Independence Day 2023 | Vision@2047: What India's biodiversity will look like

Wildlife and conservation expert MK Ranjitsinh, whose next book is 'Mountain Mammals of the World', says, by 2047, India's biodiversity as national natural heritage will be protected by laws, policies and people.

Faizal Khan

August 12, 2023 / 13:16 IST

Wildlife conservation expert and author M K Ranjitsinh considers biodiversity as the country's national natural heritage that must be protected.

As the first director of the newly-created department of wildlife at the central government half-a-century ago, MK Ranjitsinh drafted India's Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 that sought protection of wild animals, birds and plants to ensure the ecological and environmental security of the country. Ranjitsinh, an Indian Administrative Service officer, was Secretary (Forest) of an undivided Madhya Pradesh when the state was home to one-third of India's forests. He went on to become chairman of the Wildlife Trust of India, regional coordinator of WWF's Tiger Conservation Programme and member, National Forest Commission. He has authored several books on wildlife, notable among them A Life With Wildlife: From Princely India to the Present (2017) and Beyond the Tiger: Portraits of Asian Wildlife (1997). Mountain Mammals of the World, his forthcoming book, describes the 62 species of large mountain animals living in six continents.

When MK Ranjitsinh joined the Indian Administrative Service, his passion, commitment and conviction for nature soon took him to the forest service, a cadre then existing only in the state services. "The Imperial Forest Service started by the British was disbanded after independence," says Ranjitsinh. "Under the Constitution, forest became a state subject. It was brought to the concurrent list much later," he adds. Ranjitsinh began his service in the Madhya Pradesh government and moved to the central government later where he was tasked with opening India's first national parks, an initiative, he says, protected much of the country's wildlife until now."

With the new amendments to the Forest Conservation Act and Biological Diversity Act passed by the Lok Sabha in July drawing sharp criticism from environment experts, all eyes are on the discussion that would take place on the bills in the Rajya Sabha. Ranjitsinh, for one, is concerned about dilution of legal framework and policy, the basis of conservation. "Policy gives expression to the legal framework and vice versa," he says. "The national natural heritage will survive only if the forests and national parks are effectively protected," says Ranjitsinh, who as Madhya Pradesh forest secretary added nine new national parks and 14 new sanctuaries to the existing three national parks in the state between 1981 and 1983. He, however, is optimistic that all political parties would come together to protect the country's rich national natural heritage.

"I won't be there to see the state of India's biodiversity in the centenary year of Indian independence. But I am confident it would be protected by laws, policy and people," says Ranjitsinh, 84. "India is a paradox. Despite the huge pressure on land because of population and poverty, there has been a positive impact on nature. We have respect for life and regard for nature. We haven't lost a single large mammalian species, except for the Sumatran and Javan rhinos and the cheetah which became extinct in the last century," he adds. "You must give power to the local community and allow them to function. They will get their little share they need to survive and they will protect the rest."

Ranjitsinh, however, warns that if the present trend continues, biodiversity will survive in another quarter century in small miniscule pockets, like walled-off glorified safari parks, surrounded by human habitation, and animals like elephants becoming prisoners in their own parks. He sees the best case scenario as the protected wildlife area remaining at the present 4 per cent of the total land area of the country. "It could get better," says the vastly experienced wildlife conservationist who considers the deaths of cheetahs brought from South Africa and Namibia for reintroduction as a "complex situation". "There is nothing wrong with the project, the problem is with the implementation," he says. "The cheetahs can be saved and established in our forests. But we need accountability and total collaboration between experts and forest staff on ecological and veterinary aspects."