I love being at home, in Wayanad, when the south-west monsoon arrives. This hilly district of northern Kerala is still full of tall trees and myriad creatures, and drenched in rain for several months in a year. From my window, I see Banasuramala, a beautiful mountain 2,000 metres high, gracing the southern horizon, and canopied hills to the west. Small farms make scruffy patchworks on the other sides. To the north-east are the shola grasslands of the Brahmagiris. All around, streams born of millions of seeps gifted by trees gather to flow to the Kabini and then to the Kaveri.
I work at the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary, where a small team of dedicated ecosystem gardeners, skilled in various aspects of horticulture, plant conservation and Western Ghat ecology, grow native plants of this mountain ecosystem, or biome, through techniques honed over four decades of experimentation and practice. We cultivate plants that are highly endangered in the wild, some 2,000 species in all, accounting for 40% of the Western Ghat flora. We deploy a range of methods, from intensive-care nurseries to outdoor habitats rich with herbs, tubers, succulents, shrubs, trees, creepers, climbers, epiphytes (plants that grow on other plants) and lithophytes (plants that grow on rocks). These species have been initially brought from different parts of the Western Ghats, mostly from areas that have already been deforested. Much of our work is a search-and-rescue mission, and we refer to these plants as refugees, similar to human refugees suffering the depredations of war, displacement, climate change and general toxification of the environment. We also speak of species being rehabilitated when they form mixed-species communities that eventually become quite independent of our care.
Local stream, headwater of Kaveri
Surrounding these “refugee camps” we also have once-denuded patches, adding up to an area of more than 60 acres, which are recovering to forest through natural processes of succession under our vigilance. Since we are on the edge of a reserve forest, still rich and diverse despite its small size of about 100 square km, reforestation happens easily if the land is simply protected—because insects, birds and mammals transfer spores and seeds. Beyond all this, we educate students and visitors about the centrality of the natural world, first of all to itself and then to human lives, including the economy, something most urban people seem to deny, to our collective peril.
Over time, this botanical sanctuary has become a zoological sanctuary. We have noted 220 species of birds, including Malabar trogons, flycatchers, frogmouths and laughing thrushes. Many unusual mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects abound, and several are endemic to the Western Ghats, such as the iridescent shield-tail snake, the Nilgiri marten, a nimble and ferocious small mammal, and many species of bush frogs.
The sanctuary has become a river-maker too. I’ve seen how moss-laden trees condense mist, how droplets of water gather on downy grasses, how cool it is inside the infant forest we have grown, and how water trickles out of the toes of trees to form tiny rivulets, which flow into neighbours’ fields. By leaving large areas of the land to natural succession, and not deliberately planting trees, as practised by other agencies, and giving time, a slowly restoring area acquires many important properties of a healthy ecosystem. These include species diversity, a thick layer of leaf litter decomposing to humus, a robust water cycle, layered and dense vegetation, and different climates from the canopy all the way down to the shady interior.
Monsoon clouds over Gurukula
As gardeners and habitat-restorers we, of course, are dependent wholly on the timing and duration of the monsoon, on its intensity and quantity—because our wards, namely the land and the plant species we conserve, are. On an average we require 500 cm of rainfall a year, and most of it in the south-west monsoon. The weather features regularly in our speech. Much of our work hinges on the fine sensibilities of land-based peoples: common-sense knowledge to do with life-cycles in the forest and our own intuitive understanding of weather patterns, instead of measurements and forecasts alone.
Changing Monsoon
Most Indians believe that the monsoon is unassailable: a wind system 18 million years old, which has breathed life into the subcontinent since the rise of the Himalayas, whose formidable heights block it from travelling to Central Asia, condensing it instead into long hard rain. Its intensity varies from year to year, but we believe it will blow. But ever since I have been here, about 24 years now, I have heard people talking about how the monsoon has gone awry, that it is no longer what it used to be. We also know this from scientific data, but crucially for us, we know this from the behaviour of the plants and animals in our sanctuary.
Stream in our valley
We depend on both monsoons, together called the double monsoon, but the south-west matters more, as it brings more than 90% of what we need annually. The north-east monsoon, however, makes this a rainforest, along with locally generated thundershowers between the two monsoons, by extending the wet period to cover more than eight months of the year. Typical rainforests have rain or mist throughout the year, as we do here. Luc Lambs, an eco-hydrologist at the University of Toulouse in France, studies the double monsoon system in South India—its variation over time, the role of the forests in water–vapour recycling and what meteorologists call the “gatekeeper” effect of the Western Ghats range. He says the south-west monsoon has weakened considerably over the past three decades, while the north-east monsoon is getting stronger. He also affirms that forests are necessary to condense rain as are the icy heights of mountains.
Impatiens flowers under cultivation
Anecdotal evidence also suggests that the monsoon is changing in fundamental ways. The monsoon was much colder when she was a little girl in this valley, says Laly Joseph, my colleague, recalling how it poured from June to October, with a brief break during Onam, which usually falls in September. For the past decade, however, it has rarely arrived on time, often disappearing after setting in, sometimes drying up in August only to rain very heavily in winter.
The garden is open to the public
Plants Confused
All this fluctuation spells trouble for monsoon-dependent plants. Laly propagates 100 species of endangered native balsams, which belong to the genus Impatiens, all endemic to the Western Ghats, with succulent stems and brightly-coloured flowers, considered by many naturalists to be a flagship group of the range. She says that many species are struggling because they are confused by changing environmental cues: plant hormones are, after all, finely attuned to tiny changes in seasonal patterns of moisture and temperature. For example, species rescued from higher elevations are not doing well at the sanctuary’s 750-metre elevation any more because it is becoming too warm and the rain is often interspersed with long dry spells, which, if too long, can signal the end of the monsoon to these species. Laly is growing these delicate plants in the nursery because their natural habitats have been eroded.The sanctuary’s plant conservation programme envisages that at least a few can be given a toe-hold chance for survival by our tribe of ecosystem gardeners, if lost in the wild, because of rapid alterations to global climate conditions. Also, rising temperatures bring new diseases and many species are succumbing to these.
Upstream from GBS
For the past three years, Impatiens stocksii, a small plant with white flowers that is endemic to Coorg and Wayanad, has been sprouting two weeks later each consecutive year, says Abhishek Jain, our plant scout at large, who travels through the mountains documenting species in the wild. They are thus a month late this year, and haven’t sprouted yet in early June. Both Laly and he say that pre-monsoon convectional showers that lead up to the main monsoon are critical to the dormant tubers setting out their annual leaves and shoots. The pre-monsoon allows for the dormant tubers to start growing underground, and once the main monsoon starts, the plants quickly put out leaf shoots as if assured that a long period of growth lies ahead. The tubers gain in size from the starch made by the photosynthesising leaves. Flowering and seed formation can happen once enough energy is accumulated, usually towards the middle or latter half of the monsoon. Shockingly, this year we had no pre-monsoon rain, and Impatiens stocksii is even more delayed.
I have been keeping a diary to note when trees flower, fruit, produce seeds, drop leaves and flush. There’s a marked difference in these timings between last year and now. Jackfruit, for instance, has fully ripened and fallen in end-May instead of in late June or early July. Mala-elengi (Chionanthusmala-elengii) has flowered and fruited a full six weeks ahead of last year. The southern rudraksh (Elaeocarpus tuberculatus) flowered copiously in early February this year instead of the usual March. I am concerned that some of the trees are masting this year, a term used for synchronised and exceptional production of flowers, fruits and seeds. I’ve heard that this can happen sometimes in anticipation of death by drought. It takes consecutive years of drought to kill mature trees, but when they reach survival’s edge they put their final energy into the next generation by producing copious quantities of seeds.
The Monsoon’s Needs
So we know that the forest needs the monsoon. But we don’t give as much thought to how much the monsoon also needs forests, although most of us have an inkling that plants cool the land and that forests are intimately connected to rain and rivers. Scientists used to refer to rainforests, particularly the Amazon, as the planet’s lungs. Now, some like Luc Lambs and Antonio Nobre, an earth-systems scientist in Brazil, talk about forests acting as biotic pumps, whereby trees release organic molecules into the atmosphere, thereby changing air pressure, which creates a drag effect to draw in the winds from the sea. The proponents of this theory are a pair of Russian nuclear physicists named Anastassia Makarieva and Victor Gorshkov, who studied the contribution of forests all over the world to the global hydrological cycle.
Yet deforestation proceeds untrammelled. A report released in the first week of June by the Indian Institute of Science shows that Kerala has lost half of its forest cover in the past four decades. It is no wonder that the quantity of rainfall has also decreased. If we could reforest more of the land and protect whatever remains of old forest, we could keep droughts and floods at bay, because vegetation has an ameliorating effect on both. Indeed, we keep saying that the monsoon is necessary for agriculture, but we hardly ever talk about what the monsoon needs. In an era when an Indian court redefines the Ganga and Yamuna as “living persons,” let me propose that we look at the monsoon as a being, with its own needs: cooler oceans and lands, glacier-bearing Himalayas, forested Western Ghats, a vegetated India. Further afield, it needs the Siberian permafrost to not melt. It needs the Antarctic to remain icy.
Sights and Sounds
Lately, I have been falling asleep to the songs of different bush-frogs and crickets. Tonight, they outdo every other sound—thunder, passing vehicles and barking dogs. Last week, birds such as nightjars, frogmouths and owls were clearly audible and now they’re drowned out by the insect–amphibian choir.My ears hurt. This raucous medley is a sure sign that the monsoon is here or about to arrive very soon.The trails are full of jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus) and smashed, partly-eaten remains of its relative, the ainili (Artocarpus hirsutus), which sports smaller orange fruits with a spiny skin enclosing lobes of sweet flesh and large seeds. Wild jamuns and mangoes, rose apples, guavas and sweet limes, and dozens of forest tree species are also fruiting. Bonnet macaques, Nilgiri langurs, Malabar grey hornbills and giant squirrels are gorging in the canopy. Someone reported seeing a troop of lion-tailed macaques with babies. It is feasting time for everybody in this valley: wild boar, humans and cattle included. Elephants come by at night, attracted from afar by the smell of overripe jackfruit—to them, a delicacy.
Local forest
Herbaceous plants and creepers are suddenly exuberant with the prospect of regular rain. They grow fast during the onset of the monsoon, infused by nitrogen from lightning and the perfect combination of sunshine and water. Soon, if the monsoon arrives and sustains, the trails and rock-walls will be covered in Impatiens flowers, ground orchids and ferns—a spectacular visual treat.
I fantasise sometimes about a perfect monsoon. Rain that is not too much or too little, neither lasting the whole year nor only a few days, arriving perfectly on the first of June and lasting till October. Rivers full and flowing, everyone happy and well-fed, reservoirs lasting through the summer, and fields and forests growing lush and fecund.
Immersive Programmes
I worry, though, that the monsoon, with its moods and savage powers, might altogether cease. Daily, I awaken to an inescapable prospect in the middle of paradise, this botanical sanctuary in Wayanad. Plant conservation is precious work, and it must be done. But what if the monsoon fails? What will happen if forests and drought get into a positive feedback loop? In other words, what if drought leads to forest fires, leading to less rain, and then to more forest fires and so on? What, then, of rivers and the millions of people downstream?
So I busy myself with thinking about how to conserve the monsoon. I believe it is mostly a matter of stopping toxic or destructive activities. Author Derrick Jensen writes that a single Trident nuclear submarine is capable of destroying 408 cities at once. What sort of a mind could conceive of creating such a machine? It seems to me, it is the same mind that is killing the monsoon. The US army alone can stop the murder of the monsoon. It is the single largest contributor to global warming. Why do I say murder? We know that the military–industrial complex is destroying the planet, and we know that it is happening willfully.
Whom shall we serve? The machines or the monsoon?
Suprabha Seshan (suprabha.seshan@gmail.com) lives and works at the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary in Wayanad, Kerala. She is the sanctuary’s managing trustee and is an Ashoka Fellow. On behalf of the sanctuary’s ecosystem gardeners, she received United Kingdom’s Whitley Award in 2006.
The Indian government is harassing and attempting to silence the leaders of the Dongria Kondh tribe, famous for winning a “David and Goliath” court battle against a British mining giant.
The Dongria’s resistance to mining on their lands has continued since their landmark victory in 2014. Leaders including Dodi Pusika feel that the risk of mining remains as long as a refinery is operational at the foot of the Niyamgiri hills, an area which the tribe have been dependent on and managed for generations. A recent protest at the refinery was met with a baton-charge from police.
Pusika’s daughter-in-law, Kuni Sikaka, was arrested in the middle of the night of May 3 and accused of links with armed Maoist rebels. In exchange for her release, Dodi Pusika and other members of his family were made to “surrender” as Maoists and paraded in front of the media.
There has been an alarming increase in arbitrary, politically motivated arrests of tribal people who are resisting mining operations or government policies which endanger their lands and communities. Typically, those arrested are accused of Maoist links – usually without evidence.
Human rights activist and doctor Binayak Sen and tribal teacher Soni Sori have both been imprisoned for alleged Maoist connections and only subsequently released after national and international campaigns.
In April, the Home Ministry issued a report claiming that Maoists were “guiding the activities” of the Dongria’s organization, the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti (NSS). On the contrary, Maoists instructed the Dongria to boycott the very meetings at which they delivered their decisive “no” to mining.
Lingaraj Azad, a member of the NSS, stated, ‘We have always opposed violence – either State violence or Maoist violence. We will not bow down, but continue our struggle to protect Niyamgiri from being mined.’
Survival International is calling on the government to drop these fabricated charges, stop this persecution of the Dongria Kondh, respect their decision about the Niyamgiri mine, and to uphold their right to protect their lands and determine their own futures.
Featured image: A Baiga woman surveys the land in Amaniya panchayat, Chhattisgarh, much of which falls in the area of the proposed tiger corridor between Kanha and Achanakmar National Parks. In the tribal belt of central India, indigenous communities are being manipulated, evicted, and impoverished in the name of conservation. Photo: Heera Bai.
Throughout India today there are a total of 645 Adivasi communities recognized by the government. With a combined population of about 70 million, these communities maintain an impressive array of cultural identities, languages, customs and economies that go back millennia. But despite their resilience and their relative isolation from the perils of extreme extraction, Adivasis—the Hindi term for Indigenous Peoples—have not been able to escape any of the hardships that other Indigenous Peoples so often face around the world.
Across the Tribal Belt of Central India, where 90 percent of the population is still completely dependent on agriculture, indigenous communities are constantly being evicted from their ancestral lands to make way for development projects, industry, tourism and government-sanctioned conservation initiatives.
In the states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the Baiga community have faced a legacy of evictions that dates back more than 30 years. They are constantly being forcefully, and often illegally, relocated from their fields and villages that live in and around the borders of the Kanha and Achanakmar National Parks.
Women from Hirapur, a Baiga village which was relocated from Kanha National Park in the 1970s. “This lush green jungle – we can only see it, but we cant touch it. We cant take anything which was our traditions, our daily bread, it was everything to us. Our rights are written down in a book but we are illiterate.” Photo: Heera Bai
The Baiga are classified as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) by the Indian Government, and the present adult generation had little access to education. The majority are illiterate and know no other language than their regional dialect. Their villages are incredibly isolated, accessible only by foot or motorbike on tracks through the forest. The distance between these villages makes cross-community solidarity or resistance logistically difficult, increasing their vulnerability to exploitation.
Until recently, the Baiga community was dependent on the jungle and the surrounding environment for survival. However, they existed in a symbiotic relationship with the forest generously providing them with everything they need including food, ‘jhari-booti’ (jungle medicine) and wood to build homes and tools. However, after decades of increasing rules and restrictions placed on their access to forest resources and the criminalisation of practices such as ‘bewar’ (shifting cultivation), their way of life has become increasingly difficult to maintain.
Noonsari, the makeshift village of displaced Baiga adivasi, in Mawai district Madhya Pradesh. This is a dhanoosna, a weapon used by their ancestors for hunting in the jungle. It takes a whole day to make a single arrow from peacock feather and cartilage. Photo: Heera Bai
“For us, only the jungle for us is good,” Bazaari Singh Baiga of the Peepatola village in Chhattisgarh said. “We don’t want fields or houses in another place. We want to stay living in the jungle, we don’t want to move to a city, where would we get wood from? We get everything we need from the jungle. If we moved from here we would die very quickly! We don’t buy things, we take everything from the jungle and make things ourselves with our own hands.”
“We don’t want fields or houses in another place. We want to stay living in the jungle, we don’t want to move to a city, where would we get wood from? We get everything we need from the jungle,” says Bazaari Singh Baiga. Photo: Heera Bai
All Baiga villages in Kanha National Park in Madhya Pradesh have been displaced. The evictions began in the 1970s and the last five villages were evicted in 2013. It is a legal requirement that villagers give free, informed consent to the relocation of their village, but consent is forcefully taken after threats, harassment and manipulation.
“The Forest Department came and told us that if we don’t leave willingly they will bring elephants to trample our homes and fields,” Shakti Baiga said. Baiga lived in Benda, one of the last villages in Kanha evicted in 2013. “They brought documents into the village and made us sign it. But we’re illiterate, how could we have known that we were signing our land away?
“I had 5 acres of land in Benda. Here, I could only afford to buy 1.5 acres to support my whole family. I could only afford this land because chances are, this village will be also displaced in the near future. A new [Bhoromdeo] Wildlife Sanctuary has now been created and the fences are starting to go up around the village… There are only two families from Benda here, I don’t see any of the original community anymore.”
“How could we have known that we were signing our land away?” asks Shakti Baiga. Photo: Heera Bai
There is a strong World Wildlife Federation (WWF) presence in both parks. The infamous panda logo is seen in across the region, from the gates of the national park to small forest villages on the edge of the buffer zone. Despite denying any vested interest in tourism in Kanha, they offer $8,995 ‘tiger tours.’’ Survival International has confronted them about their complicity in illegal evictions in the National Park, but they have denied the illegality of these displacements.
The Forest Rights Act, implemented in 2006, supposedly recognizes ‘any traditional right customarily enjoyed’ by any ‘forest dwelling Scheduled Tribes’ or ‘Traditional Forest Dwellers’. These rights include not only those of forest habitation, but also ‘the right to cultivate for their livelihood, the right to collect minor forest produce, the right to graze cattle, the right to convert leases or grants (pattas) to titles, the right to manage the community forest resources, and the right to enjoy any customary/traditional practice.’
The Forest Rights Act also stipulates procedures for evicting a community from its land. The Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) means that the Gram Sabha (village level decision making body) must give full, informed consent to the displacement. The community are supposed to be given three options: 1) Reject the eviction and stay on their land, 2) Agree to the eviction, and accept 10 lakh Rs in compensation, or 3) Agree to eviction, and move to a government provided Resettlement and Rehabilitation site.
Maki Bai and Sombati Bai from Ajanpur (displaced, now squatting on land in Bhari village, Madhya Pradesh) “All the land that was ours before, where are we going to find that now? We won’t find it. we were the kings of the jungle, but here they treat us like dogs. It’s only sadness here. We can’t even taken wood. Our lives are like dogs!” Photo: Heera Bai
There is no evidence in any of the Baiga villages evicted in the Kanha National Park were given any choice in the relocation, no village was given the option to stay. Even when a rejection is given, this is manipulated; a ‘no’ at the village level gram sabha becomes a ‘yes’ at higher levels of government.
In recent years, the government has run out of state land around Kanha National Park to offer the evicted communities as part of a Resettlement and Rehabilitation package. Villagers from Johar, Benda and the three other villages that were evicted in 2013 received just 10 lakh per adult male, in compensation (women and children under 18 are entitled to nothing). Now, they are struggling to find land that they can afford to buy and the communities have scattered across the region.
In the second park, Achanakmar National Park in Chhattisgarh, there are still 19 tribal villages inside the Core Zone, and many more in the Buffer Zone. So far, five villages have been evicted from the Core, and five more have been given their eviction notice. Those evicted were rehabilitated in resettlement villages on the outskirts of the National Park, where the concrete houses and the dusty road is a far cry from the lush green surroundings they left behind. They were promised five acres of land, a home, a village school and two years of paid work. The fields are drying up after just two harvests, after two years the school building is still awaiting completion and the promised work is yet to materialise. Men of the village are starting to go to distant cities like Lucknow in order to find menial, exploitative daily wage labour.
“If we have no choice but to leave Rajak, then we will only be relocated to Jhiriya Behera,” says Ramcharan Baiga. Photo: Heera Bai
Villagers still living in the forest have seen the resettled villages and refuse the offer of relocation. In Rajak, a core zone village, the villagers are unanimous in their rejection of the displaced and the proposed resettlement site. “Of course we want to stay in our village,” Ramcharan Baiga, a residents of Rajak, said. “If we can stay, then we will. We have told the District Collector that we will not go to Bharatpur because the land there is not sufficient to support our families. If we have no choice but to leave Rajak, then we will only be relocated to Jhiriya Behera.” The District Collector is refusing this compromise and insisting that the villagers have no choice in their resettled location.
The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), Ministry of Environment and Forests, have recently and surreptitiously passed an order stating that:
“In absence (of) guidelines for notification of critical wildlife habitats, no rights shall be conferred in Critical Tiger Habitats which is duly notified under the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972.”
The Forest Rights Act states explicitly that the rights conferred within apply to all forest areas without exception; therefore the attempt by the NTCA to bypass this is illegal, and will be devastating for the communities affected. There is mounting evidence that suggests that the presence of Adivasis in critical wildlife habitats, including tiger reserves, is in fact conducive to preserving and managing these areas of biodiversity.
In addition to this, there are also plans to create a ‘tiger corridor’ between Kanha and Achanakmar. There are over 700 villages in the proposed area, and many residents do not even hold the most basic land titles. Their evictions will be quick and they will have no grounds to resist. WWF and the state government have assured people that there will be no evictions in the area, but local people do not believe this at all. There are villages about every 7 km in the proposed corridor area, meaning that tigers will not be able to move through the ‘corridor’ without presenting a huge threat to villages. Therefore locals have come to conclusion that the reassurances they have had about there being no evictions are not true.
“That’s what they said when Kanha became a national park, they said the same for Achanakmar. They have already started putting up fences and restricting people’s access to the forest,” said Naresh Bunkar, a local man who was been working with adivasi communities in the region for 30 years. “It’s all lies. Slowly slowly, everyone here is going to be evicted.”
Heera Bai is a freelance journalist who works at Brush & Bow, a platform for creative journalism, working on documenting individual stories through art and music. Follow them at brushandbow.com and on Twitter @brushandbow2
Survival International has called on the UN expert on extrajudicial executions to condemn shoot on sight conservation policies.
In a letter to the Special Rapporteur charged with the issue, Survival stated that “shoot on sight policies directly affect tribal people who live in or adjacent to ‘protected areas’… particularly when park guards so often fail to distinguish subsistence hunters from commercial poachers.”
The letter adds that “nobody knows when wildlife officers are permitted to use lethal force against [suspected poachers], and it is impossible for dependents to hold to account officers whom they believe to have killed without good reason. Many countries have gone further, and granted wildlife officers immunity from prosecution.”
The letter cites Kaziranga National Park in India as an especially striking example of the tactic. According to a recent BBC report, an estimated 106 people have been extrajudicially executed there in the last 20 years, including one disabled tribal man who had wandered over the park boundary to retrieve cattle.
Kaziranga guards have effective legal immunity from prosecution, and have admitted that they are instructed to shoot poaching suspects on sight. This has had serious consequences for tribal peoples living around the park. In June 2016, a seven-year-old tribal boy was shot and maimed for life by guards.
Similar policies are used in other parts of the world, notably Kenya, Tanzania and Botswana, among other African countries.
Speaking about his own anti-poaching work in Africa, poaching expert Rory Young from the organization Chengeta said: ”Shoot on sight is stupid. If we had been shooting on sight during this latest sting operation we would have shot a handful of poachers and that would have been the end of it. Every single poacher is an opportunity for information to get more poachers and work your way up the chain to the ringleaders.”
Survival has asked the Special Rapporteur to clarify that shoot on sight violates fundamental rights enshrined in the UN’s Civil and Political Rights Covenant and other international conventions. It also urges the UN to enquire about the policy with the Indian government, and the government of Assam state, where Kaziranga is located.
Shoot on sight is justified on the grounds that it helps to deter poachers. However, there have been several recent cases of guards and officials at Kaziranga being arrested for involvement in the illegal wildlife trade themselves.
Survival International is leading the fight against these abuses, and calling for a new conservation model that respects tribal peoples. Targeting tribal people diverts action away from tackling the true poachers – criminals conspiring with corrupt officials. Targeting tribal people harms conservation.
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “If any other industry was guilty of this level of human rights abuses, there would be an international outcry. Why the silence when conservationists are involved? Torture and extrajudical killing is never justified – the law is clear on this. Some people think that the death of innocents is justified, that ‘collateral damage’ is necessary in the fight against poaching. We ask them, where is your humanity? Of course, there’s a racist element at play here: Shoot on sight policies would be unthinkable in North America or Europe.”
A BBC investigation has revealed that tribal peoples living around a national park in India are facing arrest and beatings, torture and death under the Park’s notorious “shoot-on-sight” policy.
The park gets over 170,000 visitors each year. Fifty suspects were extrajudicially executed there in the last three years, and a severely disabled tribal man was shot dead in 2013. The BBC has estimated that 106 have been killed in the last 20 years. In the same period, only one official has been killed.
The BBC interviewed one local man who had been beaten and tortured with electric shocks during a detention by park officials before they realized he had no involvement in poaching.
The program also featured Akash Orang, a seven-year-old tribal boy who was shot in the legs by park guards last July. Akash said that: “The forest guards suddenly shot me” as he was on his way to a local shop. His father said: “He’s changed. He used to be cheerful. He isn’t any more. In the night, he wakes up in pain and he cries for his mother.”
Park guards have effective immunity from prosecution and are encouraged to shoot suspects on sight – without arrest or trial, or any evidence that they might have been involved in poaching. One guard admitted that they are: “Fully ordered to shoot them, whenever you see the poachers or any people during night-time we are ordered to shoot them.”
WWF has provided equipment – including what the BBC calls “night vision goggles” – which have been used in night-time operations and “combat and ambush” training. When asked by the BBC how donors might feel about their money being used to enforce this brutal treatment, WWF India’s spokesman said that: “What is needed is on-ground protection… We want to reduce poaching and the idea is to reduce it with involving other partners.”
Survival International is leading the global fight against these abuses and first brought the park’s high death toll and serious instances of corruption among Kaziranga officials – including involvement in the illegal wildlife trade they are employed to stop – to global attention in 2016.
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “Conservation organizations, including WWF, are supporting a model of conservation which is resulting in gross human rights abuses. They have failed to condemn policies that are leading to widespread extrajudicial executions. For too long, conservation has relied on its positive public image to hide its horrific and sustained attacks on indigenous and tribal peoples’ rights. We’re working to stop this. It’s time for conservationists to work with tribal people, the best conservationists and guardians of the natural world. It’s time for conservation organisations to call for an end to shoot on sight policies.”
