Not-so-scientific wildlife estimation being carried out in Rajasthan on World Environment day

Volunteers entering Jhalana Leopard Conservancy in Jaipur. Photo Credit - Dhirendra 

Jaipur: Animal right activists discussing environment issues on television shows, locust swarms eating out the newly sprouted crops of farmers, urban elite discussing the Ganges becoming clearer during lockdown with their air-conditioning beating the heat, adding up to global warming are few of the things that are happening these days. However, topping it all, a not-so-scientific estimation of wildlife being carried out by the forest department in Rajasthan, while the world is reeling under a global pandemic. One may not know if we should be worried about the state of ecology and environment or celebrate the World Environment day today.

An estimation of wildlife vaguely called – 'wildlife census' is on Friday being carried out in sanctuaries and protected areas of Rajasthan except for tiger reserves. Teams of two volunteers each would sit atop the trees in makeshift scaffoldings at various water holes all through the night and will count the various animal species they encounter. The census of wildlife is generally carried out on full moon night of the month of May but this year the forest department had missed the day given the lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are taking all precautions prescribed by government protocols like mask, sanitizers and social distancing. We have made bigger scaffolding this time. ” GV Reddy Head of Forest department said.

But when asked whether forest department was sure that any asymptomatic carrier of COVID-19 was not among those volunteers who had gone in the forest today, Reddy said that he cannot get everyone tested as it costs Rs 4500 per person. He pointed out that exercise is also important given certain emotional satisfaction to the volunteers participating in the exercise and which he claimed increases their attachment to wildlife.

“The census is also important in terms of attachment of volunteers to their local park and sanctuaries. They feel associated with local wildlife and conservation efforts,” Reddy said.

But the whole exercise being carried out is certainly against the advisory issued by Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change on April 6. The advisory reads, “It is felt that there are possibilities of spread of virus amongst animals in national parks, sanctuaries and tiger reserves and also transmission of the virus from human to animals and vice versa. It is, therefore, states reduce the human wildlife interface.” The letter sent to all wildlife wardens of the states by the union ministry went on to recommend ten points which essentially instructed to reduce human-wildlife interface and recommended high level of surveillance.

But the forest department in Rajasthan still sent hundreds of volunteers in the jungle for the wildlife estimation. Interestingly, many of the sanctuaries where the estimation exercise is going on today are habitat of the leopard which is a cat species susceptible to COVID-19 infection. Center for disease control and prevention (CDC) in USA clearly mentions in its FAQs section that COVID-19 can spread from people to an animal in some situations while risk of animals spreading COVID-19 to people is considered to be low.

But question is that why forest department in Rajasthan is using such an outdated method which could be avoided altogether with so much of technological tool available today. “We would gradually introduce scientific techniques used in tiger parks such as line transit method and capture-recapture method of some species in future,” Reddy replied. In all, the 'muhurut' - the day of unscientific wildlife estimation exercise on the occasion of World Environment Day was uncalled for.