Where have they gone?

Pandora’s box-2:

Endangered Earth: Where have they gone?

Life in the city – bustling with activity. Faceless people running to and fro, preparing for better tomorrows for themselves and their families. In all this mad rush, how many of us look around our familiar habitats and see the pitfalls threatening our collective futures? The pitfalls of potholes on roads, traffic snarls, flooded dirty drains, festering diseases , rising costs and dwindling power resources are obvious to all of us. More and more time spent in earning our rozi-roti and less and less time for our friends and family has become part and parcel of this era. But hardly any of us take the time to notice the “friends” and “family” that we grew up with have gone missing!

Advanced modernization, the rat-race of climbing up to the summits of our dreams and ambitions, the rapidly developing industrialization – all these have taken their toll. We survive within our comfort-zones and familiar habitats, but seem to have snatched these from the denizens of our homes and surroundings. The familiar chirp-chirp of the unpretentious house sparrow, the cooing of the dove, the early morning wake-up call of the crow, the sight of the silent descent of the preying vulture, the soundless  flutter of the dragonfly, the fluorescent glow of the fireflies in bushes on warm nights, the deep drone of the black bhanwara, the flutter of countless colourful wings of exotic butterflies.. all these are stilled and vanishing every day. The ongoing march of man and his machines have caused these friendly neighbours to abandon our hearth and homes. To understand why we are all part of this mass extinction of essential fauna , we need to sit up and take stock of our involvement and become answerable to the generations to come.

We, as humans, are the evolved race and hence highly adaptable to changing, sometimes adverse, conditions. But animal, plant, insect, bird and specially amphibian species have remained dependent on us for their survival. Some of these are dependent on multiple habitats to survive. Direct exploitation of many animal species, like hunting, fishing, ‘collecting” butterflies and beetles, destroying nesting places, changing weather patterns, pollution of air, water and soil, indiscriminate use of insecticides and the new BT crops – all have served to annihilate many of our familiar “house-guests”. Better transport facilities, advanced  communication means, the industrial revolution that is India Shining, has taken the gloss off the environment in all its erstwhile majesty!

Nobody knows or can exactly pinpoint the reason for the endangerment of the species that we grew up with. The emissions from the mobile network towers atop buildings, the felling of trees for six-laned highways, the rotting garbage dumps, the lackadaisical attitudes of the health authorities who allow injudicious use of insecticides in soils and spraying of fruit trees and crops, the contaminated water sources that are used for irrigation – all of these have contributed towards the extinction of these precious, delicate and harmless co-residents of our land. According to Ms. Swati Sharma, an environmentalist  and Secretary of an Uttarakhand- based NGO “Saviours”, the reasons for the rapidly diminishing species are varied. This NGO was started in1999 and  works for conservation of the environment, the planting of trees, rural empowerment , conserving the endangered Ganges dolphin and associated issues. They have recently launched the “Trees of Faith” campaign, in which the religious heads of communities are enrolled into teaching students and through them the parents about the inculcation of awareness in methods of protection of the flora and fauna around them. Ms. Swati Sharma says,  “The changing patterns of human habitation, the closed doors and air-conditioned homes, the bigger and bigger concrete houses and cities with smaller and smaller garden spaces and the lack of awareness are all contributing to the dwindling of so many species of animals that used to live on the fringes of our world.”

Ms. Swati Sharma says that lack of nesting places in the modern buildings is a major factor for the impending extinction of the familiar sparrows, robins, etc. as also the use of unleaded petrol which uses benzene and  causes the hatching of birds eggs to be adversely affected.  According to her,” Earlier, ladies had the time to wash grains, dry them on rooftops before storing, and this provided food for the household birds. Now the Mall Culture has taken over our lives with the assorted dals and cereals being purchased in packets ready for use. As are the pre-cooked, ready-to-use food available off the shelves of the malls . A recent news item in the Times of India revealed the shocking fact of more than 400 foreign tourists and many labourers having made their home inside the forest reserve of the Rajaji National Park, inspite of the efforts of the authorities to evict them. These encroachments into the territory of wildlife is as dangerous a phenomenon to human life in the long run, as the growth of terrorist organizations and activities are in the immediate sense.

One well-documented fact  that emerged recently when the sudden extinction of vultures was looked into was the use of “Voveran” (diclofenac sodium) the common medicine given for the mitigation of fever and pain in domestic and farm animals by veterinary doctors. The carcasses of the cattle that didn’t survive, had a high quantity of this chemical, which was toxic to the kidneys of these carrion birds. Just a small error caused an entire species to die out! The extinction process began with the dinosaurs that roamed the planet and now survive only in our imagination (courtesy Jurassic Park), the dodos of Madagascar, the moas of New Zealand ,the Reunion solitaire or “white dodo” and other now extinct species, which now survive in and adorn paintings on walls and text-books for the Generation Next.

Whatever the reason, it is a wake-up call for each of us, to sit up and take notice of the friendly inhabitants of our homes and hearts. Wouldn’t you like to have your children wake up with the caw-caw of the crow, hop around with the little brown sparrow, feed breakfast crumbs to the robins, share their tiffin box with the prancing squirrels and chirping hoopoes, jump in the rain puddles with croaking frogs, and sleep to the comforting hoot of the barn owls? Look around you! How often do you see the familiar mynah bird? Or the bats flitting noiselessly on dark nights and hanging upside-down  asleep in your verandah? When did you last show your children the green glow of the firefly or  jugnu, as they lit up the trees and bushes on hot summer evenings? How many colours of butterflies do you recollect from your childhood? And the “helicopter” or dragonfly that hovered over your heads in scented gardens heralding the onset of summer? When last did you hear the buzzing  of the big, black drone or “bhanwara”- the harbinger of the Season of Flowers?

As Ms. Swati Sharma sums it very aptly, “It is not the animals, birds, insects and other species that are venturing into our territory, it is us that are venturing into theirs.”

The extinction of a species could mean the loss of the cure of cancer, or a new medicine for AIDS, a new antibiotic, a disease-resistant strain of rice or wheat. It is vital for us to remember that our lives are entwined with those of the plants and animals. Their protection will ultimately be ours, as will their destruction.The time has come for each of us to take the responsibility. We cannot depend on legislation alone.  Its time to make our little attempts at re-creating the world around us. Time to do our bit towards the preservation of our “friends and family.” Let us attempt their rehabilitation. Let us be the architects of their world. And thence, of ours.

Dr. Seema Tyagi

Meerut