The Hindu Business Line : Of a sanctuary and its beautiful people

IT rained the three days we stayed at Pal village near the Yawal Wildlife Sanctuary, a 45-minute run on a Gypsy from Raver town with a lakh population. "Kuch dinon se accha barish hai (It has been raining well the last few days)," says the smiling owner of the STD booth.

The rains here do not come down in sheets for hours; they come in bursts and have cut off access to parts of the sanctuary, like Langda Amba. A metalled road running across the sanctuary connects Pal in the east to Langda Amba in the West through a four-km stretch of broken ground, which has turned slushy. A senior forest official advised us against going to Langda Amba (the langda variety of mango grows here) as only tractors, carrying foodgrains and vegetables for the residents, were able to make it. The average rainfall in the Jalgaon district is 740.7 mm.

The morning air carried the fresh breath of wet trees after a good monsoon wash as we set out to view the buffer zone abutting the sanctuary. One had heard and read a bit about the 175.52-sq.-km Yawal sanctuary and decided to make it to the place where one met up with Kishor Rithe, Varad Giri and Rushikesh Chavan of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), Pravin Kale, Ishan Agarwal and Dr G.N. Vankhede, head of the Department of Zoology, Amravati University.

The Maharashtra government has decided to set up the Lohara (Chinchati) Minor Irrigation Project in the buffer zone of the Yawal sanctuary and the Ministry of Environment and Forests has asked BNHS to prepare a management plan for the buffer as a condition to clear the project.

The group has been working over the last few months on the project, which costs around Rs 3 crore. But this does not include the net present value of the submerged land or command area that has to be paid by the State government to the Centre according to guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court. In many ways, this rule has stalled State governments from resettling villages located inside sanctuaries.

The project intends to augment water supply of the pick-up weir of the Sukki dam across the Sukki River. (In Hindi, sukki means dry and happy depending on the usage.)

The Sukki dam is full. It was built by the British and falls inside the Yawal sanctuary and the proposed dam is to be built across the Bhadak Nala, which starts from the Satpuda mountains and meets Sukki in the buffer area. The proposed dam wall is 615 metres in length and 18.74 metres in height.

Walking the area one saw a white chalk line moving into the distance, drawn by the Forest Department, staking out the forestland that could get submerged.

The Yawal sanctuary, on the western side of the Satpuda mountain range in the Jalgaon district, north Maharashtra, is a dry, deciduous forest except when the rains provide it with a green sheen. The mountains and the sea share a common wavy pattern, stilled in time on rocks and in disquiet over large stretches of water. The dominant tree species is not the teak in Yawal but the anjan and salai (Boswellia serrata) with nirgudi and khair shrubs in between.

One morning when we were driving out to the area we noted a clutch of nirgudi plants on both sides of the road with their branches hung up with blue tiger butterflies emerging from their pupae. They waited for the blood to course their veins before taking off on the first flight out into a way of living.

Varad and Ishan are keen herpetologists, Pravin is a botanist while Kishor, Chavan and Dr Vankhede are conservationists and every day the group split in two on its varied search. Varad and Ishan looked under each stone and were disappointed not being able to sight a snake though they did spot geckos, frogs, toads and scorpions.

One night at around 10 p.m. Varad and Ishan, holding torches, charged into a stream abuzz with the calls of the frogs and toads. We followed them into the stream to watch a toad with a ballooning vocal sac send out musical notes that only its friends could relish. Varad turned the torch for me to see a frog weighing around 400 gm underwater and nearby the mating of skittering frogs.

One asked Varad the difference between toads and frogs and he said, "A toad has a rough skin while a frog has a slimy skin." He caught a toad and a frog and asked me to feel their skins to get to know the difference first hand. Varad and Ishan slap their palms on geckos and frogs and secure them firmly for a close look.

In the forest darkness we flashed lights while others operated their cameras and in the process Varad spotted a warbler sitting quietly on a shrub. Varad and Kishor went close to the bird for their shots but the bird did not fly; during day, the warbler does not stay in a place for more than two seconds.

As interesting as the night show was the sighting of a scorpion moulting. On the way to Bhadak Nala in the afternoon, Varad lifted a black stone and underneath it was an orange-dark brown scorpion shedding its skin. For about five minutes we watched the scorpion as it pulled itself out of its old skin, turned up on its abdomen and took in the air.

In about a year's time, no walker will be able to make it to the buffer zone as work on the dam is set to start. The project is a minor affair and there are some who brush aside objections. Sure, the lives of the tribals will not be hit as there are no tribals in the area. But the dam will affect the stream ecology of Bhadak Nala and will set a precedent for similar projects inside and outside of sanctuaries.

If the State and the Centre do have any concern for forests, they should agree to make the buffer zone a part of the Yawal sanctuary before building the dam, as it then could provide more protection to the area. That also assumes a good forest management. Yawal is controlled by forest officials based in Nashik when the normal practice is to locate the staff just outside sanctuaries. Anyone moving in the area can see cattle grazing dry the earth with the villagers following them to break or partly destroy any standing shrub or tree.

One afternoon, we saw an old man carrying two logs of teak for sale. When Kishor asked him what it would fetch, the old man replied that it would bring him about Rs 80 to Rs 100 a piece. The timber merchant will sell it at five to six times the purchase price, leaving the tribal only a little better.

Has the contractor always the first right on every piece of forest?

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