the goan I network
PANAJI
From looking at trees in her hometown Panaji to the forests of the North-East, Nandini Dias Velho, a Panaji-based wildlife biologist has captured the history of Eaglenest forest of Arunachal Pradesh.
Aided by a team which included Chorao-based talented illustrator Anjora Noronha, Velho has penned a book, released a couple of days ago in those forests itself, which records the history of the Eaglenest forest said to be one of the most bio-diverse in the world and second only to the Andes.
Tribals and people living around and on the periphery of the forest shared with Velho photos from their old albums. Others have her information of the past electoral rolls when a place within Eaglenest had one of the most remote polling stations.
Also, several others came trekking with the researcher through their past migratory routes there. Velho has presented all of the information in a WWF-sponsored ‘Eaglenest Memory Project’.
In a brief e-mail interview from these very forests in Arunachal Pradesh, Velho told The Goan that the work is as much as of the residents as it is her’s and her collaborators.
“As a wildlife researcher, Eaglenest in Arunachal Pradesh is special. It has biodiversity richness that is only second to the Andes,” Velho said insisting that the main inspiration for the work was the people who reside in the periphery and inside the forest.
In India, you can’t look at forests as inert places. They are associated with love, longing, loss and often-forgotten sacrifice these residents living around these areas make for the rest of us,” Velho said.
“This is true not only of Eaglenest but Mhadei, Cotigao, Bhagwan Mahavir and almost all protected areas,” Velho said.
She said though it is hard to pick as a wildlife biologist, it was most exciting to walk through the same forests and see it with different eyes.
“For instance almost every year I would go and see a hornbill love story in action. Across the canopy, I would watch a hornbill male feeding fruits to his partner holed up in a sealed nest cavity. The effort would go on for months till the young one was ready to come out of this cavity,” Velho said when asked to describe the most exciting moment of the entire project.
While doing fieldwork on the project, a Shertukpen elder also showed her the stone-of-love (khampo gellong), a few metres away from the hornbill viewpoint, where wildflowers are offered and stacked by people who seek love in different ways.
Not one to rest on her laurels, Velho is excited about exploring new ways of science communication and mediums of research. She’s now working with a team of filmmakers to use virtual reality (VR) for conservation education.
Another project she is working on involves a multi-disciplinary team of doctors and public health practitioners exploring human-health outcomes around protected forest areas. She also has a Goa-based project looking at trees in her hometown of Panaji.
Immediately, however, she is looking forward to an expedition on the Indo-China border in Dibang valley to learn about how the tribes there protect
snow tigers.
