Resurrecting the 'geography of hope'

By
Randeep Wadehra

Tigerland and other unintended destinations by Eric Dinerstein

Universities Press, Hyderabad. Pages: 279. Price: Rs. 375/-.

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed… For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.” This warning from conservationist Wallace Stegner is timely considering the fact that 78 million acres of forest land and 50,000 species of life forms are destroyed annually. Apart from countless species of flora, insects and microbes there’re only 26,000 species of birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians known to science. And what a precious wealth it is!

Have you heard of vegetarian vultures or penguins thriving in the tropics? Or of giant ‘homicidal’ trees and the ones that grow lush on toxins? Nature, in her primeval form, can be awesome, enchanting and mysterious. The almost infinite range of flora and fauna, with mindboggling spectra of colour, shape and size only enhance the feral beauty. Only those besotted with such pristine splendor spurn the ‘civilized’ world’s comforts and dedicate themselves to the unraveling of its enigmas. A world enthralling enough for Eric Dinerstein to become a dedicated conservation biologist; and to inspire a scientist like Bill Haber to turn his discourse on pollination systems and sexual reproduction of plants “into an ecological interpretation of the Kama Sutra; how the decurved bill of a violet sabre-wing (a hummingbird) perfectly fits the flowers of an African violet vine; how only a single species of night-flying hawk moth has a tongue long enough (25 centimeters!) to reach the floral nectaries of the deep-throated corolla of the Solandra vine; and how the long-tongued bats lap nectar from the musky-scented flowers of an air-plant…”

Konrad Lorenz’s magniloquent query, “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” indicates the interdependence of different geographical entities on our planet. For example, moist air currents from the Amazon, deflected by the Andes, cross the Atlantic and precipitate over southern Africa. And the ones that slip over the Andes influence snowfall in the Himalayas. We already know how El Nino affects the global weather including monsoons apart from harming breeding of marine life and seabirds in the Galapagos. But this book recounts more than such natural phenomena. It unfolds Nature’s occult beauty while exposing the perils it faces.

The sub-Himalayan region is rich in wildlife – the great one-horned rhino, elephants, tigers, gharials, river otters, langurs etc and the flora like dwarf juniper, monkshood, primrose, poppy, various types of shrubs and herbs including raj briksha – a medicinal tree. Tiger, the largest carnivore on land is on the brink of extinction as are other species, viz., nilgai, hares, various types of deer etc. Along with yaks, wolves and marmots, Himalayas, especially Tibet and Ladakh, are home to snow leopards – a cat more sinewy and fitter than ordinary leopards of lower areas. The total historical range of the snow leopard used to be more than one hundred thousand square miles across the mountains of Asia, but by mid 1980s it had been reduced to about half that area. Obviously poachers are having a free run of the region.

Central America’s cloud forests, where one witnesses rainbows almost daily, are home to a rich variety of flora and fauna. Costa Rica’s Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve has African violets, orchids, ferns, bromeliads etc. Birds, amphibians and insects are a riot of colour – dazzling quetzals, three-wattled bellbirds, toucans, golden toads (extinct since 1980s), glass frogs, bright morphos and other butterflies. Bats, according to the author, are much misunderstood flying mammals. Out of about 1200 species only three are vampires, i.e. they feed on blood, while the rest live off fruits, insects etc.

New Caledonia is home to giant monitor lizards, terrestrial crocodiles, and towering Agathis trees (known as kauris). The forty species of its primates, called lemurs vary in size ranging from that of a mouse to that of a gorilla (extinct). The elephant bird (extinct) could tower over an ostrich. Among other birds the horned parake

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