By Mayuri Phadnis, Pune Mirror
In a first, the department has partnered with ‘Wolfgang’ for a year-long study project. This is to save the animals from going the GIB way.
Aserious body of research work on wolves, put together by four young wildlife enthusiasts has inspired the State Forest department, for the first time, to adopt a citizens’ initiative and extend it into a formal bigger format study involving several eminent experts in the field, while also keeping the exercise participatory, allowing other enthusiasts to join in. The project — “Ovitla Landga” (Wolf from the poem) — is all set to be launched on August 1.
Flagged off by the Pune division of the Forest department, the enterprise will roll out into a year-long study of the habitat, survival issues and other aspects of wolves in the state. “The project will encompass several small studies done by different groups. It will map the distribution of wolves in the State, including issues pertaining to their co-habiting the landscape with humans — particularly the ‘Dhangar’ community of shepherds. It will assess the potential for restoring grasslands in Supe, which were converted into plantations for exotic species of crop, earlier,” informed Sunil Limaye, the Chief Conservator of Forests (CCF), Pune division. He welcomed people with resources, interest and time to participate in the project.
The four, who put together the impressive work, that triggered the project, come from very different walks of life but found their calling in trailing the wolves of the region after they participated in the census done of the Great Indian Bustard (GIB) back in 2006-07. Mihir Godbole, a jeweller dabbling in diamonds, Milind Raut, an engineer by qualification turned marketing professional, Viraaj Apte, a software tester with a software product developing company and Siddhesh Bramabankar, a software engineer and also a passionate ornithologist, during their visit to Nanaj for the census, were deeply influenced by Bilal Habib, who working on his PhD, took it upon himself to sensitise villagers, particularly the Dhangar community, to wolves, trying to persuade the shepherds from poisoning the wolves to save their flocks.
Habib is a scientist at Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India.
“We started helping him in his task in our free time. When we returned to Pune, we became aware of the wolves in the fringes, particularly in places like Saswad. We started tracking them and got completely hooked, deepening our study over the past seven years,” narrated Mihir Godbole. The group subsequently christened themselves ‘Wolfgang’.
The disappearing grasslands had drawn attention to the survival issues of the animals and birds that inhabited them. “But the focus was on the tiger, Shekru — the giant squirrel and birds such as GIB, with no work done on the wolves. Now after seven years in the grasslands we have identified five packs of wolves around Pune, Satara, Phaltan, Nagar and Solapur. We are now trying to track the dens of these secretive animals,” Godbole said. “Our concern is that these wolves should not be lost like GIB, so we wanted to get our act together before it is too late,”
he added.
Once the group had some concrete data in place, they approached Jeev Singh, who was the Chief Conservator of Forests, and then made a pitch for the conservation of wolves. However, it was Singh’s successor Sunil Limaye who made a grab for the project. Now the State-sponsored project will be co-ordinated by Anuj Khare, the honorary wildlife warden and member of the State Wildlife Board. “There is State plan for conservation around Pune and Nagpur. Wolves are one of the prime predators but there is not much information available on them. Wolfgang’s work is a driving force for this project, which will become the basis for the conservation plan,” Khare told Mirror.
Besides Khare, Sonali Phadke, an engineer who has been working with an ecological consultancy firm, will help in the co-ordination of the programme. Also on board is Aparna Watve, a plant ecologist with special interest in rocky habitats and assistant professor at Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS), Tuljapur. Her contribution will be the study of the social aspects of the Dhangars. Dr Pramod Patil, a medical practitioner, who works in advocacy on the conservation of GIB, will look at the avian fauna in the grasslands. Trishant Simlai, an international ecologist who works on freshwater bio-diversity will study the political ecology of conflicts. Girish Punjabi will construct the citizen science project web-page, which will solicit citizen participation in posting pictures and mapping the grasslands. Tracking of large carnivores in human habitat will be done by Vidya Athreya, the carnivore biologist, best known for collaring and GPS tracking of a leopard. “This is all part of our culture and heritage and few of us have already started working on our projects though the official launch is yet to happen,” Athreya told Mirror.