Sanctuary | People
COURTESY: KISHOR RITHE
“P. M. Lad is no more.” The message
was so stark, so diffi cult to digest that
I actually contemplated dialling his cell
number to confi rm the news! He was not
just close to my heart, but was a man
I admired. He taught me much about
life and the wildernesses I am sworn
to defend. I spoke to him at least once
a week, sometimes more often, our
conversations ranging from his latest
birding trip to conservation issues of
national importance. Now he is gone... and I
carry both the joy and the burden of being
the sole benefi ciary of some of the vast
fi eld experiences he shared with me. When
he went, a vital and very unique repository
of knowledge built over years of detailed
observations in the fi eld went with him.PARASHURAM MAHADEV LAD
After a lifetime of work, I was sad to
see how unhappy he was about the state
of wildlife conservation in India. In 2017, I
found myself at a loss for words when he
asked me hard questions about how the
Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh could
endanger Lesser Floricans by imposing
a ban of sale of private agricultural
lands inside the boundary of the Sailana
Sanctuary. This, he knew, would anger the
farmers, who owned the land (few use to
cultivate, mostly kept untilled). I shared
his pain, but hated the fact that he had
to confront the unthinkable... that wildlife
conservation was fl oundering in India.
I did what I could, for I too wanted to
protect this elusive bird species. I wanted
to give him the comfort of knowingthat the eff ort to protect what was
precious to him would not be abandoned.
I introduced him to legal experts and to
my close friend Praveen Singh Pardeshi,
Additional Chief Secretary, in the Offi ce
of the Chief Minister of Maharashtra. But
his anger and disappointment with the
slide in wildlife governance could not be
assuaged because the truth is there was
no concrete outcome that he, or I for that
matter, could see.
Born in Khedi Sawaligadh, a small
village in the Betul district of Madhya
Pradesh, Lad saab completed his
Bachelors in Mathematics from Nagpur,
and was among the fi rst batch of IFS
trainees to complete a forestry course
at the Indira Gandhi National Forest(December 29, 1934 – January 17, 2018)
P. M. Lad was a legend in his lifetime. A member of the Indian Forest Service, he spent a lifetime
defending wildlife and the forests he loved. Kishor Rithe writes about this passionate birder, who
visited every Indian state, save for Tripura, to study and enjoy the avians of the Indian subcontinent.