I have always felt a pull towards the dry deciduous and the scrub forests, the heat, the stunted trees, the amount of thorns, the looks of a bad bad west!, the surprise of life scurrying away at every corner. Thally forests fall into this category of scrub forests, it was love at first sight alright!
I got selected to the Javalagiri range as range coordinator from KANS during the Mammal Survey conducted by the Tamilnadu forest department at Hosur Forest Division during a hot weekend of March. I walked the South Thally beat with the most honest forest guard I have ever had the privilege to meet, Sivasubramaniam who had won the best guard award by the department. We spoke in a broken English and exchanged a lot of news.
The forests of Thally like elsewhere in the Melagiris are reeling under the tell-tale signs of encroachment, extensive cattle grazing, firewood collection, undergrowth clearance by fire. Surprisingly, these fires which I could observe at many places were controlled fire, meant to encourage growth of grass for cattle and also sometimes to snare the hare when they come to nibble on the fresh new grass. It was indeed depressing to witness the degeneration of these beautiful forests. I came across cattle grazers with goat inter-spread with sheep (Grazing goat in the reserves is illegal since they eat away the tender new shoots and stop regeneration),Illegal sand mining, Illegal fire wood collectors with scythes, Mr Sivasubramaniam promptly caught hold of them and seized the scythes. (we had to release it to them anyway, they unrelentingly followed us and our survey was under the danger of their disturbance.
On a positive note despite all the disturbances a few ungulates have managed to survive escaping the poachers, we noted a few hoof marks of the guar, pug marks that stood told us a healthy pack of wild dogs busy hunting a while ago, jungle fowl, elephants. Sadly the last of leopards have left these forest.
The direst evidence survey yielded nothing in my charts. Even the most exciting, water hole count on a pond on the foothills of Devarabetta failed to mark a positive presence. However on the final day of doing a dung count via line transect we walked way up that gave a wonderful view of the entire Thally valley and left our finishing lines under the shades of most sweet smelling flowers I have ever known. The Jalri trees (
Styrax species, also called Sambrani in Kannada) flower only once a year. Shivaratri coincides its flowering and the hills are ablaze with its sweet smell lingering profusely.
I left the Thally forests with a heavy heart and wondering if the measures by the FD to build a solid Elephant proof trench and Solar fencing might bring some relief after all.
photo credits: Shilpa Narayanan
