In the second of this three-part series, Romulus Whitaker speaks on the Guindy Snake Park, the Irula Co-operative Society, Crocodile bank and Wildlife conservation in Chennai.

In those days what it took was weeks and weeks of endless dialogue with bureaucrats. In projects like these, all it takes is to get one individual to get interested and it will get the whole project going. In this case it happened because of one individual Boja Shetty. He was the key person who was instrumental in getting the Guindy Deer Park land, that small one-acre land that had to be allocated to the Snake Park scheme, an NGO scheme.

We were a small trust you know, and to get land from the forest department, is like squeezing blood out of rock Because it is so difficult and they shouldn't be giving away land to all and sundry. I mean it is phenomenal that it actually happened in the case of a real honest project which would benefit wildlife and educate children. Thanks largely to this person.

I had come back from the United States, after college in the late 60's and I read about the Irulas and the I realized that these guys were primarily the best snake catchers in the country. I read about them from a few articles written by Harry Miller who worked in the Indian Express at that time. These guys are the most professional snake catchers. Although then, their primary reason for catching snakes was for the skins, which I obviously did not like. This was use of a wildlife resource, but it wasn't sustainable and nobody was studying it and nobody knew how many thousands of snakes were being killed in excess. They just killed as many as they could.

There was a huge leather industry flourishing on this snakeskin trade at that time. I had to actually campaign against snakeskin export and stop the skin trade. But then I saw these expert snake catchers have their livelihood ruined. I already knew a lot of them by then and many of them were my friends, because I was helping them to market snakes alive to the Hatkins Institute in Mumbai. But what I saw in other snake venom extraction centers was that when they get the snakes, they keep milking the snake of its venom, once a week, until it dies, which is not very long, as in three to four months all the snakes are dead. I felt that was a huge waste of wildlife resource.

I mean what is the point, because though it is use of a wildlife resource, it is not sustainable. That was my reason for helping the Irulas start their own co-operative society in which the snakes after being caught, will be kept only for a few weeks. The Irulas get money both for capturing the snake and a bonus for the amount of venom extracted. The Irulas make a good living and life saving anti-venom is also made. And at the end of it all, the Irulas are all reasonably well off and the snakes are released back into the wild. Now, that is one example of sustainable wildlife resource.

The Crocodile Bank was originally conceived in the early 70's because the crocodile was facing extinction in the country at that time and this was the original basis for starting what we call the 'gene bank' for crocodiles and thus named Crocodile Bank and not a Crocodile Farm. The idea of a farm somehow seems to give the idea that it is a place where the crocodiles would be killed or skinned or whatever. So we had to call it something very different because it was purely to conserve crocodiles first in captivity and subsequently in the wild. It served a very vital purpose of supplying breeding populace for restarting in Tamil Nadu as well as in the other parts of the country. That was the first phase and then it moved into Phase two and then it became an international Crocodile Bank. So now we started gathering species, which were endangered in other countries as well, like Siamese crocodiles from Thailand and crocodiles from Mexico.

So we had more or less crocodiles from all over the world and the Crocodile Bank became a gene pool for all species. At the same time it becomes a vibrant educational institution, because over 5 lakh visitors come here every year and it is the first time they encounter crocodiles as a non-menacing, interesting and potentially viable animal, in terms of their ecological diversity. So it is a multipurpose place. In addition to this, it becomes a base for other field activities like a research station in 'Veerappan' country, where research is being done on both crocodiles and other reptiles over there. And then, we have a permanent research station in the Andamans, which was started more than 10 years ago. It has a few boats, an educational centre for children and scientists working in different disciplines, not just crocodiles, but also in botany and other disciplines. We do rapid assessment surveys for the Forest Department. The Crocodile Bank is naturally the base for all these activities. We have a lot of research activity going on.

Conservation…Oh my! That is the kind of answer I really wouldn't want to give…I would say that the custodians of wildlife and forests are not the forest department and they are not us or anybody in Delhi or Chennai or Mumbai or Bangalore. It is the people who live there. You like it or not. They'll ruin it or make it okay, depending on how well we interact with them. If we act as policemen and keep telling them they are doing a hell of a job and ruining the countryside, nothing is going to happen basically. Just giving you an example, I mean they will keep destroying the trees to make money out of it. Give them a proper framework with a plan that is sustainable and make it profitable for them.

At Crocodile Bank we still have research going on and we will never stop research. We want to concentrate and focus on the development of the Crocodile Bank as a centre for education about wildlife, crocodiles and reptiles. Crocodiles need much more space and freedom. We are very interested in cutting down on the number we have. Over 3,000 crocodiles and also make it easy for people to observe crocodiles. So we have recently opened an underwater observatory. We have a lot of ideas from abroad and our own ideas. We just need to source more funds.

…mmm… I suppose all of them are my favourites. But I like the Ghariyal, the strangest looking of all crocs. You get attached to them over the years. You get to know them, seeing the intimate behaviour of the crocodiles with their babies and stuff like that, is an experience which draws you to them. It is hard to love the crocodile. It is not something that you would like to have like a stuffed teddy bear, next to your pillow, but it is a different kind of respect that you have for them.

There is not really much you can dig on wildlife around Chennai, except try to get people not to kill snakes, which I think started very early on. The Snake Park started this trend at the very beginning itself - the trend of people calling us instead of killing the snake. Even today when I am not associated with the Snake Park in an official sense, I do know that they are doing the same good work by answering calls and catching snakes that are reported by the public.

Interest is there, but very little involvement. I mean involvement in the activist sense. Nobody comes out of the various NGO's and societies that are associated with wildlife in this region. I don't want to mention anything, but most of them are unwilling to do anything in the controversial sense. They are very conservative. That is one criticism. Yes, the people here are very nice, but they are also much more conservative and most unlikely to stick their necks out. They want to stay away from anything controversial and that is one major reason why nothing much gets done here, in terms of wildlife conservation.

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