Someone Should Explain What’s Ailing Wildlife

editorial:

A monkey is making friends with humans in Singtam, even scurrying forward to groom them as only monkeys can. Pigeons are dying again, dropping off perches, unable to fly, and soon not even finding the strength to keep their heads up and then dying slow deaths. Within the circle of friends in the office, there have been two owlet rescues in the past week. A year back, bears were foraging into habitations in search of food; and less than a year ago, Clouded Leopards were hunting in villages, one even landing itself inside an animal enclosure at the Himalayan Zoological Park drawn by the scent of meals kept out for animals there. These are all different species, victims of different situations, but a common thread running through all of them is that these are aberrations, almost every incident triggered by some insensitivity on part in how we mess up life for the fauna here.
The Singtam ‘bandar’ is obviously a deposed troop leader, defeated by age and a younger challenger to abandon his group and live out its remaining days as an outcast. With a troop no longer at hand to mingle with, it finds friendship with its evolutionary cousin in humans. About a decade back, a Langoor had arrived in Gangtok in a similar condition, riding down on jeep bonnets from Tsomgo and had made a home in the capital where it eventually died. At around the same time, a Takin had blundered into the Rhenock area, a suspected outcast from its tribe in Bhutan. That was a crazy year because a bison was also sighted in the Pakyong forests. The edging out of older leaders is a natural phenomenon, but what is not natural is how these animals behaved in exile. After all, one does not see overthrown bosses of animal groups move into human settlements. The pigeons suffer a much different fate.
They are obviously not suffering from bird flu, and when they died in much larger numbers, their unhygienic roosts in Singtam were blamed. But they are now dying in Gangtok as well. The casualties might just be nature’s way of balancing things, but as one researcher points out, they could dying from pesticide poisoning passed on to them by well-meaning bird lovers who feed them grains not realising that these could be laced with pesticides. The Clouded Leopard and bear episodes obviously stem from lack of feed in the deeper forests or increased encroachment of their spaces. Owls, like most birds, do not abandon their young, and yet, inside a week, this office made two owlet rescues. The mother is obviously dead, either to disease or from human hands, or the fledglings dislodged from their nests by human interference.
Everything shared above by way of explaining what might have happened are speculations of an untrained mind. And this is worrying because before an untrained mind applied itself to these developments, the subject experts should have already studied the patterns and offered some explanations. To cite the example of pigeon deaths, when officials at the animal husbandry department were contacted, they shied away on the grounds that no complaints had reached them about pigeon deaths. No one reports pigeon deaths, in fact, very few will even know whom to inform about such incidents. It is the responsibility of experts at the Forest and Animal Husbandry departments to follow up when such information reaches them. If such incidents are going to increase, people should know how to respond, both for their own safety as well as for the health of the animals and birds. For example, as people grow fond of the Singtam Monkey even kids will start playing with it. Shouldn’t it then be checked by veterinarians and inoculated [if such an option is possible for monkeys]? On similar vein, people should be told on what to do when a pigeon dies in their locality, or how to ensure effective rescues for such animals. It cannot be advisable to make all of them pets or deposit them into cages, however big the enclosures might be, at Bulbuley....