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RECENT MASS BIRD DEATHS AT SAMBHAR LAKE, RAJASTHAN, INDIA: New Challenges for Sustainability in the Face of Extreme Climate Events

The dilemma of how to harmonise the legitimate needs and insatiable wants of human beings, with the simple imperatives of nature, has come to the fore as never before.  Over the last three hundred years following the industrial revolution, whenever collateral damage has been done to nature – the hundreds of species of plant and animal/insect life rendered extinct almost on a daily basis – it has been blithely seen as an inseparable part of the superior and inexorable striving for human ‘progress’, whether defined as wealth generation, ever higher levels of consumption, technological advancement or just plain economic development.

It is only now, in the panic and insecurity created by the suddenly escalating effects of climate change worldwide that are putting the survival of the human species itself into question for the first time, that we are being forced to pause and think of how both macro policies of governments and everyday actions by individuals are affecting the fragile sustainability of the planet.      

One of the simple imperatives of birds – a vitally important part of nature - is that they need warmth during the cold winter months; for this, they are willing to put their lives on the line and fly thousands of miles to where the warmth is.   Thus, November to March is the prime time for birds from the cold Northern countries to migrate to the warmer climates in the South;  with the onset of the spring in their permanent northern homes, they make the arduous journey back.  

What they need when they arrive here is not only warm weather and the assured presence of safe water and food, but also peace and calm and freedom from non-bird, i.e., human, pollution in the form of artificial noise and toxic commercial activity.  The intrusion of loud human activity and human-generated industrial, chemical and electronic pollution have the effect of killing birds, at worst,  or at best driving them further away from human habitats and ever deeper into the interiors of their once-pristine habitats.

For centuries, birds have used their instinct, knowledge and experience to identify certain habitats as conducive destinations for their migratory journeys.  In Rajasthan, two such habitats have offered safe havens.  One is the national bird sanctuary at Bharatpur and the other is the Sambhar Lake.

The Keoladeo Bird Sanctuary at Bharatpur (better known as the Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary)  is reputedly the premier Asian destination for migratory birds, and has been declared a UNESCO natural heritage site for this reason. It is a sad commentary on our anthropocentrism that this wondrous sanctuary,  almost within stone’s throw of the Taj Mahal in Agra, is much less well known than the man-made “wonder of the world”.  

The other habitat in Rajasthan that receives migratory birds in significant numbers (it is a lesser site than Keoladeo in this regard) are the wetlands that comprise the Sambhar Lake. The Sambhar Lake is a 220 sq, km area salt lake that is situated about 80 kms from Jaipur. Reputedly the largest inland salt lake in the country and an important site for both local birds and winter migrants,  Sambhar is the only other Ramsar site in Rajasthan besides Keoladeo.  (Ramsar sites are ‘wetlands of international importance’ listed under the Ramsar Convention of 1971, an international treaty for conservation and sustainable use of wetlands (it was signed at Ramsar in Iran, hence the name). The Convention’s mission is “the conservation and wise use of all wetlands through local and national actions and international cooperation, as a contribution towards achieving sustainable development throughout the world”. There are 27 listed Ramsar sites in India,  most of them in Jammu and Kashmir, out of a total of 2100 worldwide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ramsar_sites_in_India)

Despite its designation as a fragile ecosystem, Sambhar has faced gross neglect.  What the Sambhar Lake is better known for is its contribution to human welfare  and entertainment.  It is one of the most important sources of salt production in India, and reportedly accounts for almost 9 per cent of the country’s total salt production.  It is also a huge favourite for Bollywood shoots, which have used its surreal landscape to good effect. Indeed, it is quite possible that until the 20,000 bird deaths within the space of a week this month, few people in India or elsewhere reading newspapers had even heard of Sambhar at all.

Sambhar is the  favourite landing place for pink flamingos that arrive there during the monsoons.  Other migratory birds from northern Asia and Europe  that arrive for the winter are, notably, the Ruddy Shelduck, Black-winged Stilt, Temmink’s Stint, Northern Shoveler, Common Teal, Northern Pintail, Gadwall, Black/brown-Headed Gull, Gull-billed Tern, Pallas’s Gull, Pied Avocet, Ruff, Common Redshank, Marsh Sandpiper, Wood Sandpiper, Common Sandpiper, Lesser Sand Plover, Little Ringed Plover, Kentish Plover, Common Coot, Green Bee-eater, Black-winged Kite, Lesser Whistling Duck, and Mallards (https://www.conservationindia.org/gallery/thousands-of-birds-found-dead-around-sambhar-lake-rajasthan).  All of these latter birds count among the recent deaths.  

What brings migratory birds here are the water, with its marine and plant resources.  Formed out of a natural depression and surrounded by the Aravali Hills, the lake bed is richly silted in salts which rise to the surface with evaporation.  The waters of five streams feed the lake –Rupangarh and Mendha, the main ones, and the lesser Samoad, Khari and Khandela – and annual monsoon rains give fresh life to the waters. The specialized algae and bacteria growing in the lake provide striking water colours – that also impart their distinctive hues to the salt - and support the lake ecology in the form of teeming populations of small fish and algae that, in turn, sustain the migrating waterfowl.  Interestingly, almost all the mass  deaths this month were of insectivorous and omnivorous species. The herbivorous species survived.    

The immediate cause of the mass deaths has been identified by scientists at the Indian Veterinary Research Institute in Izatnagar, Uttar Pradesh, as Avian Botulism, i.e., a neuromuscular illness caused by a natural toxin – Botulinum - produced by a bacteria — Clostridium botulinum which is paralyses the muscles and is an often fatal disease for birds.  Clostridium botulin produces the toxin when it starts reproducing. The bacteria is commonly found in the soil, river, and sea water. There are reportedly around eight types — A, B, C1, C2, D, E, F, and G — of botulinum toxin and they are distinguishable when diagnosed. Common to all types of toxins is that they attack the neurons, which in turn leads to muscle paralysis. Botulinum affects both humans and animals, but the type of the toxin varies; botulinum C in birds and A, B and E in humans. 

The toxin has been recognised as a major cause of mortality in wild birds since the 1900s. Thus, mass bird deaths, while a tragic occurrence, are apparently not totally unusual, and have been known to happen in other parts of the world.  For example, reportedly 7,000 water birds died in Lake Michigan in 2007 and 2008, followed by another 4,000 in 2012. In the wake of the Lake Michigan deaths, studies conducted by the U.S. Government’s National Wildlife Health Center identified several environmental factors - including pH level, salinity, temperature, and oxidation-reduction potential in the sediments and water - as significant factors influencing the likelihood of botulism outbreaks in wetlands.

The Indian Veterinary Research Institute’s diagnosis is that November’s outbreak of avian botulism that caused the mass deaths at Sambhar was caused by the climate. Water levels at Sambhar were fluctuating throughout the year. While it was a particularly hot and dry summer, the monsoon was unusually plentiful.  As a result, the water level reached the lake bed after a gap of 20 years. The good monsoon provided a favourable environment for the bacteria – which need anaerobic (absence of oxygen) conditions, as they do not grow in acidic conditions - to spread. The temperature of the water was about 25 degree Celsius, and its pH ranged between 7.4- 9.84. Bacteria growth also requires a nutrient-rich substrate, like areas with large amounts of decaying plant or animal materials. The monsoon had brought with it a large population of crustaceans (like shrimps, crabs, and prawns), invertebrates (snails) and plankton (like algae), living organisms capable of hosting the bacteria for a long period of time. According to reports, the bacteria is also found in the gills and digestive tracts of healthy fish. It reproduces through spores and these spores can remain dormant for years. They are resistant to temperature changes and drying. And when conditions are favourable, the spores get activated. The IVRI report noted that after the monsoon, when the water levels receded, there might have been an increase in salinity levels which could have led to the death of these living organisms. At this point in time, the spores could have been activated. (https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/avian-botulism-killed-18-000-birds-at-sambhar-govt-report-67866).

According to another theory, ‘a bird-to-bird cycle’ could also have led to the tragedy. In such an event, maggots feeding on dead birds can concentrate the toxin. Birds feeding on dead birds can get affected. This might explain the deaths mainly of omnivorous and insectivorous birds and the successful survival of herbivorous birds at Sambhar.

Scientists believe that botulism outbreaks are likely to become more and more frequent as climate change alters wetland conditions to favour bacteria and pathogens. Previous studies have found that outbreaks tend to occur when average temperatures are above 21 degrees Celsius, and during droughts. Given the recent evidence of unabated global warming, all of this is cause for anxiety about the future of our wetlands as havens for birds.

The bird deaths have also set off a public scrutiny of the state of affairs at Sambhar Lake.  Benignly overlooked by everybody, the conditions prevailing there would seem to be in total violation of the Ramsar Convention.  The Convention requires that nations signing in to report changes if any occurring in the natural environment of their designated wetlands, whether brought about by natural causes or man-made.   The scrutiny following the mass bird deaths found that in addition to the monopoly licence given to the sole government-owned salt extraction company - Sambhar Salts Ltd., a joint venture of Hindustan Salts Ltd. and the state government -  several illegal and unregulated private parties have also been active at the Lake and are, in fact, extracting far larger quantities than the government unit. This raises the possibility that a potential cause of the bacterial load could be toxicity of the water due to excessive salt extraction through questionable means – for example, multiple borewells have been drilled into the lake bed for extraction of water and their storage in pans for evaporation - by these illegal salt units.  

Nor, indeed, is the notionally ‘legal’ government unit totally blameless.  Among other sins, people on the ground might well be in collusion with the private units for shared profits from the private salt extraction.  It has also come to light that this government-owned salt production unit has signed a contract with a private event management company, selling all commercial and tourism rights to it.  All in the name of promoting tourism. More investigations – if they ever get done and followed up - will likely tell us what further damage will be laid at the door of these fragile wetlands by  uninformed ‘tourism promotion’ plans, and commercial projects driven solely by short-term monetary profits.  

In the Pichavaram Mangroves – the second largest mangrove forest in the country, second only to the Sunderbans in Bengal - that I visited in Tamil Nadu in south India – located close to the temple town of Chidambaram - permission given to resorts to operate on the shores of the mangroves, and to companies for the erection of cellphone towers – another case of pandering to insatiable human greed - have already had the effect of frightening away considerable numbers of the water bird population and pushing them deeper into the undergrowth. The resorts have since been shut down (but ugly evidence of their former presence continue to dot the shore in the form of abandoned, decaying buildings). But the cellphone towers are still active, and other ‘tourism’ plans are on the government’s anvil (no doubt on the grounds that money needs to be raised for conservation) (https://www.savista.com/worlds-second-largest-mangrove-forest-pichavaram-tamil-nadu/).  

No tourism in sensitive natural areas must be planned for without active consultation with and active oversight by naturalists with the necessary professional knowledge and expertise. It is unfortunate that Public-Private Partnerships in vital projects are always seen only in terms of government and private interests.  There is need to include another element to the ‘Public’ component, in the case of projects where natural heritage is involved, namely conservationists/citizen-activists/environmental scientists/lawyers specialising in environmental law/environmental journalists – people who can collectively muster the expertise and commitment  to bring knowledge, scrutiny and public debate to bear on interlinked issues of human and natural survival.        

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Parables on Recycling

This one is from the Buddha’s life.

 “One day, as the Buddha sat in deep thought about the world and ways of instilling goodness in human beings, he was approached by one of his disciples.

The disciple said humbly, “Oh teacher! You are so concerned about the rest of the world! Why don’t you also look into the welfare and needs of your own disciples?”

The Buddha: “Tell me, how can I help you?”

Disciple: “Master! My attire is worn out beyond the limits of decency. Could I get a new one, please?”

The Buddha looked at him closely and found that the robe did, indeed, appear to be in bad condition and needing of replacement. He asked the store-keeper to give the disciple a new robe. The disciple thanked the Buddha and retired to his own room. A little while later, the Buddha visited his disciple and asked him if his new clothes were comfortable and whether there was anything else that he needed.

Disciple: “Thank you, Master. The new robe is indeed very comfortable. I need nothing more.”

The Buddha: “Having got a new one, what did you do with your old robe?”

Disciple: “I have begun using it as my bedspread.”

The Buddha: “I hope, then, that you have disposed of your old bedspread?”

Disciple: ” No, no, Master. I am now using my old bedspread as my window curtain.”

The Buddha: ” And what about your old curtain?”

Disciple: “That is being used to handle hot utensils in the kitchen.”

The Buddha: “Oh, I see. Could you tell me what they did with the old cloths they were already using in kitchen?”

Disciple: “Those are being used to mop the floor.”

The Buddha:” Then… the old rug that was being used to mop the floor…?”

Disciple: “Master, since the rug was already tattered, we could not find any better use for it but as a source of wicks for the oil lamp which is right now lighting up your study ….”

The Buddha smiled in contentment and walked out of the disciple’s room.

_________________________

The Buddha’s approach to conservation may sound extreme to the present ‘buy-use-discard’ generation that is living in an era of rapid innovation and even more frenetic consumerism.

But this approach of using things to the last thread, so to say, rings a bell with me, as I am sure it does with many of my generation in India, wedged as we were into the tail-end of a pre-industrial culture during our childhood and growing up years. In fact, it was one of my friends of my generation who sent me this story.

Reading it brought back to me that my earliest and most vivid childhood memories of recycling and conservation was watching my mother. We didn’t use words like “recycling” and “conservation” then. It was simply everyday behaviour. And through ordinary practice, it got communicated across the generational divide.

My mother never wasted anything. Nor did she hoard things that were not useful to her. From time to time she gave away a lot of things to known and unknown people… relatives, families of her domestic staff, institutions and causes that worked in the name of the poor and needy such as jumble sales, earthquake or flood relief efforts, etc. The things she gave away were always in good shape, the kind of stuff that could be immediately put to use, the kind of stuff that she would readily use for herself. One of her mottoes was, when you give things away let them be from the best that you have; if you cannot bear to do that, it is better not to give at all.

Which meant that whatever became old or torn was not given away but stood around forever in our house, asking to be dealt with. Every loft and cupboard in the house had at least one or more bundles of what she dramatically labelled “RAGS” in bold letters… Stuff for recycling. Discarded pillow cases became dusters. Old towels became floor mops. The sturdy hems of discarded sari petticoats or cast-off window curtains became string for tying up bundles of stuff (anything that needed to be bundled would be first neatly wrapped in a discarded sari length and then tied with these adapted “strings”). My father’s torn dhotis (white sarongs worn by men) were cut into squares and folded away neatly to serve as polishing cloths for silver and brass objets d’art, and to shine glassware to a high gloss. And the tornest bits of torn material became use-once-and-dispose rags for cleaning the oil lamps in the puja (worship) room, or mop up accidentally spilt anything in the house, or keep the floor or table tops clean when we lit the hundreds of earthenware oil lamps at Diwali to decorate the house… Leftover scraps from material bought for making dresses, shirts, curtains would be transformed into tote bags for vegetable and grocery shopping, shoe bags, inside-liners for cushions and pillows … The list of uses that she found for ‘waste’ was endless.

I realize now that it had nothing to do with being rich or poor, or the ability or inability to afford to buy new things. We were an affluent family, and lacked for nothing. What my mother was doing was to practice a traditional approach to resources whether natural or man-made… to stretch their lives by careful use… to put them through multiple lives.

The winds of change began to creep in when I was into my late teens. Plastic had recently become big time in India, and a lot of affluent urban middle class folks began to start feeling defensive or  ashamed  about looking “traditional”… this was called being “behenji-ish”, if you lived in north India, and “mami-ish” if you lived in the south of the country…The change started in upper middle class homes, with discarding the ubiquitous use of stainless steel tableware and switching to porcelain, and included discarding old styles of reusing and recycling, and the products associated with them, like cloth carry bags, stainless steel mobile water containers (koojas in Tamil) meant for long train journeys, stainless steel mobile food containers called “tiffin carriers”… And so on.

How liberating it felt, when one travelled in the West, to set forth on shopping trips without carrying one’s own cloth bags! And how treasured the sturdy plastic bags that one brought back home,  bulging with purchases. People returned from foreign trips with huge stacks of plastic shopping bags (because you couldn’t get them in India then!)…You could see plastic bags tumbling out of ladies’ suitcases when customs officials looking for dutiable goods (India was a highly State-controlled economy in those days and the import of foreign goods of every kind was prohibited, or heavy duties needed to be paid on them) found plastic bags instead.   As part of this new modernism, eating in restaurants or off the street, and drinking whatever water was available without checking the source,  became the preferred option to carrying one’s own food and water, something that was now seen as being very old fashioned and middle class, indeed.

It had to come back to us from the West. Like many other “progressive” ideas! By the time the modern environmental consciousness of the 1970s matured into the alternative individual life styles in the 1990s, educated Europeans could be seen walking to the market carrying their own cloth bags. And the first generation of those bags were pretty ordinary looking too…They had none of the frills and embroidery and other embellishments, so lovingly put into cloth bags that fell out of every cupboard of an Indian household! 

I, of course, was charmed by this new turn of events. I realize today how much of my mother’s practices I still hold on to, things that I never gave up even when they had become very unfashionable in the metropolitan India of the 1960s and 1970s. Today, at home, I get dubbed “kabaadiwala” – waste collector – by my husband for my pains!  But I persist. Imagine my delight when my young son – now in his mid 20s – who left home when he was 16 to go abroad for higher education told me that he continues with many conservation practices he had seen me and my mother follow!

I am going to send him this Buddha story. And I hope that you, dear reader, enjoy it too.

[brihadabombast-blog]

#retreat #traveller #retreatforyoga

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Searching for Sustainability:  ‘Earth Living’ as a Way of Life

”We cannot have harmony and balance in our lives if we forget to include the earth and natural rhythms in our lives. Nature, in all its myriad forms, is the most powerful force on earth. Although mankind has tried, we have not found a way to match its awesome power, but we have found ways to work with it. Science often confirms the wisdom of the ancients who observed and then harnessed nature’s rhythms and cycles to shape and enhance their lives. We can begin to do this in our own lives by first paying attention to our own natural rhythms, such as when we wake or when we feel the need to sleep. If possible, we may want to try to rise and sleep with the sun or live without electricity for a weekend and then monitor how we feel. We can make the choice to eat the foods of the seasons and to seek fresher, locally grown, or organic produce whose own cycles have not been tampered with by technology. We can create harmony in our homes by making a smooth transition between our indoor and outdoor spaces. By bringing some of the outdoors inside and taking some of our indoor décor out, we can simultaneously enjoy nature and the comforts of home and the feeling that our living space is expanded. Then, whether inside or out, we can lounge on a comfortable piece of furniture and feel the wind, inhale the scent of deeply breathing plants, listen for the many songs of life, and observe the moon and the stars. As we do this more often, we may find ourselves noticing the pull of the full moon on bodies of water, as well as the water in bodies, or the music of the night acting as a lullaby. When we seek balance in our lives, we want to balance not just our roles in life but also the natural elements in our spaces. Having representations of the elements in the colors, shapes, and textures of our homes will appeal to our mind, body, and spirit. We may find that when we sync ourselves with nature’s rhythms, we ride the waves of energy to feel more in harmony with life and the world around us.” ___________________ The above piece was sent to me recently by a well-wisher ("Daily OM"). It inspired me to reflect on how, without calling it ‘earth living’, the decision to migrate from my busy life in Mumbai to come and live in the countryside at my husband’s hereditary family estate, whose restoration he took on as his retirement project, provided a spur to craft precisely such a life.  I describe below some of the highs and lows of being at this countryside retreat. Let me hasten to say that everybody does not need to migrate to the countryside; I just had the option and decided to give it a go.  Indeed, it is possible for all of us, wherever we might be, to establish connections with nature… in small or big ways.  Being where I am currently makes it easy for me, and I feel grateful for the opportunity to experience the rhythms of nature in this little corner of India.   Whether in the traditional architecture of the house where the central courtyard brings the sun, moon, stars, trees and birdsong right into the haveli … the interior décor that we have designed where we have drawn extensively on themes from nature… our diverse open and enclosed spaces which we try to creatively adapt to the dictates of the weather and seasons… our indulgence for flickering candles  and oil lamps  in the courtyard in place of electric lights that help us stay in harmony with starlight in the late evenings … our homegrown/locally sourced and organically cultivated food that makes us feel close to the earth…the natural water that we draw from deep bore wells for all our needs including drinking, cooking and even the swimming pool that doubles up as an irrigation resource...Life at the estate brings with it a lot that is good about nature. But there is also the ‘bad’, that we have learnt to take in our stride.  It has helped us learn the wisdom that what is ‘bad’ for us - comfort-loving humans - is almost always ‘good’ for nature (which is probably why the ‘bad’  is there in the first place! ). For example, our countryside home on the edge of the city  has been repurposed as a boutique property, and the guiding principle of this property is  sustainability. It welcomes people from all over the world but is particularly favourably inclined towards travellers who subscribe to an environmental ethic and who are deeply concerned about the future of the planet. It remains fully open to guests for only seven months of the year - October to April - when the weather is cool and comfortable.  It is also open through the peak monsoon month of August when the weather is cool, skies cloudy, and the surrounding natural vista a verdant stunning green.  This strategy of remaining open just for a few selective months is a poor business strategy!  But we have come to terms with the loss of revenue, rather than opt to keep our air-conditioners running 24/7 through the summer months, involving profligate use of energy.  How ironical that when the weather is too hot for humans, the period from the end of spring and through the summer is when the birds on the property are at their busiest songster best, making it the ideal bird watching season where common birds of the north Indian plains are concerned!   Again, during phases in the hot summer,  we have to cope with masses of sand flying into our open-air pool due to occasional fierce sandstorms - called aandhi in Hindi - that also wrench leaves off trees and hurl them into the courtyard.  The paradox here is that if there were no frequent sandstorms in this part of Rajasthan, there would be no plentiful rains in that year.  We have therefore learnt to welcome the sandstorms, and to simply avoid using the pool on the days that it has taken a beating. Not having guests during these periods does away with having to be apologetic about what is a perfectly natural occurrence, but which guests may not always understand or appreciate. In the humid ‘short summer’ that lasts for a fortnight to three weeks at the end of the rains - through much of September - the luxuriant growth of insect life in our surroundings renders the late evenings somewhat stressful if we use too many electric lights, as the bright lights have a fatal attraction for these insects.  When we have guests staying with us, we need to use full lighting, yet keep insects under control for enhanced guest comfort.  This raises the huge, and for us ethical, question of whether to spray?  Or avoid chemicals altogether and let nature take its course. In our neck of the woods, our resident starlings love the taste of the local insects.  On the morning after a particularly insect-filled evening, they fly into the courtyard in pairs and within a couple of hours achieve a complete clean-up.  During particularly humid 'short summers', therefore, we avoid taking bookings, thus resolving the dilemma of how to assure guest comfort while remaining true to our environmental ethic.  We are constantly having to witness pigeons falling dead around us,  after having gorged themselves on the peanut crop which, because it is a high-value crop for the surrounding farmers, is heavily treated with insecticides.  One reason why our grounds are a bird-watcher’s paradise with the numbers of new species growing every year, is that our property is chemical-free.

Again, for about two weeks in the late spring when the late mustard crop is being harvested, the tiny black flying insects that live and feed in the mustard crop through the growing season are forced to flee their habitat.  Death, then, is their only alternative, and the only death they know is death by drowning.  As if by instinct, they make their way to our swimming pool and commit mass suicide.  If we come to know that some farms around us are about to harvest a late mustard crop, we decline bookings for that period and simply allow what must happen to happen! These are a few of the ways in which we try to go with the rhythms of nature and our immediate environment…Our biggest rewards are the pure air we breathe, the pure water we drink, the simple organically grown healthy food we eat, and the enviable freedom from mosquitoes that we enjoy. Another of our rewards is our huge population of wild bees.  It is said that the presence of wild bees on a property is a certificate of the property’s  adherence to organic principles.  Every third morsel of food that we eat on this planet is attributable to the labour of wild bees. It becomes everybody’s responsibility, therefore, to engage in actions that keep bees alive and busy and plentiful.