing , almost every day there is a new story in front of me where there is human-animal conflict , but i find that the animal is not at fault as it does not understand the funda of boundaries and borders defined by humans , but still we can make out the difference how it behaves when it visits human habitat and how we behave when we visit their wild habitat.
Go to the forests and see how the monkeys and longoors run away after spotting a human and go to a location where a monkey has visited outside forest how people surround it , start clicking , teasing , feeding , chasing and disturbing it. And then i get a call for a distress situation created by the monkey ( actually by humans who provoke the wild animal) and i m requested to catch , take away , remove the animal from there. Wildlife is already unpredictable we cant make out whats going to be the next reaction of the animal and thus the curious human mind provokes the monkey to start somethings that seems to be entertaining which is very disturbing.
The leave me alone call for tiger conservation and protection should be implemented for all the wildlife, today the national animal is endangered and on a verge of extinction, tomorrow the whole nations animals will be in threat.
And a small information on the leopard attacks of 2012 and 2013 - majority of the attacks on humans were when they were sitting in the dark for relieving themselves at the night time, thus the leopard can not be blamed when someone in and around his territory is sitting in such a position that the cat miss identifies it as a prey like a monkey , langoor or a dog. Majority of the locations where human life was lost was either encroachment or a forest area where leopards are living since years. An other reason contributing to it is the accumulation of un-managed garbage which attracts rodents and srtay dogs and cats which are easy prey to the leopards and thus a center of attraction.
I was a part of all the rescue and trap operations undertaken by the forest department and concluded with the whole write up is on the basis of my observation and no doubt with the references and thoughts of the experts of this field.
