The Hindu Business Line : Vanishing forests

TRIPURA is balding fast. Officially, 60 per cent of the geographical area of 10.49 lakh hectares has been declared as forest land, but old timers are not so sure. Sal, teak and other forest cover are being stripped, smuggled into Bangladesh to feed its saw mills and return back as high quality furniture.

In Agartala, land costs between Rs 2 crore and Rs 3 crore per acre, while commercial space (10 ft x10 ft) is priced at around Rs 1 crore; paddy land is priced between Rs 40,000 and Rs 50,000 per acre, while tilla land (hilly land) quotes at between Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000 per acre. Driving round Tripura one did note clusters of teak, while on the ride to Jhumpi Hills, with Betling Shiv at 3,200 ft being the highest point, one looked up in awe at a few old, 180 ft tall, rare Sundhi trees.

The ride up to Jhumpi is winding and tiring and at a spot below Betling Shiv we took a break to see the evening lights spread out like stars at Aizawal, Mizoram. We rested for the night in a guest house proudly displaying a framed board stating: "Here is a place where two US Air Force pilots were rescued by the then Vangmun youths during World War II. The two pilots jumped out of their burning aircraft and landed here in the jungle. They were: John Beach, Philadelphia, USA, 11.2. 1945; James Mark, Chicago, USA, 12.2.1945."

The Lushai community lives here and one watched two middle-aged men playing carrom board in the portico of a shop. Anywhere in Tripura the air is scrubbed clean by the greenery. Its wildlife sanctuaries are not in good shape and we visited three of them — Rowa, in the northern district of Tripura, Sepahijala in west Tripura and Trishna in south Tripura. The about one sq. km Rowa wildlife sanctuary could be the smallest anywhere in India housing some 10 to 12 barking deer, according to Krishna Das, forest ranger.

Rowa is more a botanical park with around 28 hectares of a total of 89 hectares under "unauthorised occupation." A well-built rudraksh (Elaecarpus ganitrus) plant apart from agar trees, from which Agartala perhaps derives its name, provided relief. Bird calls are scarce, though in the winter months a small waterbody in the sanctuary is home to migratory birds. Spread over 194 sq. km, the Trishna wildlife sanctuary is said to have gaurs feeding on a variety of tall bamboo - Oxytenanathera nigrociliata, locally known as Kailyai. Paddy is grown by about 100 families living inside the sanctuary. In recent times, about 109 acres of paddy land have been acquired by the forest department.

Young Animesh Das, wildlife warden, took us up a tall tower to view the sanctuary and trekker Malkhan Debnath spotted the rare black Hoolock or Whitebrowed Gibbon (Hylobates hoolock), standing erect atop a tree at a distance of around 400 ft. For a minute it turned round before climbing down to the forest floor. Led by Debnath we scrambled down a steep valley crowded with bamboo but failed to spot the primate. "It is the only ape found in India. It has the distinctive build of an ape, arms much longer than the legs and a tailless body. Males and young females are black; on reaching maturity, between the age of 5 and 6, the female's coat fades to a yellowish grey," writes S.H. Prater in The Book of Indian Animals.

During the afternoons, the Hoolocks retire to the lower layers of the forest. Each family hunts within its territory. Within this domain the family follows the same trail through the treetops day after day, much as chimpanzees do, says Prater and adds: "Swinging on their arms from branch to branch, running erect along the heavier boughs, dropping from one bending branch to seize another below, Hoolocks are more agile than any of the heavier apes. When walking they walk erect, using the outstretched arms as a balance."

We saw a lone brown Hoolock female in a cage at the Sepahijala wildlife sanctuary, some 20 km from Agartala. The sanctuary started as a zoo and at first glance it seems there are more animals in the zoo than in the sanctuary. Rubber plantations, grazing cattle and villagers are common sights inside the sanctuary. There is a suggestion to relocate the zoo, while the staff protests. A zoo is at best a poor location for animals and it becomes bad, apart from violating wildlife laws, when it is situated within a wildlife sanctuary.

Here we watched four to five Phayre's Langur (Trachypithecus phayrei) with quaint white circles round its dark black eyes on the branches of a tree inside a moat; locally they are called Chashma bador (Spectacled monkey). They moved quietly from branch to branch, while Roy tried to click them. A.K. Gupta has made a short study on them in the April 2005 issue of the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. Gupta writes: "In India, Tripura has the largest population of this species which was also reported from Assam and Mizoram."

We did not see the Phyare's langur in the wild. We went to Sepahijala twice but rarely came across birds. To prove us wrong we did see a golden-backed woodpecker (Dinopium benghalense) in the morning tapping the top end of a dead tree for insects.

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