Calling upon wildlife enthusiasts to go beyond what he called “celebrity” photography, director, BRT Tiger Reserve Vijay Mohan Raj said there was more to the jungle than the ‘Amitabh Bachchans’ and ‘Shah Rukh Khans’ (the elephant and the tiger) and several other highly endangered species were in dire need of conservation. At the E Hanumanth Rao Memorial lecture on ‘The Role of Photography in Conservation’, organised by the Bhavsar Kshatriya Youth And Cultural Association, in memory of celebrated wildlife photographer, Raj narrated how the remote Magadi lake in Gadag district, which hosts the highly endangered bar headed geese from Russia, attracted conservationists’ interest after they were photographically documented. ‘The Bombay Natural History Society’ took note of this and the importance of the lake, which attracts 5,000 of these 20,000 birds in the wild today, was recognised.
Raj also mentioned how a similar effort at documentation helped step up efforts to protect the endangered lion-tailed macaques in the Sirsi region of Uttara Kannada. To a question by association president Deepak on forest department’s efforts to increase awareness on conservation, Raj said children in cities, who are adequately informed about conservation, could visit villages on the fringes of forests and take the message to their counterparts there, since they are in conflict with wildlife on an almost every day basis.
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