Book review: Urgent need for conservation action to save India’s habitats

T HE very first photograph in the book has you hooked. The caption lends further weight to the visual: “Occupying just 2.4% of the earth’s total land area and harbouring 7% of the world’s flora and 6.5% of the world’s fauna, India ranks among the world’s 17 most mega-diverse countries and has ecosystems representing practically every biome of the world.” With such an engaging opening, one is ready to plunge headlong into Saving India’s Wilderness: Challenges and Solutions. “Wildlife research and management in India,” he writes, “is primarily focussed on protected areas and charismatic species such as tiger, elephant and one-horned rhino. For this, conservation action cannot remain within the Protected Area boundaries.” K. Ullas Karanth, the conservation scientist known for his work on predators and prey, points out in “The science of tiger conservation” : “If current recovery efforts are to succeed, they must be backed by passionate public support for investing necessary resources.” Infrastructure projects Conservationists have been constantly fighting against infrastructure projects. Do we even care?” At the online launch of the book, Sekhsaria said bluntly: “The biggest threats come from things we don’t talk about like the defence structures in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.” Political will In his musing “Is political will extinct in India?”, Bittu Sahgal recalls what Prime Minister Indira Gandhi wrote in 1972, a year Project Tiger was launched: “‘Wildlife conservation is not a political issue.