What really do we mean by conservation? Personally speaking………

It is said that one can live the lives of thousand men by reading books. But, how many of us can live the lives of thousand animals, ten thousand plants and a hundred thousand other living beings? I did. It happened througha relationship between few drops of water and the tip of a tongue. Thirst is the crudest expression of life and a belief that there is water nearby keeps us alive. A similar thirst made me take my first steps towards wilderness conservation. I hope that this essay is as vibrant as the Vardah cyclone and as empty as its aftermath. This dawn is marked by birds collecting sticks from thousands of fallen trees all over Chennai city to build new nests. So, a dawn is not just another dawn. This essay is what‘not just’ all is about.

It was not the usual dawn! It was made specialby a beautiful little bird, not resting in a nest, but wrapped carefully inside a cardboard box! I’m a city dweller, studying a subject between science and engineering. And I’m a nature lover, withnothing to dream about other than an internship in a forest. That’s how I ended up in Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural history (SACON), after fighting the massive Chennai flood. Somebody who knew SACON’s work with birds brought the little bird which was found injured below a tree. It was the first time I touched a live bird and this sums me up!

It was a baby cuckoo that had been rejected by the nest’s owner,which it believed to be its mother. The baby’s skull had been peckedby its surrogate mother. The outcome of Nature’s selectionprocess that was evident along with the diverse forms of behavior in the beak sized hole on the baby’s head. But it was alive, perhaps just to convey the pain of evolutionary success to me. The little one could not eat on its own and, as it was an insectivore, I spent hours catching insects for it. It was a drastic failure. I tried giving it some water. The smell of water in a syringe provoked it to open its mouth, showing its thirsty tongue. Who was I to it?

For over a century we have been conscious about two very important words: racism and sexism. We have questioned the customof considering the behavior these words signifyas the rights of certain communities and agreed that every human being is equal. In fact, most of us tell our children this.We grow upaccepting this idea about equality, though not in all real life scenarios. However, we agree to be ignorant of another kind of equality. This pertains to “speciesism”, a belief as old as the first human civilization.We comfort ourselves in valuing and discriminating between species. What is the hierarchy we imposeon different species? How is a teak tree superior (or not) to a banana tree? What makes a German Sheppardbetterthanother dogson the streets?

Why do we want to stop global warming, to control climate change, to save our green cover, etc.? Why do we advise the world to use renewable energy,to grow forests, to improveour food security?For whom do we do this? For us? For our children? Our grandchildren? Our great grandchildren?If so, it’s curious as we felled our forests, warmed our globe, and depletedour resources also for our children, our grandchildren, our great grandchildren, fora single species called ‘Homo sapiens’.

We allowed ourselves theexploitation of the earthfor our comfort, and as we fear the loss of these resources we want to conserve them, again for our comfort. Buthow do we account for the loss of thousands of species that perished for our comfort? Life, food, home, family, sorrow, pain…are these words only to be used while describing the human condition? Have we got a patent over Life? Is anthropocentrism an ailment afflicting the human race?

What could have led to the need for conservation? Plainly put it is perhaps‘death’or eventual lossand depletion of a kind. Death disturbs us and we fear it. But not all deaths are the same. Some deaths are actually killings.Recently, in Nigeria, a snake was killed as it was suspected of having eaten a goat. But when they cut it open they found only eggs which had made the snake look bulkier. This was an instance of two deaths: a snake eating a goat and men killing a snake. Are both deaths of a similar “scale”? In another incident, afemale Bengal tiger was killed by more than a thousand people in a village near Jorhat. The tiger had strayed in search of food and was beaten to death. What would have been the last thoughts of the hungry animal? Isn’t it free to roam the world? What made the villagers to kill the tiger on sight?

Somewhere around 8000 BC farming emerged and its expansion led to the gap between human and non-human use of the earth’s resources. As farming increased and human beings spread across the land, they displaced all other beings. This “initial cause” has led to complex relations within human society which include ideas and attitudes to conservation as well as social justice.

Why should we conserve all species?Harris. F. Lewis, in his essay ‘The philosophy of wildlife conservation’ suggests that though the term ‘conservation’ may seem pure we should not forget that it was initiated by hunters to shootanimals periodically as a sport. It implies that the reason we conserve various species and the environment may mean more than the worditself. In the preface of prominent books on wildlife the benefits and uses of conservation are listed as a justification. Is that an answer to this question? If conservationis only to preserve natural resources for the future it is no different from the hunters’ logic of conserving animals.

All living beings have a right to life. We belong to nature and we are in no way superior to other living beings. Thisis the foundation toreal conservation, while the kinds of “conservation” driven by anthropocentric benefits have another name:business.

The baby cuckoo was not alive the next morning. It was not killed in a factory farm, or due to a kite festival, or by fire crackers. It was just pecked by its surrogate mother.It defined for me the fine line between death and killing. Deep ecology erased any hatred I may have had towards the surrogate mother completely from my mind.

I remember a quote by John Seed.”I am protecting the rainforest” became “I am part of the rain-forest protecting myself” to“I am that part of the rainforest recently emerged into thinking.”

Was this little piece about a baby cuckoo? Yes and no. Itssenses were aroused to the smell of the water I held in my hand. And now I feel its thirst. Who was I to it?