Urban Indians are mostly unaware that India has a population of gray wolves, a threatened species in threatened ecosystems. Some 10 per cent of India’s landmass is covered by ecosystems known as Open Natural Ecosystems (ONEs), habitats to species such as wolves, with a dry climate and sparse tree cover. Questions around the conservation of Indian wolf populations in ONEs such as grasslands are anything but straightforward. They bring forth a slew of issues around land use, environmental governance, and pastoralist livelihoods, all determining the management of ONEs. The ecology of this species is closely linked to livelihoods and threatened ecosystems and this defies what India’s conservation paradigm is about: forests, state-managed protected areas, and the forest department. We write about how Indian wolves push us to think about conservation, mixed-use landscapes and arid ecosystems, all at once.
Floral biodiversity in ONEs in the monsoon season. | Photo Credit: Iravatee Majgaonkar
A short journey outside most cities in India’s Deccan region and one is bound to encounter savanna grasslands, a type of ONEs—native habitats with a dry hot climate, low tree cover, and little surface water and dominated by grasses, rock, and short scrubby vegetation. The absence of a tree canopy is not a sign of degradation of these systems but in fact its very nature for thousands of years, thanks to the action of climate, wild and domestic animals as well as natural fires. Roughly, 3,20,000 sq km of India’s landmass are dry ONEs and they are mainly spread across peninsular and western India.
Livestock rearing livelihoods in the savanna grasslands of western Maharashtra. | Photo Credit: Kalyan Varma
Every year, thousands of people from traditional livestock-keeping communities, or pastoralists, make long journeys from their native villages in the Deccan plateau’s grasslands to agricultural regions and back, with their large herds of indigenous sheep and goats. They follow the scarce monsoon rains, which annually transform the Deccan’s dry grasslands and lend them a new lease of life. The herds move every day so as to not over-graze any one area, yet fully utilise this ephemeral productivity. The herds mainly consist of sheep, with a few goats: “Goats often lead the herd but some of them are curious stragglers and we need to keep a watch and make sure ‘they’ aren’t close by”, as one of the older pastoralists from the Dhangar community in Maharashtra told us once. He was referring to the top predator of the Indian savanna grasslands, the Indian grey wolf Canis lupus pallipes, which shares close connections with the Deccan pastoralists who often do not rue an occasional loss to it. In fact, some of them believe that the wolf has a small share in their herd.
An adult female wolf in Open Natural Ecosystems in the dry season. | Photo Credit: The Grasslands Trust
The Indian grey wolf is an elusive, smaller, scrawnier cousin of the better-known northern grey wolf, that ranges throughout the drier parts of the Indian subcontinent, especially the Deccan. Research shows that wolves are more active at night in rural India and they prefer places having intact ONEs with interspersed agriculture because that allows them to maintain safe distances from people working and living in rural landscapes.
An adult male wolf at the border of a maize field. | Photo Credit: The Grasslands Trust
Indian wolves have an ancient lineage with a unique genetic signature. But this uniqueness is in danger as their populations are rapidly declining, thanks to habitat loss, followed by disease and hybridisation with their domestic cousin, the dog. Some estimates suggest that their numbers could be even lower than that of the much celebrated Bengal tigers.
An ONE being excavated for soil and rock. | Photo Credit: The Grasslands Trust
If Indian wolf populations are to be conserved, the standard toolbox of conservation interventions in India is set to fail. This is because Indian grey wolves and ONEs both, do not conform to what India’s conservation paradigm revolves around: forested habitats, protected areas, and the forest department. This is a species whose diet is mostly livestock and its continued presence relies heavily on coexistence with people-especially pastoralist communities. Further, it uses mixed landscapes, almost entirely outside protected areas or reserve forests, which are all outside the forest bureaucracy’s jurisdiction and strongly shaped by socio-economic development goals.
Wolves and pastoralists in ONEs. | Photo Credit: Rajesh Pardeshi
Placing the burden of accepting wolves on pastoralists is unfair when on the other hand ONEs are shrinking due to unsustainable land diversions. More protected areas or tiger-like conservation fanfare are not the answer to the conservation of wolf populations in India either. Agencies and corporations involved in and benefiting from rural development and welfare, agricultural policies, and renewable energy projects: i.e. groups other than those that are conventionally mandated to look out for the environment have an important responsibility. They need to start cohesively thinking about ONEs outside forest department jurisdictions as being valuable for pastoralism and biodiversity to enable meaningful and socially just outcomes for conservation of wolves.
A chinkara antelope with a black drongo on its back. Drongos feed on ectoparasites on antelopes and small insects that are flushed out from the grass as the chinkaras feed. | Photo Credit: Abi Tamim Vanak
People are often convinced that mountains and forests have value for people and nature. The presence of trees and water bodies lends itself to that conviction. Arid and rocky ONEs do not make the cut in the same way, and they do not necessarily have indigenous community representation either. However, the lives of pastoralists, the Indian wolf, and a myriad of biodiversity are intertwined, and in examining their relationship and their future, we must continue to challenge the “fortress model” of conservation that has failed the denizens of the ONEs of India.
Abi T. Vanak is the director of the Centre for Policy Design at ATREE, Bengaluru. Iravatee Majgaonkar is a PhD student at ATREE.
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