| Rom, you are
probably the most unique and fascinating Indian wildlifer
I have ever seen. Where were you born and what can you tell
us about your parents?
I was born in New York City during the Second World War. My
mother Doris Norden was an artist and my father was then
in the U.S. Army. After they were divorced, my mother
married Ram, son of Kamaladevi and Harindranath Chattopadhyaya.
We moved to Bombay in 1951 where Ram set up India’s
first colour motion picture processing lab, Ramnord,
in Worli.
You get a lot of slimy characters in the film business,
but you chose encounters with the genuine slithery articles?
What accounts for your lifelong love affair with herps?
While growing up in the U.S., we mainly lived out in
the country in northern New York State. Non-venomous snakes
abound there and as a five-year-old, I was already catching
them and keeping them as pets. Amazingly, my mother was totally
supportive of my strange pursuit. I was interested in bugs
and
spiders too, but snakes were the MOST! Coming to India could
have been dangerous for a snake-crazy kid but I survived
my childhood and the fascination for snakes and other herps
just grew and grew.
It grew to the point where you actually started a
snake park, right?
Yes, that was in 1970. And it was called the Madras Snake
Park, now the Chennai Snake Park. I am happy to say it is
still going strong and has lakhs of visitors per year, half
of them children. The Trust is run by a retired IAS officer,
B. Vijayaraghavan, one of those rare officers who always had
a deep interest in wildlife and educating people.
Tell us about the Croc Bank? Are you still a part
of this?
The Madras Crocodile Bank Trust was set up in 1976 to act
as a gene bank for all the world’s crocodilians. Today,
it is home to 14 species of crocodiles, 14 species of turtles,
lizards and snakes. It is also a premier institution for herpetological
research and houses one of the best herpetological libraries
in Asia. It is at the forefront of herp conservation in India
with a major turtle project in the north, the new gharial
conservation initiative and a research base in the Andaman
Islands. I was the director for about 25 years until
I stepped down in 2001. I’m still a Trustee and Advisor
at the Madras Crocodile Bank.
Of course, you wanted to farm the crocs and use the
money to protect them in the wild. But you never got that
permission, so does the Croc Bank have a future?
It is a shame that the Indian Government will not consider
crocodile farming and ranching as a viable conservation tool
as in many other developing countries. As with the tiger,
it is very difficult to convince people that they should
share their river, lake or forest with a potentially
dangerous predator. However, give the crocodile an economic
value for the people who are responsible for its survival
(the people living in its habitat, not the bureaucrats
and conservationists living in Delhi!) and there is a chance
that they will tolerate and even nurture it. This is
a basic principle of wildlife management but we have
missed the boat and are losing our wildlife as we speak.
The Croc Bank is a not-for-profit conservation NGO, which
barely breaks even by selling low cost tickets to the lakhs
of visitors that come to see and learn about the crocs.
The plan was to initiate, guide and support a crocodile farming
scheme for the Irulas (and other tribal groups) by supplying
them eggs produced by the thousands of crocs at the Croc Bank.
The profits would be for the people and for conservation of
wild populations, now facing extinction.
The Irulas... what prompted you to become
their spokesperson?
The Irulas were my first peer group. Back
in the 60s and 70s, there were very few people in India
with a positive interest in snakes and it was wonderful for
me to find a group of people with such a deep knowledge of ‘my’
subject. Of course, they were then into catching snakes for
skins so we changed that and provided them with a livelihood,
which still allowed them to use their vast natural history
knowledge. That was how the Irula Cooperative came into being.
Now, they catch snakes for the venom (for the manufacture
of life-saving anti-venom serum) and release them back into
the wild.
Was there ever one defining wildlife moment you can
identify that changed your life forever?
When I was about five years old, some little friends I was
with, up in northern New York, killed a harmless snake. I
put it into a jar and took it home. My older sister,
Gail, was horrified and that impressed (and I suppose, saddened) me so
much that I went right out and caught a live one to bring
back and admire its beauty and grace. I was hooked then.
I am still hooked today.
You are hooked to a life-threatening involvement,
if I have it right. Are you actually allergic to snakebites?
And what happens if you do get bitten?
Yes, I’m allergic to some snake venoms and also
the anti-venom serum. I have no desire to die just yet and
I am extremely careful in my old age. When I was in my
wild twenties (the age at which you are “invincible”),
I had a few serious snake bites, which taught me some
important lessons that stuck with me all my life!
I got a message from you about the gharial and Sanctuary
is running a campaign with you as a result. What is the real
status of the gharial and can we save it?
There are just about 200 adult gharial left alive in the wild
and the pressures on its survival are mounting by the
day. Gharial survival is inextricably linked with the survival
of our northern rivers (as are the fates of river dolphins,
turtles, migratory waterfowl, otters and famous fish like
the mahseer and hilsa). While some of us may be interested
in the conservation of different species, a concept we
call ‘wildlife management’, the real problem is
‘human management’. Unless the realisation that
we are losing all of our rivers hits home, we will not only
lose the wonderful gharial and the other river creatures,
the stage is also being set for huge die-offs of our fellow
human beings who are dependent on these rivers for survival.
If you had the resources, what kind of herp research
would you most wish to undertake?
As we all know, good, effective conservation can
only happen with good research as the basis. For the
gharial, we need to know what their territories are, how far
they migrate and what the critical factors are in their riverine
habitats that determine whether they survive or not. For the
king cobra and python, we need to know how far they roam,
whether they have a home range and how large they grow.
All this research requires dedicated field people and
some fairly expensive radio telemetry equipment. The same
argument holds true for the long list of other endangered
herps like the leatherback sea turtle (the Andaman and Nicobar
nesting beaches are some of the best in the world) and the
myriad species yet to be described in the Western Ghats, Eastern
Ghats and the Northeast.
How could farming possibly help save the last 200 gharial?
The gharial were heavily hunted for their skins. The remaining
populations were then limited to the few riverine habitats
that weren’t destroyed by dams, barrages, and siltation.
Now, they are being finished off by competing fishermen who
always resented the closure of fishing in Protected Areas.
Gharial (and mugger) are easy to rear in captivity from eggs
collected in the wild and much more profitable than fish.
Why catch fish for a small income when a reptile can earn
you much more? Croc (including gharial) farming, (where animals
are bred for the sale of skins) could ironically save the
species if done right.
Wildlife crime networks are sophisticated and ruthless
and our wildlife enforcement is abysmally poor. Don’t
you think these crime syndicates will get the better of whatever
well-meaning safeguards you build into a system of croc farming?
The positive thing about the croc skin industry is that it
is a decades-old international network, managed under CITES
by the Crocodile Specialist Group. There are few other wildlife
resources traded internationally, which are so rigorously
controlled with checks and safeguards such as un-reusable,
magnetic tags for skins and products. Criminals are generally
one step ahead of the game and of course, we need to be vigilant.
But their underground off-take from a croc skin industry would
be nothing compared to the current deadly slaughter of our
last gharials as they get caught in fishing nets.
You have long championed people-oriented conservation
such as the Irula Cooperative’s snake venom industry,
the Irula Women’s Society’s tree planting programmes
and, of course, the croc farming that you and I disagree about.
Where do you stand with regard to the proposed Tribal Bill?
A uniform Tribal Bill for all tribals all over India may be
a laudable idea but shows how badly the lawmakers have done
their homework. What happens when each nuclear family develops
into one or more families? Is there another 2.5 ha. available
for them too? This is a complicated issue to which too little
thought has been given in the face of real and perceived people’s
problems and political pressures. Having roamed Indian forests
for half a century, I know what human presence in a forest
does and it’s rarely positive. If we can’t keep
at least that four per cent Protected Area that India has
left inviolate, we are dooming one of the richest wildlife
legacies on the planet.
Thanks to field studies in different parts of the
world, it is now apparent that ‘rescue’ of wild
animals and translocation to new, unfamiliar places is likely
to end in disaster, snakes included. Do you have any message
for the many snake rescuers around the country on this?
This is a tough question because very often when you get a
snake call, unless you take a snake away from a household
or garden, it is likely to be killed. It would be best to
release the snake as close as possible to the place of capture,
but in urban areas this is generally not an option. Since
snake rescues must, under law, be done with the permission
of the Forest Department, an area for release should be chosen
with their help and approval that has the basic food, water
and shelter requirements for snake survival. This means calling
on the help of experts in field herpetology, essential if
the rescue and release programme is to have any meaning.
How do you view television as an educational tool?
There has been quite a focus on personalities such as Steve
Irwin in recent weeks. Do you think these shows are machismo-promoters?
Since I do a bit of this ‘reptile wrangling’ on
TV myself, maybe I’m not the best person to ask. Certainly,
it has become a bit of a circus, with some of the presenters
a bit more obnoxious than the last. Steve Irwin started the
recent trend of reptile popularity and whether you liked his
comic face and brash talk or not, our cold-blooded friends
have been gifted with a lot of positive public relations,
which the furry animals and birds have had for so long. My
take on it is that as long as the reptiles are treated with
care and respect, an informative television programme done
with a knowledgeable presenter can be both educational and
entertaining.
Back to work Rom. Your latest project is the Agumbe
Rainforest Research Station, probably the first permanent
rainforest base in India. What’s it all about?
I bought land, surrounded by forest, outside Agumbe in the
Shimoga District of Karnataka, with funds willed to me by
my mother. The base has been set up over the last year and
commissioned with funds from the Whitley Award for Nature,
London. It is now operational and acts as a research, conservation
and education centre in the Western Ghats. Now researchers
can actually live in the forest where they are studying, students
can come and experience what a rainforest is like and we can
help spread direct conservation messages to people living
in and around the rainforest. We are collaborating with the
Karnataka Forest Department, local as well as urban schools,
researchers and NGOs. We have to keep wildlife alive long
enough for better stewards to take charge of the natural world
that sustains us all.
Are there any young herp persons on the Indian horizon
that give you reason to hope?
There are a good bunch of young herp persons in India now,
more than I could have ever imagined back in the 60s when
I was starting to get serious about studying and protecting
them. They need training, encouragement and in the long run
they need jobs in this field, which will only happen when
the Government, corporates and universities start taking
conservation and research more seriously.
Do you have a message for kids?
My main message is something most kids already know:
reptiles and amphibians are just about the most
fascinating creatures in the world. But it is difficult to
make grownups aware of just how wonderful and useful these
animals are. It is up to kids to educate their parents
and all adults (whose minds generally get closed to the
wonders of nature) and open their minds to our dependence
on the survival of wild places and wild creatures.
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