Sanctuary Asia – July 2019

Billy Arjan Singh would turn in his grave on seeing this

image. He spent his entire life trying to protect Dudhwa and

its environs. The tiger was always central to his purpose,

but when anyone spoke of Dudhwa’s grasslands and its

barasingha deer, his heart and eyes would light up.

He was an old-fashioned, habitat-integrity-wildlife-

protection man, whose infectious love for nature was

outweighed by a burning desire to protect nature from “...

fools who know how to count money, but not blessings.”

Across India, the powerful people in whose charge we

have left the critical business of infrastructure development,

seem unable to comprehend what 12-year-olds now easily

grasp... that forests ARE infrastructures. Destroying such

perfectly functional, critical infrastructures, to build less

critical infrastructures, at humongous fi nancial risk and cost,

makes poor economic sense.

OFF TRACK

Sanctuary|The Last Word

Don’t get angry... get involved. Follow us on http://www.sanctuaryasia.com I Facebook I Twitter I Instagram I YouTube

As for the tiger, it is at the absolute apex of its

evolution. Just by breathing and hunting and sleeping, it

bumps up India’s GDP when hordes come from far and

near to gaze at it. That’s not all. Its forests feed 600 rivers

with the purest, sweetest water. Its green gables sequester

carbon, which its soils store more eff ectively than any tax-

money-sucking-invention that human skullduggery might

dream up.

It’s time the Indian Railways put its development agenda

on track, and got the tiger off its (lethal) tracks. t

Photographer: Ankit Kashyap

Location: Dudhwa National Park, Uttar Pradesh

Details: Camera: Canon 5D Mark IV, Lens: Canon EF 70-200 F/2.8 IS 2

Shutter speed: 1/4000 sec., Aperture: F/2.8, ISO: 800, Focal length: 200 mm.

Image taken: May 22, 2018; Time: 08:09 a.m.

ANKIT KASHYAP