Dr Manoj Sumati R. Borkar
It was a quarter of a century ago that I submitted the first ever technical report on ‘Conservation status of Mugger Crocodiles in the Cumbarjua canal of Goa’ to the Goa State Forest department. I was leading this investigations over a period of 2 years between 1991 and 1993 ably assisted by a couple of my colleagues from Carmel College for Women , and generously complemented by the then forest brigade under Deputy Conservator Rohidas Naik IFS, and young officers like Francisco Araujo and Subhash Henriques. In that span of 2 years, I spent most of my Sundays scouting for crocs along the silt laden banks of the canal and cruising the narrow creeks fringed by dense mangroves, in a small country-canoe of a native fisherman named Thanu Bhomkar.
Until then only locals would see the reptile and little information was in public domain. With no previous records available for perusal, every observation was new as well as important. Of course, renowned Indian Mangrove Scientist Arvind Untawale’s animated narrative on his sightings of the crocodile here during his surveys were enough to fuel our enthusiasm. On completion of the report, we got much deserved attention from various quarters and continued basking in our hard earned limelight for a long time to come. That was long ago, and in subsequent years my research interests meandered from fishes, bats, birds, butterflies, etc to larger flagship species across the country such as the Gangetic River Dolphin in Assam to the Asiatic Lion in Gujarat. But curiously people at large remember me for my work with the Crocodiles of Cumbarjua.
The modest funding for this field study on Goa’s crocodiles had come from the WWF for Nature India, but the findings of this pioneering study were far from ordinary. Apart from establishing the species here as that of the fresh water crocodile, Crocodylus palustris, my team attempted enumerating the population of crocodiles in the canal, charting its habitat in all its entirety as also inventorying the various other reptiles, birds, mammals and butterflies that share the space, and understanding the impacts on the mugger and its habitat. Interestingly the team also paid attention to the captive crocodile population held in the Bondla Zoo and conducted a rapid assessment of their health and suggested measures for enclosure enrichment.
However, the high point of this study and what was to subsequently grab a lot of national and international attention had its genesis in what my father shared with me during the tenure of this research. He recalled and vividly narrated a folk ritual called Mannge Thapnee that he had witnessed during his childhood being performed by the resident agrarian Hindu Gawdas from Durbhat Wadi in Ponda. The ceremony has been taking place with unshakable devotion and regularity even in present times. On the new moon night of Paush, the men-folk gather in their paddy fields and craft a croc-dummy from silt and make offerings of puffed rice, jaggery and even a live chick. In this seemingly pagan folk-religious response we deciphered a scientific perspective, a time tested wisdom of our ethnic tribe, replete with conservation ethos. Simply put, we conciliate with what is sacred and that translates into protection. I brought on scientific record this curious practice through my research paper in December 1992. 23 years later in 2015 I was invited to speak at the European Congress of Conservation Biology where I highlighted the conservation contexts of this unique practice to the amazement of the global conservation lobby!
Another fascinating dimension we discovered was that crocodiles were brought in by Adilshah much before the Portuguese conquest, with intent of deterrence against any likely invasion from the sea. That could well be the first ever example of ‘biological warfare’ during the pre-Portuguese era in Goa!
Somewhere after submission of our status report, the crocodile came into public gaze and attention. Thanu Bhomkar the sexagenarian ‘bare feet expert’ on crocodiles from Banastarim, who mentored and accompanied me on all my Croc-voyages for 2 years, received expression of interest from a star hospitality establishment to undertake regular crocodile sighting trips in the hitherto unexplored creeks of the canal.
Today the Cumbarjua canal has its identity linked with the crocodilian habitat comprising of the luxuriant mangrove fringes here. This stretch of the canal is navigable and at least until the mining ban came into force, the barge traffic here was significant posing realistic decimation threat to this Schedule I species protected under the Indian Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. It also figures in the IUCN Red list of Threatened Species and is categorized as Vulnerable! Sand mining, ship building, fishing and unregulated tourism add to the pressures on the habitat.
In Goa, an interesting scenario has emerged since our study dating back to the 90s and once again this amphibious reptile is garnering attention from the stakeholders in the state, albeit for different reasons now. Today the crocodile is no longer reclusive and confined to Cumbarjua, in fact it is sighted in unusual places along the coastline like Miramar, Morjim, Benaulim, suggesting that there has been a likely ‘spillover’ from the meta-population habitat in Cumbarjua. Of course not to deny that the species has an exploratory instinct and can travel great distances over land in search of water. Such free excursions beyond the canal will lead to frequent crocodile-human conflict, and the casualty could be either! The State’s apathy towards this flagship species of the canal is unreasonable and annoying. There has been no census carried out to enumerate them in the canal or elsewhere in the state, nor has there been any study on the carrying capacity of their habitat.
Currently several private crocodile dundees operate in Cumbarjua with little controls from the state. I have witnessed boats carrying tourists violating the private space of the reptile and some operators even prodding the basking crocs.
The Goa State Biodiversity Board is active in sensitising stakeholders on Tradable Bioresources and defining Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) mechanisms, besides its core mandate of conserving the state’s biodiversity. Strangely though it has refused to spare even a cursory focus on the crocodiles of Cumbarjua. The Wildlife and Ecotourism wing of the Forest department too is overtly affianced in Dudhsagar tourism, and has ignored the reptile and refused to partner in optimizing its wildlife tourism potential. The current crocodile tour operators need to be imparted with understanding of tenets and principles of ‘nature area tourism’ and cautioned about the ‘law of diminishing returns’. Though it is true that the conservation of this reptile here can be best incentivized through crocodile tourism, if the canal is crowded with cruises, safaris and reckless visitors only seeking comfort and recreation sans experience and education, and importantly if the local community is not guaranteed of assured ‘backflow of profits’ arising from crocodile tourism, the enterprise shall soon be unviable.
