Should tourism in National Parks be banned in India?

The clean air, the heavenly fields leading up to the mountain of Bandhvgarh fort. The magnificent lake infront of Ranthambore fort. The lush rainforest of Kabini and the magnificent range of habitats in Jim Corbeett.

These are just a few of the magnificent scenery of India’s national parks which are home to hundreds of thousands of insects, reptiles, birds, mammals, providing refuge for local tribes and oxygenating and providing a source of water to surrounding villages.

These magnificent forests were made into national parks to provide utmost protection for the wildlife and enhance the life of surrounding villages to prevent human-animal conflicts.

The most rich areas of the forests are out of bounds for any non forest guard person while safaris are allowed the rest of the official national park. The outer buffer area can be used for resources.

The national parks have become a major tourist attraction for both locals and international tourists in India. However, despite all the monetary benefits, tourism in forests is a very constroversial topic.

From the screeching of hungry children, to the roudiness of careless visitors who treat the forest like a zoo to the cramping up of jeeps at the sight of the king or queen of the jungle. These common sights are a threat to the jungle. Not only does all the jeep activity disturb the harmony of the forests, rules are often broken. Litter is thrown which can potentially kill wildlife. Human shout and scream and misbehave which scares animals and often disturbs their hunts. There have been chases where this rowdy behavior has triggered elephants in Kabini to mock charge at jeeps. All this commotion truly destroys the joy of harmony for real nature lovers.

However, national parks do bring in massive benefits for the jungles also. Often villages are relocated. To encourage this, locals are provided with jobs as naturalists and forest guards, hence benefitting their lives. This tourism also provides a big source of income for the forest department to maintain the national park. As a result, villagers start to protect the national park for its monetarily value. Also due to the increase in activity in parks, it becomes complicated for poachers to infiltrate in the jungle during the day.

To conclude, tourism in national parks should not be banned. However, I strongly suggest that regulations be implied strictly to prevent misbehvaiour and damage to the beautiful forests. A maximum jeep allowance should fall in place and naturalists should educate the tourists on how to behave in the forest an punish them severely if rules are not followed.

The Truth About Captive Elephants

Elephants have always been a major part of South Asian culture. Ganesh, a Hindu God, is believed to have an elephant head. These magnificent beasts have played a major role in ancient warfare. In modern society, elephants are used for religious procession, tourism purposes, such as elephant rides and circuses, and begging on streets. Currently, India has over 3,500 captive elephants.

See the source image — Captive elephants are beaten into submission

While seeing these gentle giants are always an enthralling sight, have you ever wondered how these wild giants carry out their mahouts’ orders so meticoulousy? Sadly, behind their scenes, there is a shockingly ugly truth about the captive elephant industry.

Firstly, the domestic elephants are captured from the wild at a very young age as domestic animals are poor breeders. It is vital that the elephants are captured at tender age because it is significantly easier to train. This has a pronounced affect on the mental state of both the calf and its mother, who is either killed or left to spend months in search for its lost child. As elephants are highly emotional creatures, the separation of a child from its parents will cause similar amounts of psychological damage as would be faced by a human.

The taming down of the wild elephant includes month of heartbreaking abuse. Not only this, once trained, the elephants are kept in appalling conditions. They are often chained in the outskirts of their places of worship in the scorching heat. The elephants are confined in small captive concrete areas, which is very unnatural for such a large creature.

The elephants are often paraded on tar roads for religious procession. Not only does the loud and crowded religious processions result in immense amounts of panic in the elephants, the hard surfaces of the ground and chains cause fatally infectious wounds. This is due to the fact that the feet of elephants have evolved over time to become accustomed to the forest environment, not some hard manmade surface.

What’s more shocking, out of the 350 captive elephants which have died in the last 7 years in Kerala, a large majority have been due to a poor diet and malnourishment. Elephants are slow eaters and require over 100kgs of food daily. They normally walk 5-10km daily, grazing to meet their daily requirements. In their concrete environments, these captive elephants are not able to graze naturally and are underfed. This has led to mass amounts of intestinal infections, which is one of the root causes for captive elephant deaths.

In the wild, elephants are allowed to transfer between herds, increasing their social interactions. However, their isolation in captive environments prevent this and often causes isolation of these highly emotional and intelligent gentle giants.

Fortunately, large social pressure and a petition filed by the Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Center in Bangalore, has resulted in the Supreme Court being forced to make a decision on how to protect these captive elephants. As of now, the court has ordered a census of the number of captive elephants in the nation and requires a registration of each individual by its owner. However, for such a large nation, laws are often difficult to implement and until the industry still profits, the situation of captive elephants will never improve.

So, next time you pay for a circus, elephant ride, or anything involving captive elephants, I hope you realize you are sponsoring the continuation of such a cruel industry.

Meanwhile, do check out my book on indian Wildlife.

10 ways to stop deforestation

Deforestation is probably one of the biggest issues glaring into the face of humanity. With greenhouse gas emission and the global population on the rise, trees are the need of the hour whether it be to produce oxygen, provide resources such as wood and herbs, prevent flooding or be home to unique wildlife. Deforestation rates have to reduce significantly and here are 10 ways you can help.

1)Consume Less Chocolate – they come from palm oil plantations which are one of the largest destructors of forests

2) Consume less non-veg, especially beef as poultry farms are cutting down forested land

3) Buy less wood products

4) Save Paper, see next article

5) Plant a tree

6) Recycle and reuse products

7) Boycott products from companies responsible for large scale deforestation

8) Volunteer at NGOs to help establish national parks to protect forests

9) Donates to organizations such as WWF which are campaigning against deforestation

10) “Buy” a tree- an initiative by many organizations in various forms where one purchase protects on tree – examples include “Stand for Trees

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Should tourism in National Parks be banned in India?

These magnificent forests were made into national parks to provide utmost protection for the wildlife and enhance the life of surrounding villages to prevent human-animal conflicts.

The most rich areas of the forests are out of bounds for any non forest guard person while safaris are allowed the rest of the official national park. The outer buffer area can be used for resources.