The Hornbill Headgears

One country 02 states, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. One river 02 names, Kameng and Jia Bhareli. One continuous habitat 02 Tiger Reserves, Pakke and Nameri. One language spoken by 16 different communities. This is the language of ‘conservation’ spoken by 16 different communities living around Pakke and Nameri Tiger Reserves at the recently completed ‘Pakke-Nameri Conservation and Peace Carnival’, from Pakke Jungle Camp at Seijosa in East Kameng District of Arunachal Pradesh to Ban Theatre in Tezpur in Assam.

Imagine who took the initiative, the Nyishi community Gaon Burras. The Nyishis and conservation, the ones who wear Hornbill beak headgears, everyone laughed at us as if we were joking. Community conservation at Pakke Tiger Reserve, initiated by the DFO, Tana Tapi, ADCF, now Field Director, along with some National Wildlife NGOs by getting together the Nyishi Gao Burhas (Village Heads) into an organization called Ghora Abhe Society, who in turn organized locally led conservation by their community to save this extraordinary Tiger Habitat. Help Tourism was invited here to boost the process and they added community based ecotourism infrastructure to the initiative, ‘the Pakke Jungle Camp’.

The dynamics were perfect, but in isolation. The work of Ghora Abhe Society was being appreciated nationally and internationally, but there was hardly any news or awareness or initiative locally in the neighbourhood. The 02 partners in ecotourism, Ghora Abhe and Help Tourism sat with the Field Director of Pakke Tiger Reserve and discussed that it will be impossible to sustain conservation if the similar dynamics is not set in continuing Nameri Tiger Reserve. The several community leaders of different communities around Nameri Tiger Reserve were invited for a preliminary meeting to Pakke and convinced to participate in community based conservation. To do the first awareness program, a carnival for peace and conservation was planned. 

The once isolated community, Nyishis, fierce hunting community referred to as ‘Dafla’ by the neighbours in Assam, now took the responsibility to lead habitat conservation and wildlife protection in the region, infact they took the ownership on conservation. This is not strange, conservation was always in their gene, only that we cannot interpret this with our modern sense of conservation. They always lived as a part of nature, ate out nature, built shelter out of nature, got their clothing out of nature and lived the most sustainable lifestyle in isolation. We wanted to make them global, they appeared before the world in their hornbill headgears and we shouted that they were killing hornbills to make headgears. We often consider Hornbills to Tigers, as the king representative in their respective categories, birds and mammals. The Nyishis wear this as their headgear to show the world that they belong to an extremely diverse habitat, which they have lived with for time unknown and where hornbills are abundant. We have, through our greed destroyed these entire habitats and act as pro-conservation people from our un-natural homes and offices. The English could not make them a part of their industrial revolution and termed them TRIBALS. 

The time for us has come to be TRIBALS, to be a part of the natural system beyond borders, and not trying to exploit nature, each for our own selfish interest. If we have created some infrastructure, let us all blend it with the biodiversity forces locally and convert ourselves to the religion of BIODIVINITY. Come and train with the TRIBALS in their traditions. 

The support for the rally was provided in a big way at Tezpur by Nature’s Beckon, an Assam based NGO, pioneers in the field of community based conservation and presently extends hands to some Northeast states and West Bengal.  

Taj Mahal closed for two and a half years

Imagine if Taj Mahal would be closed to visitors for the next two and a half years...the world, the nation and the local people, all would get together to question the situation. The Toy Train or DHR, the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, the oldest heritage railway in the country, the model for the world is not running her stretch from NJP (the main Railway terminal for Siliguri) or Siliguri Junction (the Railway Terminal of great importance from the metre gauge days) to Darjeeling for the last two and a haif years. Yesterday at the DHR annual meet, held at The Cindrella Hotel in Siliguri, in presence of the International members of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Society (DHRS) and Darjeeling Railway Community Support (DHRC), the officials from DHR, NF Railway and the local members of the DHR-India Support Group, David Barrie, the Chairman of DHRS commented that, “across the world, most of the narrow gauge railways have a journey distance of 5 to 15 miles, we are proud to have a narrow gauge railway here, the DHR which runs a stretch of 55 mile”. He also said “it is the great grandfather steam engines, which are so strong and simple that they can still pull 04 coaches uphill if maintained and run in an ideal manner”.

We have several shortfalls here for not being able to address the issue of immediate repair of the DHR track, both nationally and locally. The history of track and road damage at Pagla Jhora is more than 100 years old, but we do not know of any period when the running of the train or cars on the parallel road (Hillcart Road, now NH 55) have been out of function for such a long time. There seems to be hardly any understanding for the HERITAGE, for the traditions and cultures which we have inherited. In a press release yesterday by DHRS says that the society has been awarded the most prestigious award sponsored by the Steam Railway Magazine, which recognizes the Society’s work in improving the reliability and performance of the world famous ‘B’ class steam locomotives on the DHR. Engineering Director, David Mead and steam engineer, Mike Weedon were the men behind this project. We in India need to do our part, atleast restore the railway track damaged by landslide, or atleast do the NH 55, which connects thousands of villagers and Railway people to Siliguri for their basic needs.

The DHR is like the Taj Mahal for us who live in North Bengal and Sikkim in India and are proud that several places and their people are an integral part of this heritage. 

All pictures used here is between 1865 to 1930, undergiven are the DHR Annual Meet pictures from yesterday.

    

Elephant vs Railways/Forests/Development...

Jumbo died at a railway classification yard in Canada at St. Thomas, Ontario, where he was hit and fatally wounded by a locomotive. Barnum afterwards told the story that Jumbo died saving a young circus elephant, Tom Thumb, from being hit by the locomotive... the Wikipedia.org describes ‘Jumbo (1861 – September 15, 1885), also known as Jumbo the Elephant and Jumbo the Circus Elephant, was a 19th-century male African Bush Elephant born in the French Sudan (present-day Mali). Jumbo was eventually exported to a zoo in Paris, France; and then transferred in 1865 to London Zoo in England. In November 1881, Jumbo was sold for $10,000 USD to P. T. Barnum, who took him to America for exhibition in March 1882. The giant elephant's name has spawned the common word, "jumbo", meaning large in size. Jumbo's height, estimated to be 3.25 metres (10.7 ft) in the London Zoo, was claimed to be approximately 4 metres (13.1 ft) by the time of his death’.

Railways and Elephant deaths in railway tracks is a long history. I was reading a very interesting article in the link related to IPS (Inter Press Service) on Tribal Rights (dated 22.02.2013), where I came across an interesting comment:

hogy • 8 days ago

My attention was piqued when I saw this in the sidebar. Ashish Kothari quoted: “Roads, railway lines and transmission lines through forests cause fragmentation and risk killing animals (dozens of elephants have been killed attempting to cross railways),” he told IPS.

My work on ricksha arts in Bangladesh turned up a wonderful handpainted backboard panel of an elephant attacking a RR train. I thought of it as emblematic, but heard from one of the authors of *India's Railway History : A Research Handbook*, that when trains got going in India early 19th c., "Almost immediately environmental costs of railway development were noted from deforestation to increasing malaria (blocking of waterways created breeding areas)--and yes, confrontations between elephants and trains." This colorful panel attained the cover of that book.

So sad for the animals and the forests.

Many of us saw the news footage on television yesterday and in the newspapers today about an adult tusker being dragged to death by a train at Buxa Tiger Reserve. The Field Director posted some photos on social network. It is not a pleasant to see such photos, but I am adding one to help to understand the impact. Some news claimed that the train driver said that the elephant came charging to the engine and hence died. Most of the time we have observed that the elephants like humans usually do not cross the railway track straight but often walk on the track for time till a better place to get to the other side is found. Also with some experiences on road I have seen that if a car or truck honks at a crossing elephant, specially loner, the elephant chases the honking vehicle.

This particular tusker was seen by us quite many times during travelling by the intercity express towards Alipurduar. Also locally, the tusker was always seen in this area, and has never been heard to cause any damage to people or property. The place where the accident took place, to my knowledge is about a kilometre from the Damanpur Range office. Are we missing the basic duties as Forest Department, protection and monitoring of wildlife? This is the basic question from well meaning, responsible and conscious tax payers, whose hard earned returns support this department, especially when logging has been banned in India. It is the questions from the well meaning villagers living around the protected areas, who through generations have protected this open treasury called forests and wildlife. Other than the elephant deaths by train, recently there had been a few elephant deaths in the forests, which were detected only when they smelt rotten.

In North Bengal, where elephants are International and covers a landscape which includes Nepal, Bhutan and India, and has also been reported to visit the Bangladesh border, the problems in conservation is multi-dimensional. The human-elephant conflict is in its extreme level, with elephant habitats fast converting into human needs, which includes villages, increasing urbanization, increasing tea gardens, increasing land demand by the defence forces and increase in unplanned developments. Under such circumstance, it has never been planned to provide local people with a livelihood of protection and monitoring of the elephants in the wild. Other than affinity through religion, that has till date helped to keep the local elephant population steady, livelihood can play a major role in creating a sense of ownership in conservation of elephants and their habitat.

There has been 02 PILs (Public Interest Litigation) at the Calcutta High Court:

In 2000, a PIL was filed in Kolkata High Court 

W.P. No. 13220(w) of 2000   in the matter of laying a broad gauge railway track from Siliguri to Guwahati passing through certain Wildlife Sanctuaries and Reserved Forests in North Bengal.

This matter came up time and again before the court. Finally on 10.5.2002 the Court received a joint inspection report (prepared by some high officials who were supposedly well conversant with the subject) filed on behalf of the Union of India.  They detailed in the report the manner as to how best the animal sanctuaries can be saved from the alleged threat likely to be caused from the conversion of gauge.  

The committee, that was formed with three persons taken from the Wildlife Institute of India, Forest Dept. under the Ministry of Forest & Environment and the Ministry of Railways, made some recommendations. According to the committee, those recommendations, if implemented and followed, would protect the wildlife of the area to a great extent, even after the proposed conversion.  

On August 20, 2002, in view of those recommendations, Kolkata HC directed the railway authorities to see that those recommendations are  adhered to and implemented. Then with hope and trust that railway administration will implement the recommendations in real spirit and see that the peace of the wildlife is least disturbed, HC disposed of the PIL. 

Next what happened would make the entire elephant expert community villains to the natural world in general and as per the figures available:

From 1974 to 2002, during 29 years, the number of elephants those died due to collision with train on meter gauge track was 27. 

From 2004 till date (to  February  06, 2013), during  last 9 years, the number of elephants those died due to collision with train on converted broad gauge track has been  40.

Now there is a second PIL with the Hon’ble Calcutta High Court, which has been done only because of the fact that neither the Railways, nor the Forest Department or the Experts or anyone else are ready to take responsibility of the elephant deaths, and the entire pro-elephant conservation fraternity, both local and global has to watch this Jumbo death circus. 

Legends of the Lake of No Return and Stories from the Pangsau Pass

The Khamti community in Arunachal Pradesh say that Pang Sau means ‘camping place’ and when they migrated here as Tai-Khamtis, they did take rest here. Today also they visit the Pangsau Pass as a pilgrimage to pay respect to their ancestors. The Singpho and the Tangsa communities too consider this pass as a sacred place.

 The Pangsau Pass came into importance with the building of the Stilwell Road, also known as the Burma Road or the Ledo Road. During World War II, the CBI (China-Burma-India) theatre sprang into importance with the Japanese and the Allied forces trying to cover grounds. It became necessary for the Allied forces to connect the Ledo base in Assam, India with Kunming in Yunan, China. The air route was not only expensive, but ‘flying over the hump’ became almost impossible. Finally, General Joseph W Stilwell took up the responsibility to built the road through Burma, starting from Ledo, going through the ‘Hell Gate’ in present Jairampur and then the legendary Pangsau Pass and Lake of No Return.

The area still has the remains of the heritage wilderness, community traditions and happenings of World War II, which the world with nostalgia wants to experience. Keeping this in view the local communities of Jairampur, Nampong, Manmao and Rima got together with Help Tourism in 2006 to warm-up for the ‘Pangsau Pass Winter Festival’. The official event was launched in 2007 with the active support of Government of Arunachal Pradesh.

Arunachal Pradesh celebrated her 25 years statehood in India on the 20^th of February, 2012. This was a Union Territory of India under North East Frontier Agency and Governed under the Governor of Assam till 1972. On 20^th February, 1987, Arunachal Pradesh became the 25^th state of India. Inbetween this was a Union Territory placed under the Chief Commissioner. To enter any place in Arunachal Pradesh, even every Indian citizen has to seek permission under the Bengal Frontier Regulation Act 1872-73, implemented by the then British administration.

The 02 best ancient neighbours, connected through Buddhism historically are fighting over their borders, mainly over Arunachal Pradesh. The Chinese defence forces reached Tezpur in Assam in 1962 and still issues stapled visas or no visa to Indians from Arunachal Pradesh, with the claim that these Indians in Arunachal Pradesh are Chinese citizens and would not need a visa to visit China. I am sure travellers in China and India will always want to visit each other’s country, like the Buddhist era, with respect for each other’s country and sharing the great knowledge and traditions. All travellers worldwide look forward to land travel or river routes in Asia with single Asian Visa.

There is an event which was organized during this year’s PPWF 2013 (Pangsau Pass Winter Festival 2013) by the PPWF committee, Assam Rifles, Nature’s Beackon and Help Tourism, the common man’s bicycle expedition from Ledo to Pangsau Pass, an event for people in Upper Assam and Eastern Arunachal Pradesh to realise their ownership on the Pangsau Pass. The popular Assam legend says that the Tai Ahoms, when they entered the Lohit-Brahmaputra valley through Pangsau Pass, under the leadership of the Great Chaolung Sukhapaa in the early 13^th century, they pledged never to return beyond the Nangyang Lake, which came to be known as the ‘Lake of No Return. The Allied forces part of the story says that while flying over the hump, all radio signals would be lost and the lake would hallucinate as a landing area, and as the cargo planes would force land over there, lost in a densely forested landscape, the big flying carriers would be lost in the lake waters forever. Many local people still find remains of such planes scattered in the hump and lake. 

There are some extraordinary experiences of travellers to this area in all respects: journey, nature, people, rivers, food, history, legends etc. All those who are interested in contributing to the legends of the Lake of No Return and stories from the Pangsau Pass, and want them published in this blog, please email write-up or photographs or documents to atishdipankara@gmail.com.