Vidya Athreya - Session 02, 2020-07-03

(00:36) Work with leopards at Junnar Vidya Athreya discusses her work with leopards at Junnar with Sanjay Thakur and two others. She clarified that she was made aware of the situation in Junnar even when she was in South America by emails from faculty and their family from her husband’s institute [GMRT]. She recounts that when she returned to Pune, Sanjay Thakur, who she was already friends with, suggested they do something about it. Initially, she was hesitant as she had a young child, but Sanjay offered to do the field work if she oversaw; states that Sanjay was a naturalist, Sujoy [Sujoy Chaudhuri] was a GIS expert, and Aniruddha [Aniruddha Belsare] was a veterinarian at the Pune zoo; she already knew Sanjay, who got CHaudhuri on board, and they approached Belsare later.

Athreya describes the work they did at Junnar. She states that Thakur surveyed the landscape with questionnaires to determine the characteristics of attacks and the damage, and Belsare and her microchipped leopards that had been caught. She says that they had initially reached out to Belsare because of suggestions to collar the leopards, but were unable to get funding for the same; they had received a ‘small amount’ on reaching out to Belinda Wright, WPSI [Wildlife Protection Society of India]; Belsare suggested microchips because they are cheap, but Athreya points out that the quality of information was very different as it was only accessible if the chipped leopard was caught again. She also mentions applying to the Rufford Foundation for a grant.

(04:39) Incident with the trapped leopard; training the forest department Athreya describes an incident where a leopardess was caught in a snare; before she had moved to Narayangaon [town in Junnar] Belsare had called her informing her about a leopard caught in a leg-hold trap; Athreya narrates travelling there with her daughter, and the rescue, and explains that the leopard was left out in the open under the sun for several hours waiting for a rescue procedure that in Athreya’s recounting took 10 minutes. She says that it made her realise that forest officials had no training to take care of emergencies of this nature, but if they were equipped and trained they could immediately address it.

Athreya talks about applying for a Rufford grant to create 5 teams in leopard hotspots across Maharashtra to train forest officers on how to handle leopard emergencies. She also says that they collaborated with veterinarians, explaining that wildlife veterinarians were very rare as it was a specialisation, but every taluka had many animal husbandry veterinarians who could be trained alongside the local forest staff. Athreya says that Belsare’s equipment was a simple blow pipe, which was very effective for the most common incidents involving leopards in houses or caught in snare; recounts they worked with Belsare’s friend who worked on defense equipment to make a ‘desi’ version of the blowpipe with larger darts to fit in the full dose in one shot in India, as foreign versions were expensive and smaller because foreign medicine was more concentrated.

(08:24) Presenting the Junnar report; response from the State Forest Department Athreya recalls that they presented the Junnar report in June 2004; she says that the Chief Wildlife Warden at the time, Majumdar [B. Majumdar], was a ‘very forward-thinking person’ as he invited senior officials for the meeting which was organised at the auditorium of the ‘astronomy centre in Pune’. She recounts her trepidation in sharing her finding that translocation had led to the attacks, but she received support from the CCF of Pune, Thosare [Prakash Thosare] who defended her in the meeting as well, by asking others to submit their objections in writing.

Athreya describes the response from forest officers; She received a call from an officer after her presentation confessing that leopard attacks increased after elections in Mumbai because leopards were captured en masse during elections, and then set free indiscriminately to free up cages. She took this in confidence without divulging the name of the officer to the Chief Wildlife Warden who wrote letters seeking details of capture and release in the state. Athreya says, regarding the Junnar Project, that ‘It all came together some way, that time’.

(14:13) Translocation and leopard attacks Athreya elaborates on how she figured out that the increased attacks were connected to translocation. She recalls that even when they wrote the report they had not reached a conclusion; says it was unusual because it was an entirely agricultural area with no forest land; remembers reading a paper by John Linnell published in 1997 titled ‘ titled ‘Translocation as a mitigation tool for large cat conflict, or conflict animals’ [Linnell, J.D.C. et. al. Translocation Of Carnivores As A Method For Managing Problem Animals: A Review. Biodiversity And Conservation 6, (1997)]; explains that it clicked that leopards were very territorial animals and would try to home back if moved. Athreya also says that her knowledge of cats helped a lot; once she started microchipping leopards she realised leopards were very similar to domestic cats, and were sensitive to disturbance; describes the conditions in the leopard cages, and says they were ‘really stressful’ for the animal. At this time she read another paper about translocation being stressful for captive cats; she explains that the problem is worse with a predator in high human density areas; and recounts local testimony that the release sites had ‘resident leopards’ that were scared of humans unlike ‘outside leopards’.

(17:38 - 18:09) Interruption; doorbell rings; inaudible conversation

Another paper Athreya discusses is a report by Hamilton [P.H. Hamilton] who had worked on translocating close to 100 leopards to the National Park in Kenya; mentions that most leopards had all left the release site. Athreya also recalls that in the course of writing the paper she arranged her excel sheet by time of attack, and put together that capture and release preceded the spike of attacks. Athreya also credits conversations with officers in Junnar and Bombay during training workshops where they came up to her and confessed that they would release leopards indiscriminately without picking out release sites.

(20:05) Involvement with the Forest Department Athreya discusses the involvement of the Forest Department in her work. She explains that she was one of the first persons to begin work there; when she had first met Thosare he had mentioned a WII [Wildlife Institute of India] proposal to sterilise leopards from 2003, but people were generally unwilling to work in a human-dominated landscape; says the forest department was ‘happy’ about their involvement, especially because it was a political issue in the region, and the CWLW and CCF Thosare were ‘very science oriented, willing to engage and support new work.’

Athreya also elaborates on the importance of individual officers. She says: ‘You can’t change the system if you don’t work with individuals’; talks about how in her experience there is a ‘normal distribution’ amongst officers where most are okay with letting conservationists do their work, and some will provide support when engaged with; also says that sometimes officers may not agree with the person but still ‘give you the time of day’; explains her realisation that you have to work with individuals after writing a 2011 MoEF [Ministry of Environment and Forests] guideline, that she realised was only effective if individual officers used it.

Athreya concludes by saying that while NGOs and individuals can’t change much, change happens when officers are convinced to change their management and we are at best catalysts of change.

[00:22:16 - 00:22:26 – Restricted access. Contact archives@ncbs.res.in] [00:25:36 - 00:26:44 – Restricted access. Contact archives@ncbs.res.in]

(27:59) Language Athreya says she grew up speaking English as the common language in Bombay and was not very comfortable with Marathi; says she ensured her daughter has good Marathi by asking her maids to talk to her daughter in Marathi; her mother tongue is Konkani, and often she brings in words from one language to the other; she has spoken more Marathi than Konkani in the last two decades; recounts an incident where someone she met at a field site pointed out her improved Marathi.

(29:19) Sujoy Chaudhuri Athreya describes Chaudhuri’s contributions – they used his NGO as an organisation, he conducted a GIS analysis of attack points, and did landscape modeling for the report.

(29:55) Microchipping leopards and training Athreya talks about her experience microchipping leopards; initially funded by WTI [Wildlife Trust of India] and then Rufford Foundation; initially her and Belsare were driving up and down western Maharashtra for microchipping leopards and also stepped in for some rescue situations which she says gave her insight into management; then the Rufford grant came through, and Athreya says it ‘really opened her eyes’ due to engagement in workshops with media, field staff of the forest department, animal husbandry department, and the police.

(31:26) PhD work in Akole Athreya recalls being uninterested in doing more research; but in 2005 she was looking for funds to expand her work with leopards, as during her microchipping work she realised that leopards were often captured only because they had been seen and not because they caused damage and she wanted to understand why; also her daughter was going to start full time school so it was ‘a good time’; she had applied for almost 25 grants with no success; says that big grants for cats required support, and by that time she had ‘messed up all my contacts at WII’. She talks about writing to Ullas Karanth to ask if he had money, and discusses his reply, followed by his offer to her to become his PhD student; says his guidance helped her get the Kaplan award.

She says the year after that, Dr. Sukumar [Raman Sukumar] called her about a grant from the Norwegian Embassy to work on human-wildlife conflict; offered a project to collar leopards with John Linnell as a collaborator; Athreya recounts previous interactions with Linnell when she suggested that him and Laurie Marker be invited for a WTI-MoEF workshop on human-leopard conflict in Delhi in 2006-07; describes Linnell and his knowledge of wildlife, especially his lack of surprise at Akole being a leopard landscape; says she ‘learnt a lot from the Norwegians’.

Athreya also discusses how the project came together - says ‘it all came together perfectly’; they received a reply from MoEF within 3 weeks, while she had not heard back from MoEF on a proposal for close to a year at the time of the interview; said it was ‘very very enriching’ to work with Sukumar, Karanth, the Norwegians, and the Forest department.

She also reveals that she had no plans to collar leopards before Sukumar had reached out even though CWLW Majumdar had suggested it before; she was hesitant because of the risk involved, because while she knew leopards were living together with humans, any incidents of damage would be pinned on her; she says she had said yes because she thought MoEF would not allow the program to go through, but then much to her surprise she got the permission in a few weeks.

(38:50) Small interruption – Athreya cuts out for a few seconds, and the question is repeated

Athreya explains why she chose to work in Akole in Ahmednagar district; says that most of the leopards that were captured without cause were in that region; Junnar was a ‘fractured place’ so she did not want to work there; most leopards captured were in Sangamner, and she had worked closely with the forest officers there, but she could not find a place to stay, at which point the forest department suggested she work at Akole; says it was ‘serendipity’. She registered with the Centre for Wildlife Studies in Manipal in 2007.

Athreya also talks about the involvement of Morten Odden in the project; him and Linnell were a part of Norwegian collaborators; Odden had experience collaring leopards and tigers for his PhD in Nepal, and she learnt how to collar from him; explains that it is important to be taught how to collar especially for leopards.

(41:47) Summarising her PhD work Athreya clarifies that her Kaplan graduate fellowship was for her PhD work which involved investigating the density of leopards, their diets, and the damages faced by people, to which she added her conflict analysis at Junnar; she clarifies that collaring was never meant to be a part of her PhD, and it was Sukumar’s project that she had taken up.

(42:50) Responses to Athreya’s research Athreya says that many conservationists were not believing her and publicly stating the same, she says that it was strange to work from Monday to Friday in landscapes where wildlife like leopards and hyenas were a part of life, and then come to Pune over the weekend and be with people who would deny that; credits Karanth for supporting her work even though he worked in ‘very pristine’ landscapes, says he was ‘open to giving [her]complete freedom and trust’.

Athreya also discusses publications - she published initially in JBNHS [Journal of the Bombay Natural Historical Society], then a ‘conservation biology paper’, and ‘the density paper’ in PLOS ONE [journal of the Public Library of Science] titled ‘Big Cats in Our Backyards’; says that at that time there was a resistance in India because the animals in question are ‘icons of wilderness’, but for their survival they have no choice but to live amongst humans.

Athreya says that while she ‘went in to study the biology of the animal [she] came out wondering about human-animal relationships’; wrote a lot of articles between 2012-2016, some of which were translated into Marathi, and gave several talks for the Department to villagers and managers at WII and IGNFA [Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy]; had to use the Forest Department’s experiences as well as her own research experiences for her projects. She says that ‘much more than only her PhD has come out of this in terms of knowledge’.

[00:43:26 - 00:43:39 – Restricted access. Contact archives@ncbs.res.in] [00:46:39 - 00:47:09 – Restricted access. Contact archives@ncbs.res.in]

(50:09) Waghoba Tales, Ghule, and interacting with locals Athreya discusses [Ashok Eknath] Ghule, a farmer and a temporary worker at Forest Dept, and his contributions to their work. She says that he had an ‘amazing way of telling stories’, so Linnell, Odden, and her asked him to write his stories, translated his writings from Marathi and added research findings to publish a book [Waghoba Tales]. Says Ghule was assigned to help her by the ACF in-charge of Sangamner, Mr. Phatangare.

Athreya narrates several anecdotes with Ghule and the people of Akole; describes that Ghule used to drive her around on his motorbike, and their first task was collecting leopard scat for which they took a circuitous route to follow animal trails, which ‘really frustrated’ Ghule; says that him and Athreya had ‘great camaraderie’, and he had a ‘great sense of humour’; Athreya recounts an interaction with the villagers where Ghule joked that they were sending the collected scat to China to extract gold from it. Athreya also recalls Ghule’s fondness for doing ‘charchas’ and says she realised later that he was a respected member of the community; recounts one of the stories in the charchas, about a woman washing dishes who accidentally threw waste water on a leopards; remarks on the humour people found in the situation and how they dealt with it. She also recalls capturing their first leopard and driving him to the nursery to collar him, and narrates how they were followed by people and how they evaded them; remarks that they were ‘lying through their nose’ so that no one found out where we were taking the leopards to collar it.

(57:52) Being a woman in the field Athreya elaborates on her experiences in the field as a woman; explains how she initially wore a salwar-kurta because she was in a conservative place, but later started wearing a shirt and a cap, and recalls, ‘It was very obvious I was from the moon or somewhere’. She says that she realised that while all the places she has worked in were patriarchal, in Maharashtra older women had significant power in the family. She points out that she had a positive experience; she was older, the forest officer Phatangare was respected in the community and spoke on her behalf, and Ghule again a respected member of the community was always with her. She also says that she was happy to join the local people and participate in the community – she partook in chai and water and interacted with the people and the children – which eliminated distance. She advises: ‘always stop to talk’ to the people. She also engaged with the women who were ‘very open’ to her. She concludes by saying that she was respected but she doesn’t know why; clarifies that she spoke mostly to the men because she was addressing socio economic questions, but engaged with the women and still keeps in touch with them.

Athreya also describes other situations where being a woman helped her, recounting an incident where an official from an air force base near Nashik contacted her about leopards on the ground; she sent them a presentation with pictures of her collaring leopards; she says that she was told that if she as a woman was not scared of the leopards, there was no reason for soldiers with rifles to be. She says, ‘It makes a big difference’.

(01:03:05) End