March 2012, on a night alit with the moon and the stars, a remote, barren beach at the sea-mouth of river Rushikulya in Odisha bursts to life. Olive Ridleys — amongst the rarest sea turtles of the world, thousands of them, their bodies glistening in the pale moonlight as they advance on the beach — arrive, sometimes bumping into each other, in their entranced frenzy to find suitable nesting sites. Legend says, and science agrees, that female turtles come back to the natal beach where they were born to create new life.
Using their flippers, they laboriously dig holes to lay eggs. It’s hard work, and ever so often they pause as if for a breather, gather strength, then sigh deeply, and continue their arduous task. Once the funnel — almost as deep as a bathing bucket — is ready, they lay eggs, a perfect ‘O’, like shiny, slippery table tennis balls, then fill the nest with sand, carefully thumping their bodies, rocking from side to side to seal and secure the eggs. With a multitude of turtles employed in the task, the air fills with an earthy drumming sound, in a remarkable ritual as ancient as time. Fittingly, it is referred to as Arribada, Spanish for ‘the arrival’. The mass nesting of Olive Ridleys is considered to be one of the world’s greatest wildlife spectacles, up there with the great wild beast migration in the Serengeti. Odisha — indeed India — is blessed to have among the last nesting grounds of this rare turtle, annually attracting thousands of these creatures to Rushikulya and Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary, an isolated beach on the Bay of Bengal. But we don’t particularly feel blessed; there is little support for the turtle beyond the cosmetic. Legally, Olive Ridleys enjoy maximum protection, but what use is law if it’s not implemented effectively? Thousands of turtles get butchered by mechanised fishing trawlers as they get hopelessly entangled
in gill nets or dragged along by trawl nets, only for the corpses to be tossed back in. Turtles are ‘waste by-products’ of fishing. If the trawlers are a killer, worse still is the issue of development along the coast of Odisha, which is destroying the very nesting sites of the turtles. Over 300 ports are proposed along the coast of India — an average of one every 25km. The impact of ports on marine life is devastating. For the turtles, the assault is manifold. The first blow was the DRDO’s missile test range on Wheeler Island, right beside Gahirmatha, the world’s largest nesting ground for the Olive Ridley. Next came the 2,500 crore project, the Dhamra port — located less than five kilome t re s f rom Bh i t a r k an i k a Wi l d l i f e Sanctuary and less than 15km from Gahirmatha. The construction and dredging work that a project of this scale involves is devastating the coastal ecosystem, particularly the benthic flora and fauna, so crucial to the food web of the turtles. Once operational, shipping traffic, oil spills, chemical leaks, illumination and pollution from townships and other habitation will wreak havoc on the turtles and the marine ecosystem. But laws were bent, rules flouted to make Dhamra happen. The Rushikulya rookery is imperilled too, with a port at Gopalpur-on-sea positioned about 20km south of this nesting beach. Besides the other impacts, the massive dredging will most likely speed up erosion of the nesting beach up the coast, altering the beach irreparably, possibly even making it unusable for the turtles. compounding all this are irrational policies of forest department plantations of Casuarina along nesting beaches, further hastening erosion. Though turtles may seem numerous, the loss of nesting sites spells the end of the arribada, leading the way for extinction of olive-ridleys, who have inhabited this planet for over two million years.Yet, this natural wonder finds little place in our policy and development plans. Yes, India must grow, but must our path to growth be strewn with ecological disasters and graveyards for wildlife? The turtles are just one example of ecological genocide. While our legal and policy framework is sound, it rarely translates into action. Across natural India, disasters are unfolding. A road has been proposed through India’s only nesting ground for Lesser Flamingoes in Kutch. While the reason cited is ‘national security’, it is common knowledge, and reported in the media, that the road is aimed to facilitate tourism, for which Gujarat is on an overdrive. We are in the process of denotifying a huge chunk of the Desert National Park, ‘sanctuary’ to the Great Indian Bustard, one of the rarest birds in the world, with only about 300 remaining in India — for oil interests. In Himachal Pradesh, a proposed dam threatens to drown the core of Majathal Wildlife Sanctuary, habitat of the Cheer Pheasant, protected under law as a Schedule I species — the same as the tiger. Ironically, the tiger, whom we have pledged to save, suffers similar fate. Tiger habitat is just about one per cent of India’s landscape, and even this is not safe. The gravest threat to the tiger today is the pressure to open up forests for coal, thermal power plants, mining , highways in pursuit of a double digit GDP. To give only one example, there are some 40 power and coal projects proposed around Tadoba Tiger Reserve. One final word to drive home the point: The Budget this year gave green concerns a miss, particularly on the wildlife front. Project Tiger (our flagship programme) gets around 170 crore. The Government has prioritised relocation of villages within critical tiger habitats, and earmarked an enhanced package for the same, but this amount will hardly cover basic vitals like protection, habitat and crisis management, leaving little room for relocation.
The cause of wildlife is not an isolated one. It must be a concerted effort by various Ministries spearheaded by the Union Ministry of environment and Forests. Preserving our ecosystem must be a mainstream issue, as much as the preoccupation with fixing the economy. There can be no economic security without ecological security.
