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Exploration Series One of Exploring Nature-Report May 2015

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Exploration Series One of Exploring Nature-Report May 2015 Exploration Series One of Exploring Nature The Last Legacy: Visit to Sole Home of Asiatic Lion and Indian Wild Ass By Dwaipayan Ghosh and Arnab Basu 24th to 28 th May, 2015 1 The Last Legacy: Visit to Sole Home of Asiatic Lion and Indian Wild Ass By Dwaipayan Ghosh and Arnab Basu 24th to 28 th May, 2015 © All the Information and Photographs published in this report are the properties of Exploring Nature and cannot be used for commercial or research purposes without prior permission of the explorers 2 CONTENTS Topic Page Cover Page 01 Copyright Statement 02 Contents 03 Chapter One Why this visit? 04 What is Exploring Nature ? 04 Chapter Two Visit plan and day to day activity 05 Chapter Three Spotted and Identified Biodiversity at Gir Forest National 07 Park Chapter Four Quest for Asiatic Lion 17 Chapter Five Tribal of Gir Forest 22 Chapter Six Spotted and Identified Biodiversity at Wild Ass Sanctuary of 24 Little Rann of Kutch Chapter Seven Chasing Wild Ass 29 Chapter Eight Mistry of Little Rann 31 End of Story 33 Annexure One: The Explorers’ Profile 34 Annexure Two: The Journey Itinerary 36 Annexure Three: List of Species Identified 37 Annexure Four: Reference 39 3 Chapter One: Why this visit? Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given species, ecosystem, biome, or planet. Terrestrial biodiversity tends to be highest at low latitudes near the equator, which seems to be the result of the warm climate and high primary productivity. Marine biodiversity tends to be highest along coasts in the Western Pacific, where sea surface temperature is highest and in mid-latitudinal band in all oceans. Biodiversity generally tends to cluster in hotspots, and has been increasing through time but will be likely to slow in the future. The period since the emergence of humans has displayed an ongoing biodiversity reduction and an accompanying loss of genetic diversity. Named the Holocene extinction, the reduction is caused primarily by human impacts, particularly habitat destruction. Conversely, biodiversity impacts human health in a number of ways, both positively and negatively. The United Nations designated 2011-2020 as the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity. Being nature lovers and students of Natural Science for more than two decades, the members of Exploring Nature decided to pay tribute to Mother Nature by promoting awareness on some of the well explored as well as relatively less explored biodiversity around the world. In this endeavor two members of Exploring Nature have started this Biodiversity Exploration Series by carrying out a high level rapid biodiversity exploration at Gir National Forest and Little Rann of Kutch located in the Gujarat state of India. Both the places are unique for being holders of single population of Asiatic Lion ( Panthera leo persica ) and Indian Wild Ass ( Equus hemionus khur ) respectively. What is Exploring Nature ? Exploring Nature is a group exists in Facebook, founded by Dwaipayan Ghosh, one of the members of this exploration series. The objective of the group is active participation in eco-tourism and biodiversity exploration as well as wild life photography in order to promote eco-tourism culture and biodiversity awareness through social networking sites. The group is a conglomeration of Wild Life Photographers, Biodiversity Experts, Bird Watchers, Environmentalists, Engineers, Sociologists, Anthropologists and anybody from any segments of society and professions who love nature and consider themselves responsible and accountable to save the beautiful flora and fauna of Mother Nature as well as to promote biodiversity awareness among people. All the reports and photographs of the explorations of Exploring Nature are generally uploaded within 4-5 working days after completing the exploration in following links: https://www.facebook.com/naturaldestination https://www.facebook.com/dwaipayansphotography 4 Chapter Two: Visit plan and day to day activity It was a five (5) day visit by two biodiversity explorers (Refer Annexure 1 for the profile of two explorers), which also includes travelling to and fro between their respective home bases and subject exploration locations. For detail journey itinerary please refer Annexure 2 of this report. Both the explorers reached at Bhopal in the evening of 23 rd May from Hyderabad (in case of Dwaipayan) and Bangalore (in case of Arnab) to catch the Jabalpur Somnath Express and reached at Junagadh by 4:25 PM of 24 th May. From Junagadh railway station it was one and half hour road journey to Sasan Gir. The staying arrangement for the explorers for next two days was made at Maneland Jungle Lodge which was around 2-3 km away from the main entrance of Gir National Park. Maneland Jungle Lodge was found to be designed to match the aesthetics of the Saurashtra Penninsula of Gujarat state, where the National park is located. The lodge is stylized using local material & construction techniques. All rooms had attached modern bathrooms with running hot and cold water. There was one dinning cum restaurant which serves Vegetable Cuisine cooked from home grown and farm fresh vegetables. Pickup and drop facilities from and to Junagadh were also arranged for the explorers by the lodge. The exploration at Gir started from next day at 6:30 AM, total three safaris were planned for two days for which online permits were already obtained. On the first day (25 th May) of the exploration at Gir, there were two safaris – morning between 6:30 AM to 9:00 AM and afternoon between 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM. Only one safari in the morning of the second day (26 th May) was planned, as explorers had to proceed for next subject location in the afternoon of that day. The safari jip, guide was provided by the Forest department of Gir National Park as part of the safari permits. On the evening of 26 th May, explorers reached at Viramgam via a train journey which was turned out quite hectic as they did not have reservation due to unavailability of tickets in Veraval Mumbai Central Passenger train. The entry point of Little Rann was around 45 km from the Viramgam railway station and the staying arrangements were made at Bhavna Resort and Farm which was 35 km from the railway station, at village Patdi, it was a 45 minutes road journey. The resort was found built on a developed and arid, useless land by converting the same into cultivable land in order to create a tourist destination and a place of farming. Reportedly the resort began organic growing of produce and horticulture in this barren land and also created awareness about the same in the locality. As per anecdotal information, over 100 species of flora and vegetables can be found there. The resort regularly allows 5 farmers to visit the farm, to learn new technologies and encourages organic farming in the area. The restaurant of the farm, procures, prepares and serves food from their organic farm. Total two safaris were planned at Little Rann, and all were in morning. Considering the present weather (40-45 oC temperature in day time), morning 5:30 AM to 8:30 AM was found best suitable for exploration. The safari jip, guide and permits were all arranged by the Resort itself. In both Gir and Lttle Rann, besides exploration in forest and desert, explorers’ daily activities were updating the identified species profiles and logging data related to soil texture, climate and anthropological primary information obtained from the field. Another key activity at the end of the day used to be processing of selected photographs of biodiversity taken during explorations. All these activities were done at the base camps (lodges or resorts) of both the subject locations. During this five day visit, comprised of total five (5) safaris ( 3 in Gir and 2 in Little Rann), around 1100 photographs were taken by two explorers. The instruments used for photography were one 60D Canon SLR with 400 mm (F/5.6) lens , one 600D Canon SLR with 200-500 mm (F/5-6.3) lens and one monopod . Out of these 1100 photographs, 70 high impact and effectively informative photographs were selected to use in this report and publishing in social networking sites. In these five days two explorers had spotted and identified around 56 species of mammals, reptiles and aves. In the Gir itself 8 different species of mammals , 1 species of reptiles and 37 species of aves were spotted and identified. Whereas in the Little Rann the variety of biodiversity encountered were little less because of scorching summer heat. Explorers spotted and identified 4 different species of mammals and 6 different species of aves . The exploration was ended on the afternoon of 28 th May and both the explorers headed towards Ahmedabad airport to board on flights for respective home destinations. In this exploration, both the explorers travelled altogether 590 km , excluding the distance travelled from home bases to nearest port of subject locations (Refer the route map below ). 6 Chapter Three: Spotted and Identified Biodiversity ---- At Gir Forest National Park IUCN category II (national park); Location: Junagadh Distric, Gir Somnath District and Amreli District, Gujarat state of India Nearest City: Veraval Coordinates: 21 o08’08”N 70 o47’48”E/21.13556 oN70.79667 oE Area: 1412 Square Km Governing Body: Forest Department of Gujarat The Gir Forest National Park and Wildlife Sanctuary (also known as Sasan-Gir) is a forest and wildlife sanctuary in Gujarat, India. Established in 1965, with a total area of 1412 km² (about 258 km² for the fully protected area the national park and 1153 km² for the Sanctuary), the park is located 43 km in the north-east from Somnath, 65 km to the south- east of Junagadh and 60 km to south west of Amreli.
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