The Hindu Business Line : Farmers and the Florican fight for survival

WE drove down from Ratlam to Sardarpur grasslands in the Maruti Zen of my good friend, Dinesh Kothari, to land at the rest house there. And the news one received was of an attack on Forest officials by villagers, thanks to some prodding by P.M. Lad.

Beat guards Vikram Singh Ninama and Kamalesh Prasad Mishra set out on their morning beat on August 25 to check information that villagers were grazing their cattle on government land in forest compartments 395, 396 and 397. They seized the cattle and tried to bring them to Sardarpur. At Kali village, some 40 to 50 villagers surrounded the beat guards and the Janpath Adhyaksh intervened to protect them.

On August 28, the Forest officials went to the same area to be met by villagers slinging stones and bows and arrows. The officials were injured and had to fire in the air to disperse the mob. A quarrel ensued between the police and the Forest officials over registering the case even as the Madhya Pradesh government, after some 25 years, has decided to confer police protection to Forest officials. The M.P. circular, dated May 28, states: "In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (3) of the Section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (No.2 of 1974), the State government hereby directs that the provisions of sub-section (3) of the said section shall apply to the Forest guards, foresters and deputy rangers of the M.P. Forest Department who are posted in the forest division for Maintenance of Public Order relating to forest protection."

P.M. Lad explained that this provision now places the Forest officials on a par with the police as only a magisterial inquiry can probe action by the Forest officials, as is with the police. The Madhya Pradesh government should be credited for the action as similar powers have been pleaded for by my good friend, Kishor Rithe, in Maharashtra.

In Sardarpur and Sailana grasslands, villagers send their cattle to graze on government land at midnight while private lands have been put to the plough to grow maize, wheat, rice, cotton and tomatoes. Lad did not blame the villagers as over the years a rise in population has split farm and grasslands, leaving little for the Lesser Florican, which by best estimates has become a threatened species. On an afternoon we searched the Shikarbadi grasslands and were not able to sight a single bird.

For me, Khima, in his knee-high white dhoti, blue shirt and worn-out plastic shoes, is the expert on Lesser Florican, being the only forest official to daily walk the area. He suggested working the Dhamnot beed (grasslands), having sighted a jumping male bird. At 8.30 a.m., on a rather cloudy and windy day, we saw a male florican jump, followed by a second bird at Tajpuria.

The perpendicular rise into the air of a male Lesser Florican on a grassland to send the mating message to the female concealed in the grass is a slice of pleasure one has been fortunate to experience over the last two years. They were too far away to be captured on camera while we did not locate female birds. The same time last year one saw around eight birds. Perhaps, the late onset of rains could have delayed the entry of the birds in the area.

Lad, who has tracked these birds since the 1980s, was a sad and disappointed man as in the 1980s one could sight at least a 100 birds. This year, there is no grass, no insects and no birds, with the little grass being consumed by the cattle. The female Lesser Florican needs at least 18-inch-tall grass to lay its eggs and rear her chicks. Khima and Nishikant Kale noted the steady decline in the habitat for Lesser Florican though it is quite possible that in late September or October there could be a revival in Lesser Florican activity.

K.S. Dharmakumarsinhji, in a piece on the Lesser Florican styled The Lesser Florican published in A Century of Natural History, writes of hundreds of birds flying into Kathiawad from mainland Gujarat. The fascinating piece, written in 1950, mentions the banding scheme of His Highness the Maharaja Saheb of Bhavnagar, carried out by Dhrmakumarsinhji between 1943 and 1947. In just two months a hundred birds were banded; altogether 489 birds were ringed in seven years, of which 18 were recovered giving an average recovery of 3.6 per cent. "It is quite possible that some of the banded birds are caught by poachers and useful information thus lost," the writer speculates.

Should not the Bombay Natural History Society or the Wildlife Institute of India apply the best of tracking instruments to know something of the Lesser Florican before they become extinct?

At Amravati, Kishor Rithe dropped out of the trip but talked of trying to get some corporate or trust interested in acquiring at least a thousand acres of grasslands in Sailana to provide an assured home for the birds. As an alternative, Kishor suggested compensating the farmers placing under plough the grasslands on an annual basis, though that looks difficult as the funds may not come. Land here costs about Rs 12,000 a bigha and one cannot blame the farmers if they do not care for the Lesser Floricans.

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