Panaji
Stating that small things like changing the way we talk about animals would go a long way in conservation, quintessential wildlifer Dr Asir Jawahar Thomas Johnsingh pointed out that it was imperative to see things from the point of view of animals.
Speaking to The Goan, Dr Johnsingh said that very often while reporting about animals crossing paths with the human species, phrases like “marauding elephants” or “the tiger massacred the boy” or “the tiger ravaged the village” were used to describe these incidents. Dr Johnsingh insists that conservation starts with changing mindsets, which will change the way we talk about animals.
A wildlife biologist and conservationist himself, Dr Johnsingh explained that there were a lot of things that even those not trained in conservation could do to help in saving wildlife. “When we talk about wildlife, we think of big animals. These are often reported about. But if we start taking the loss of a big tree as seriously as we take the loss of an animal from an endangered species, this would make a huge difference,” he said.
Dr Johnsingh also said that it was impossible to know the exact number of species that were becoming and had become extinct due to the lack of data on species from the days before data started being recorded. “We don’t have the capability to monitor the extent of our loss, because data wasn’t recorded for thousands of years,” said the conservationist. But that didn’t mean that we couldn’t help in the conservation process right now, he added, stressing on the need to protect even small green patches.
When asked about the growing trend in Indian cities where couples were deciding not to have children in light of the increasing stress it was putting on the Earth, Dr Johnsingh felt that this was not the answer to the environmental problems. “No doubt, this would help a little, but there is just a small fraction of people who are choosing not to have kids. The trick is to balance it out, and to maybe limit the number of kids that people can have to two,” he said. “But this needs to be implemented for everyone,” he said.
Dr Johnsingh’s book “On Jim Corbett’s Trail and Other Tales from the Jungle” was launched in Goa at the Goa Science Centre on Tuesday.
