Current mood:

accomplished

Calendar profits for Conservation
So far, part of the money that was raised by the calendars has gone for the following causes.

The Soligas call the Black eagle 'The darkness of the Shola"

Black eagle study - The black eagle is a very rare, less studied bird of prey. In BR hills, we found a pair nesting very close to human settlement. The nest was getting disturbed regularly and this was also an amazing opportunity to study the nesting cycle of this amazing bird of prey. So with the money pool, I was able to hire two young naturalists from the Soliga tribe to monitor the black eagle. They were very interested in wildlife and someday wanted to work as naturalists. I was able to give them binocs and bird books too. They were keeping people away from the nest and also over the last 2 months have been keeping very detailed records of eagles nesting/feeding/cleaning activities including its prey varieties, courtship displays etc. This is one of the first times, we have such detailed information about the black eagle nesting behavior. They have already finished 5 books writing down field notes and are still at it.

This information will be really useful for the scientific and birdwatcher community. We will be translating all their notes from kannada to english and we are planning to publish it as a scientific publication with international journals. Ofcourse the authors will be the Soligas and probably for the first time, the tribals will have a scientific paper to their credit.

Saving Kranthi - About a month ago, the camp elephant Kranthi at BR hills got attacked badly by a wild male tusker. The tusker pierced kranthi's stomach, ears and back with its tusks. Some of the wounds were more than an feet deep into its skin and in both it's ears, the bones are exposes because of the wounds. (pic)

Kranthi is also pregnant with 18 month old baby in its stomach. After the attack, Kranthi stopped eating and was physically in a very bad shape. Thanks to all the work put in by the mahout and all the help extended by the forest department, the elephant is looking in much better shape now. We still don't know if she will make it all the way through, but for now things are looking OK. If she manages to live on for 3 -4 months, we will see a new elephant baby at BR hills. Getting the elephant back in shape was not easy. The mahout did not sleep for a week and he then just collapsed. Even with all the help that the forest department extended, the money was just not enough to take care of all the injections that the elephant needs even today.

Thanks to the calendars money, we were able to fund that extra bit of money that was needed to treat the elephant. We also helped the mahout financially as he was the most effected in the whole incident and he needed all the financial help he could get at his moment.