Even as our society fissures along communal lines, somewhere in a remote forest in Central India, the old ways still hold on. Here lies a shrine to a Tiger God, one revered by Hindus, Adivasis & Muslims alike.

Images of Narsimha are reverentially draped with an Islamic flag, +

thousands of little Trishuls merge seamlessly with thousands of green bangles tied onto them & dozens of green flags tucked in between them. Saffron Goddess Durga flags flutter alongside a large green Islamic 'chadar' that shades the Trishuls. A set of Adivasi Tiger God statues,+

As the mercury rises & forest department staff across a large part of India battle forest fires, I'm reminded of a forgotten memorial stone dedicated to a brave forest officer who died in 1935 dousing the flames engulfing the forests whose protection he was tasked with.

This + tablet, situated in a little corner of a village in the heart of what is now Maharashtra's Melghat tiger reserve, reads:

"In Memory of Forest Ranger Nazir Mohammad, who served for twenty one years in the Melghat Forest Division and who was severely burnt while extinguishing a +

Today is the 98th birthday of Jagat Jyoti Dutta, perhaps the oldest IFS officer alive & among the finest wildlife managers India has ever produced. Born in 1926, he is a living witness to the changing history of forest & wildlife management. As one +

(Video by @nishant2108 ) of the longest serving Chief Wildlife Wardens of Madhya Pradesh (retired 1984), he was instrumental in turning MP into the 'tiger state' that it has become today.

I traveled to Bhopal +

(The 1948 Batch of Indian Forest College, Dutta sahab stands 5th from left, Second Last Row)

*The Mysterious Hero Stone of Melghat*: A Thread 👇

I've been to many forests across central & north India, and while every forest is unique & beautiful in its own special way, none have stunned me with this overwhelming sense of grandeur, ruggedness & antiquity, all at once, +

as this confluence of innumerable 'ghats' that is Melghat. Situated in northern Maharashtra, along its border with MP, Melghat is an unending sea of jagged cliffs, deep ravines, bouldery rivers & nullahs, & tabletop mountains - all cloaked under teak forests that are home to +

*Anne Wright, born Nora Anne Layard (1929-2023): A Tribute*

Anne Wright's passing marks the end of perhaps the most remarkable era of wildlife conservation in India. In a field that back in the day was a male bastion, she was a trailblazing female conservationist who would go + on to make unparalleled contributions towards the conservation of wildlife in India. Anne was born in India in 1929, her father being an ICS officer who served Central Provinces (along with a long stint as the Deputy Commissioner of Delhi). One could write a whole book on her +

Some history Trivia on Project Tiger. A🧵

Though the Project was launched today, 50 yrs ago, the actual beginning was a year earlier. In 1972, an 11-member 'task force' constituted by Indira Gandhi submitted its report. They thought of a title for their report. They called it 👇 So that's the genesis of the name "Project Tiger", it was the title of the task force's final report.

We know that Project Tiger started with 9 tiger reserves. However, few know that the task force report recommended only 8 reserves representing the tiger's varied habitats. +

A bit on the book's stunning cover image. This is perhaps the most unique cheetah painting from India. Why so? Because this is, to Divyabhanusinh's & my knowledge, the earliest visual record (if we exclude prehistoric rock art) of cheetahs in the wild in India. How so? A short🧵:

https://twitter.com/RazaKazmi17/status/1640999567519887360

This c. 1570 painting is ascribed to the famous Mughal painter Basawan, one of the chief painters in Akbar's court. Titled “A family of cheetahs in a rocky landscape”, it is described thus: “The mother lying in a glade, suckling one of her four cubs while grooming another, the +

With cheetahs grabbing the headlines in India like never before, I'm delighted that historian Divyabhanusinh's new book "The Story of India's Cheetahs" is out for pre-order. It's the world's only book on the Asiatic cheetah's natural history, focusing on the Indian subcontinent. Published by Marg Foundation as part of their excellent Natural History Books Series, this is a revised & updated version of Divyabhanusinh's groundbreaking book 'The End of a Trail: The Cheetah in India' (1st ed. 1995, last 2006) which had been out of print for many years now.

While rewatching Satyajit Ray's Aranyer Din Ratri (1970), I noticed an error that seems to have never been picked up by anyone - neither by Ray or the cast & crew, nor the countless commentaries on the movie and its characters in books, media, and even academic papers. The movie+ is set in Palamau, and Ray, the cast, the movie itself as well as every bit of literature ever published on the movie repeats that the movie depicts the life of the Santhal Adivasis in Palamau. The primary Adivasi character, 'Duli', played by Simi Grewal (which in contemporary

Hi Ishan, you are conflating two issues. Our paper was a chronology i.e. it included all Asiatic cheetah records we could find post 1772 & thus our work included listing of all categories of cheetah references (wild cheetah records, coursing records, visual representations +

https://twitter.com/IshanDhar/status/1629052795704987648

skulls in zoos, museums, etc.) that we'd come across arranged in a chronological order. Precisely because of this reason we can't call our paper to be exclusively a distributional study since that would mean only discussing wild cheetah records & nothing else. Hence, we don't +

*Short thread*

More than a decade ago I came across a decaying image of a tiger shot in 1963 in the forests of Hazaribagh (Jharkhand). Looking at the picture, I was stunned. This had to be the largest tiger I'd ever seen with a head of absolutely unreal proportions.

I'd seen + the famous photo of the Bachelor of Powalgarh – the immense tiger shot by Jim Corbett in Kumaon, widely believed to be the largest Bengal tiger ever killed – lying prostrate at Corbett’s feet, umpteen times.

I had no doubt that the behemoth I was
looking at outmatched him. +

*The Forest Bungalows of Mr. and Mrs. Iyer (2002): A Thread*

Much before Madhavan's Farhan (who eventually became a meme for a young wannabe male wildlife photographer) in 3 Idiots, @RahulBose1 's Jahangir 'Raja' Choudhary was the OG Wildlife Photographer of the Indian silver + screen in Mr. and Mrs. Iyer (2002). While there is so much I love about this gem of a movie (making it one of my all-time favorites), what made it all the more special for me was how often it invokes, both visually (through stunning cinematography) & orally (through dialogues),+

This lovely image of a nearly 100-year-old notice delineating the duties of a forest bungalow chowkidaar (caretaker) that still hangs at an old Forest Bungalow in Bengal was shared by @ParveenKaswan. As interesting as the contents of this curious notice are, what also caught my + attention was the undersigned name.

E.O. Shebbeare, a 1906 batch IFS officer, arguably was the most remarkably outstanding IFS officer in undivided Bengal's history. He wrote a lovely book (narrated through the eyes of an elephant) titled 'Soondar Mooni' post-retirement, and +

The horrible fallout of politicisation of Podu (shifting cultivation). Also one of the many instances of violence unleashed by local communities on frontline forest staff, even though academic commentaries tend to portray former as perfect victims & latter as perfect oppressors.+

https://twitter.com/sudhakarudumula/status/1595010322145812481

However, ground realities are never black and white.

For those who may not know, while Koya Adivasis are native to northern Telangana and Agency Tract areas of AP, the Gutti/Gutthi/Gotti Koyas are mostly Muria Adivasis who migrated permanently (there used to be very limited +

Correct me if I am wrong, but while the robustness and methodology of the WII-led census from 2006 onwards are questioned, including 2018 results, are there alternate census figures to go by? If not then what isn't one wanting to comment on recent population trends left with no +

https://twitter.com/varunrgoswami/status/1586554046336610304

option but to go by the official census data? Almost all scholars I've seen writing on this subject tend to use the official WII census data as well.

Incidentally, while intuitively it might seem more difficult, but to be honest it was much easier for me to cross-verify +

Got so many interesting responses – hunting license/shikar permit, gun license, radio license, driving license, bicycle license, TV license & even drinking license! My favorite reply – this being a license to keep pet tigers 😅

Now onto the answer (and some associated details) +

https://twitter.com/RazaKazmi17/status/1582952297738313728

This, as some had correctly guessed, is a hunting/shikar license. However, this isn't a general hunting license, rather a 'Big Game' License. All wild animal species that were hunted used to be known as "Game".

'Game' could further be of two types – 'Big Game' & 'Small Game'. +

Writing this thread in Hindi since it concerns a storyteller who narrates in Hindi.

मैंने विरले ही अविनाश उपाध्याय जी जैसे कहानीकार को सुना है, और किसी भी राष्ट्रीय उद्यान या व्याग्रह आरक्ष की कहानी इतने रोचक, सहज, तथ्यात्मक, ज्ञानपूर्वक ढंग से, उस +

उद्यान या आरक्ष के इतिहास और उसके ऐतिहासिक किरदारों को परिपेक्ष में रख उनको इस तरह जीवंत करते हुए, तो कदापि नहीं।

मैं एक श्रोता के रूप में इसे अपना सौभाग्य मानता हूं कि @RajnishKSingh5 जी के एक ट्विटर पोस्ट के ज़रिए मुझे अविनाश जी के यूट्यूब चैनल के बारे में पता चला। हालांकि +

*Local names for animals that don't exist in a landscape: A small thread*

Back in 2018 & 19, I used to spend quite a few days every other month in Singhbhum (Jharkhand) teaching at the Forest Guard Training School in Chaibasa. During the course of my stays, I tried picking up + a bit of Ho language through some Ho Adivasi friends who used to work at the school. In the course of this process, I learned a lot of wild animal names in Ho. The tiger was 'Kool', the sambar was 'Saaram', the barking deer was 'Seelip', and so on. But – much to my surprise – I +

For those wondering how this contraption would have worked, it goes something like this. A goat/calf would be tied atop the central pillar on the small circular platform that you see here. The gap between the pillar and the outer edge of the trap structure was first covered +

https://twitter.com/bhlab_india/status/1567426877941501952

with small sticks, the top of which was littered with a thin layer of sandy soil, fallen leaves from the surrounding, etc. till this artificially created surface became indistinguishable from the actual jungle floor surrounding the trap. Once all this was done and the pit was +

*Tiger Natural History Lessons from Zanjeer: A Thread*

Zanjeer (1973) remains one of the most iconic Bollywood films of all time. I remember being quite obsessed with it as a kid when it used to be telecast often on Doordarshan. But when I recently rewatched the movie I was + quite struck by some very interesting references to the natural history of tigers that were peppered across the movie. This was primarily due to Pran's character named 'Sher Khan', a benevolent Afghan Pathan don who is reformed as a result of his friendship with Inspector +

There must be a thorough inquiry into the circumstances of this elephant's death. Not only could an ailing elephant not be saved despite @moefcc intervention, but even the tusks were sawed off (which also makes it an offense of poaching). Other serious Qs too - if the elephant +

https://twitter.com/bahardutt/status/1553724011653505024

had become healthy post "treatment" as was being repeatedly claimed by Latehar FD, how did it die then since the post-mortem team (led by another IFS officer) says "tusker had no external injury or wound. There were no scars or holes in its body". Also +

etvbharat.com/hindi/jharkhan…