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COURTESY: KISHOR RITHEABOVE Even after a lifetime of working for
India’s wilds, P. M. Lad felt there was a lot
more for him to do.
FACING PAGE Expert and amateur
ornithologists often turned to Lad saab for
guidance owing to his incredible knowledge of
the avian world.Academy, Dehradun, in 1959. He was then
posted at Harda and Rewa in Madhya
Pradesh and over the years served in
Bilaspur, Shahdol, Sidhi, Khargon and
Dewas. He was also appointed as the
Chief Wildlife Warden of Madhya Pradesh,
before today’s Chhattisgarh was carved
out of Madhya Pradesh. When Kanha
was in the grip of Naxalites, he handled
the situation with great strategic skills.
He was universally loved and respected,
by villagers and colleagues alike, as he
was always prompt to help them out. He
often spoke to me about his then boss
J. J. Dutta, Principal Chief Conservator
of Forests, Madhya Pradesh, whom he
held in high regard. On a request from
Mr. Dutta and M. K. Ranjitsinh, he helped
set up the Van Vihar National Park in
Bhopal, which served as a rescue centre
for orphaned wild animals. This was made
possible, especially in a crowded city
like Bhopal, only due to his exceptional
land acquisition skills. Like the late S. R.
Choudhury, Field Director of the Simplipal
Tiger Reserve, Lad saab too reared an
orphaned tiger cub (called Chiku, after
whom a visitor gate has been named)
until it had to be housed in captivity in
Van Vihar.
He was asked to serve as the Director
of Project Tiger, and then later as the fi rst
Director of the Wildlife Institute of India
(WII) in 1985, but he declined both off ers
for personal reasons.
Post his retirement in December
1992, he took to photography, acquiring
a massive 800 mm. telephoto lens as he
went about exploring every important bird
habitat in the country, from the deserts
of Rajasthan to Kanyakumari in the South
and also to the Northeast. When he passed
away, he left behind an invaluable archive
of more than 50,000 images, most shot
before the advent of the digital age.
Inevitably, his passion for avians and
his intimate knowledge of bird habitats
brought him into contact with the late
Dr. Sálim Ali, who would seek Lad saab’s
meticulous help to plan his fi eld trips to
Madhya Pradesh.
Ever willing to pack his bags and
vanish into the wilds without a moment’s
hesitation, he would accompany me (the
other way round really!) when I suggested
we visit Naxal-aff ected Bastar, where he
spent night after night walking with us
across forests and agricultural fi elds in
search of the Jerdon’s Courser. When I
claimed I had seen a bird that I was certain
was the presumed-extinct Forest Owlet
in Melghat in 1998, he was the fi rst to
arrive and assist us in gathering clinching
photographic evidence.
He was a naturalist in the old-
fashioned sense of the word and most
of his knowledge came from personal
observations. Writing in the August 2004
issue of Sanctuary Asia, he opined: “A
tiger’s facial markings are unique and this
enables individual recognition. Markings
are today being used to assist in tiger
estimation, even in places where camera
trapping is being used. (However, with
wild tigers being diffi cult to photograph,
only a few can be counted by this
method. I feel that the old pugmark
technique is more practical.) As someone
who has been used to diff erentiating
tigers on the basis of facial markings
and patterns, I can now easily recognise
individual birds based on their breast
markings, which are prominent in the
Forest Owlet.”
His guidance was also helpful to
ornithologists such as Dr. Asad R.
Rahmani and the late Dr. Ravi Sankaran.
He often invited birders to observe the
Lesser Florican in Sailana, Sardarpur
and Gujarat. He was probably the only
birder, who visited all these three habitats
continuously for past 30 years during the
breeding season. He believed that science
knew little of real behaviour of wild birdsand that for all the expertise on display,
the surface had barely been scratched.
Indignant about the casual attitude
of many experts, he would write terse
mails to the authorities about researchers
using crude methods to capture the
Forest Owlet. He vehemently opposed
the Government of Maharashtra’s plans
to declare the Forest Owlet as its State
Bird in 2011. His strongly held view was
that a state bird should be one that could
be commonly spotted, so that ordinary
people, particularly children, could see
and learn about it. It also worried him
that declaring the Forest Owlet as
the State Bird of Maharashtra would
trigger a virtual stampede of tourists
and birdwatchers which would add to
the disturbance that had already been
caused by researchers, whose actions had
resulted in the bird abandoning its home
in the Nandurbar district.
Though his main focus remained
birds, he was equally knowledgeable
about endangered species such as the
central Indian wild buff alo population in
Bastar, and the hardground barasingha
of Kanha. A life member of the Bombay
Natural History Society (BNHS), he was
awarded the Vasundhara Sanman in 2013
in Amravati for a lifetime devoted to the
service of India’s wilds.
Though a diabetic who was
compelled to take an insulin shot every
day, he never let such matters deter
him from his travels to remote areas,
even as he began to visibly age. As
recently as 2016, he drove his car and
continued birding expeditions, against
the advice of family and friends. Lad
saab also did the Narmada expedition
(Parikrama) to study the fl ora and fauna
along the river Narmada
P. M. Lad lived life to the fullest.
My last telephonic discussion with him
was in November 2017 regarding leopard
safaris in the Sanjay Gandhi National
Park, Mumbai. Within two months, came
the demise of this parindo ka masiha
(bird messiah), leaving behind a grieving
wife, son, and the entire birding fraternity.
I respected him the way I did Dr. Sálim Ali.
What a unique man he was. In an eff ort
to get him to pen his memoirs, I urged
him to write a book to which he replied
saying he had no time, adding: “I would
prefer to spend more time in birding and
conservation directly in the fi eld.”
Now that I think of it, no book could
possibly contain the wildness of his spirit. f