The homing instinct of animals must be considered before they are ‘rescued’ and left in other forests, thus causing stress to other animals.
Only a few of us realise that we are hours away from what is perhaps one of the world’s best places in terms of fauna. While the Western Ghats are among the world’s hottest bio-diversity reserves, the south-western Ghats that stretch along Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are home to the largest share of tigers, elephants, lion-tailed macaques, sloth bears, and Nilgiri Tahrs in the world. It is also habitat to a rich variety of endemic species of plants and animals found nowhere else in world.
CR Jayaprakash, a former journalist and professor at PSG College of Arts and Science, Coimbatore and biologist R Arulmugam, along with Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), held a back-to-basics learning about animals in the Parambikulam Tiger Reserve, Kerala, recently.
Amidst the colours and noises of the forest, that included peacocks, giant Malabar squirrels, spotted deer, Sambar deer, Gaur, wild dogs and countless flickers of fireflies in the night sky, a few eye-opening “human mistakes” and their impact on animals, including the tiger, were highlighted, and in the process, busted a few misconceptions.
World Wildlife Fund experts in charge of elephant radio telemetry project in Hassan have found that translocated elephants return to the areas they were uprooted from — proving that the homing instinct of animals makes relocating animals a very unscientific solution. The only answer is to not destroy their habitat. The homing instinct of animals must be considered before animals are ‘rescued’ and left in other forests, thus causing stress to animals.
Planting trees cannot recreate forests
Environmental destruction in our cities may be mitigated to an extent by planting saplings, but the forest ecosystem must be left untouched. Arulmugam highlighted the effects of destructive developments in forests with a focus on road-kills that lead to a high number of wild casualities. Even an inch of disturbance to forests can have snowballing effects on animals.
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