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on the same shoe-string budget as my
early days. The experience was invaluable.
It gave me a snapshot idea of birding and
conservation issues at a national level
that no amount of reading could. That
year I travelled across 20 Indian states
and Union Territories, some 80,000 odd
kilometres, reconnected with old friends
and made new ones. Complete strangers
off ered to house me, drive me around
and help me get to my target birds. They
were an intrinsic part of my big year and
many will, I know, remain life-long friends
and birding partners.Doyang, Nagaland and the
Amur Falcon... how did this
initiative play out?
We had heard rumors of large-scale bird
hunting around the Doyang Reservoir in
Nagaland some time ago. In September
2012, Bano Haralu, Ramki Sreenivasan,
Rokohebi Kuotsu and I (see Sanctuary
Asia, Vol. XXXIV No. 1, February 2014)decided to investigate. What we saw
shocked us - a massacre of thousands
of Amur Falcons. Roko and I spent
the next couple of days fi lming the
slaughter and interacting with the
hunters to understand the extent and
nature of the hunt. It remains the most
diffi cult and emotionally harrowing
experience of my career.
The resultant fi lm helped launch
an online campaign, which went viral
and garnered support from across the
globe. More importantly, it helped us to
interact and collaborate with the state
government and the local communities
to come up with solutions. The eff ort
was spear-headed by Bano, without
whose understanding of the area and
its people we might not have been able
to achieve any success. To our delight,
from the very next migratory season
in 2013, Doyang experienced no Amur
Falcon hunting. By any measure this was
a dramatic conservation success story!Low elevation species are adapting to elevated temperatures by expanding their ranges to higher elevations. Similar
range shifts are taking place away from the equator towards the poles.ABOVE Shashank captured in his true element while on a biodiversity survey in the Western Ghats
in July 2014.
FACING PAGE All ‘geared’ up with the quintessential birders’ equipment of binoculars and bird call
recording device, Shashank Dalvi roams the forests of the Valley School, Bengaluru..project. This was a collaborative large-
scale eff ort to study patterns of
biodiversity across coff ee, rubber and
arecanut agroforests across 30,000 sq.
km. of Karnataka’s Western Ghats. During
my stint there, I was supported by many
individuals, particularly Dr. Krithi Karanth
and Dr. Ullas Karanth.
A Mumbai boy, what is it about
the Northeast that has you in
its grip?
Northeast India was my dream
destination since childhood. When I
was given the opportunity to work
on a biodiversity project at the
Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary, I jumped
at the chance. I said yes to Dr. Ramana
Athreya without even speaking to
family or anyone at my college (I was
then an undergrad). That trip was
the start of my love aff air with the
Northeast, one of the world’s most
incredible biodiversity hotspots. When
bird activity was low, all I had to do was
turn to amphibians, reptiles, butterfl ies
or mammals. It was an incredible period
in my life when I worked with diff erent
organisations and scientists in the
remotest parts of Arunachal Pradesh,
Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya and
Assam. The sheer diversity continues to
amaze me and keeps me wanting to go
back for more.
What triggered ‘The Big Year’
for you?
In my early birding days, I came across
Kingbird Highway by Ken Kauff man. It
was a story of his big year across the
U.S. I knew that I would one day do a
‘big year’ in India too. What struck me
most about the book was the similarities
between Kuff man’s experiences and my
own. I too had spent my teenage years
hitch-hiking with Rohit Naniwadekar
across India’s Protected Areas, with
barely any money in my pocket. We
would stand at the entrance gate of
parks and approach tourists to take us
in their cars in return for showing them
animals and birds (In the 1990s and early
2000s this was still possible!). By 2015,
I felt burned out, thanks to fi ve years
of intense research work, and that was
when I decided to undertake my ‘big year’
DHRITIMAN MUKHERJEE