Sanctuary-RBS Wildlife Photography Awards 2008

Save the Tiger – The Tiger's Doomsday Clock is Ticking

February 1, 2010: Prerna Bindra suggests it’s the tiger’s worst hour. In the first two weeks of 2010 – the International Year of the Tiger – India has lost four tigers. A skin was seized in Kerala, and two are suspected poaching cases, though official reports say otherwise. Of particular concern is Corbett, where four tigers have died in 28 days in the cusp of this year.

Climate Change in the Himalaya

January 26, 2010: Dr. Vandana Shiva on getting real about climate change in the Himalaya – beyond panic and complacency. The IPCC got the date wrong, but Himalaya, the mountains of snow, are losing their snow. The IPCC has apologized for mentioning an unfounded date of 2035 for the disappearance of snows in the Himalaya, but this takes nothing away from the serious danger from glacial melt.

Himalayan Controversy

January 19, 2010: Bittu Sahgal, Editor, Sanctuary Asia on the Himalayan Controversy
 

The champagne bottles are being uncorked. Climate skeptics are in full cry in India, with the Himalayan glacier story criticising the IPCC report hitting the airwaves. The original IPCC report stated that the total area of Himalayan glaciers would likely shrink from 500,000 sq. kms. to 100,000 sq. kms by 2035. The source for this information has now been questioned and the ripples are being reflected in  news papers and  channel across the world. The targets of attack are both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, and Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, head of The Energy and Research Institute (TERI). In response Pachauri said: “We are looking at the issue and will be able to comment on the report after examining the facts. The science doesn’t change: Glaciers are melting across the globe and those in the Himalayas are no different,” he said in a telephone interview. “We’re not changing anything till we make an assessment.”

Remembering Billy Arjan Singh, August 15, 1917 – January 1, 2010

January 11, 2010: So Billy has gone too. One by one the oaks are vanishing and sadly we have weeds replacing them. The steel spine that is required for tiger defenders is hard to come by today. When I asked Billy how he would like to be remembered soon after he was awarded the Sanctuary-ABN AMRO Lifetime Service Award, he replied, "I want simply to be remembered as Arjan Singh, a man who loved tigers and fought to keep them alive and safe from humans".

Indonesia's Climate Bomb

December 2009: Heart pounding from the climb and rivulets of sweat pouring off me, I attempted to follow Edu Linga’s outstretched hand as he pointed up into the canopy…. and then I saw it, aided by rustling leaves and shaking branches… a flash of rusty orange… an orangutan! I barely had time to register this when, about ten metres to the right and a bit lower, another orange head poked up above a nest of twisted leaves and branches. I was very fortunate, we had come across not one or two, but three orangutans, foraging in the upper layers of the canopy! A critically endangered species, there are only about 5,000-7,000 orangutans left in Indonesia. The rugged mountains of the Gunung Leuser National Park in northern Sumatra is believed to hold about 2,000, aside from a handful of Sumatran tigers and rhinos, tenaciously hanging on to survival on a planet that is rapidly turning inhospitable.

Dog Eat Dog World – Feral Dogs Are Threatening Himalayan Wildlife

December 2009: I gave the pack of four dogs, running down a slope with distended bellies, little thought as my field assistants and I headed towards Thinam in upper Spiti in Himachal Pradesh. We had walked just about four kilometres from our base camp at Kibber village and still had a long way to go. Much later, I caught a glimpse of a Himalayan Griffon hovering over the edge of a hillock ahead of us. Curious, we rapidly clambered up to the spot, panting for breath, and saw a large black dog in a meadow, feeding on a carcass some 400 m. away. I prayed that it was a domestic sheep or a goat and not a blue sheep or ibex that often feed in the meadows here. A sparse landscape, inhabited by diverse life-forms, it was in desperate need of protection. A kilometre south from where we stood were steep cliffs, where I had set up a camera-trap that had registered the presence of a snow leopard. The cliffs served as a refuge for blue sheep looking to distance themselves from an occasional intrusive human or a hungry snow leopard.

An Hour At The Butterfly Bush

December 2009: This summer, I spent my holidays in the quaint hill station of Dalhousie in Himachal Pradesh with my nature-loving family. My husband, Sanjay, and I used to go out for long walks to observe the multitude of birds and butterflies that flock to this region while our son, Yash, stayed home to study. Occasionally, he would take a break from his schoolwork to spend time at a flowering bush in the garden in front of the house. Everyday on returning from our lengthy walks, we would compare our butterfly species list with his. Surprisingly his would invariably be longer than ours! Intrigued, I decided to stay back one day and check the bush myself.