Goru Goru Ka Gorukana, Kadu Kapadi Madgonai, Dr C Medegowda sings as he tells the story of his folks – the Solega neighborhood of Biligiri Rangan Hills, Karnataka. “Goru Goru is the sound of the evergreen forest or Kana. The forest is our God and so is every tree, flower, fruit and wildlife.” A Senior Research Fellow at Dr. Medegowda Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bangalore are associates.
Solega is a small neighborhood of about 30,000 folks, who historically practiced a hunter-gatherer way of life, in addition to small-scale agriculture, and now ranges from high-altitude evergreen forest to lowland scrub, br. Live in small villages within the hills. jungle.
spending a few years interviewing the elders of the tribe, a paper revealed final month Gives particulars of how they perceive wildlife interactions and up to date ecological modifications within the space. The examine goals to “give a voice to the Solega people, as indigenous voices and perspectives are often absent from discourses surrounding endangered wildlife, invasive species and general biodiversity conservation.”
Most of the animals of this space are worshiped by the neighborhood. The tiger is seen because the animal of Lord Madeshwar, Pandeshwar is the deity of the elephant, Gaur is the animal of Lord Karappa, and Sambhar is the animal of Lord Kadodaya Muttaraya.
“During the village festival, we also worship the leaves, flowers and fruits collected for the rituals. The Solega community has learned to live in harmony with the wildlife. I think we have a very good sense of smell and hearing and we can sense if a wild animal is coming or not. Recently, to capture a tiger in Bandipur-Nagarhole area, forest officials took help from our community as we are born to talk with nature,” mentioned Dr. Medegowda explains. He is without doubt one of the authors of the paper revealed in Frontiers in Conservation Science.
Festival of Solega Community (C. Madegowda)
The paper particulars attention-grabbing tales from the neighborhood. A Solega elder recounts how their god protects them from wild beasts:
“Lord Mahadevaswamy says to the animals: My children are coming, you must not see them. The tiger becomes a termite-hill, the sloth bear becomes a boulder, the elephant becomes a hill and the snake becomes a weed. This is a boon. That was given to us by our God… But if you make a mistake (commit a sin), He will surely come closer to you. [these animals]. See I must have done something wrong and that’s why the elephants came near my house. “Well, I’ve sinned, I’ll do a puja (ritual appeasement) in your title, now go” [I said]. That’s what we believe. If we sin, we must please the gods.”
Even birds play an necessary function and the calls of some birds are regarded as foreboding. Solega additionally responds to birds with their very own vocal cues.
“There is no human-wildlife conflict; It is more of coexistence. Of course, there have been aggressive interactions, or aggressive interactions in the form of an elephant attacking their crop, but the community never responds to violence. And it is mediated by their religious beliefs,” says co-author Sameera Agnihotri, an alumnus of the Center for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore.
She describes how an invasive plant species, Lantana, has troubled the tribes. “The community believes that the invasion happened because their traditional leaf-litter fire practices were banned. Every year, the tribes would set fire to leaf litter in the forest in the months of January and February at a very slow and slow pace. This was before various laws were enacted by the government and the area was declared protected,” she provides. “How the forest used to look, how is it now, and it affected the nicely being of not solely its neighborhood but additionally the wildlife. There is far unhappiness locally about this. Lantana overgrowth has led to the lack of many varieties of grasses which might be the first meals supply for a lot of herbivores, together with elephants.
Asked if she plans to proceed working with Solega, Dr. Agnihotri says: “We have only touched the tip of the iceberg. There is a huge treasure, or a wealth of information, from which we all benefit. Maybe, it is yet to be documented. And it is fast disappearing.”
Co-author Dr Aung Si of the Institute of Linguistics of the University of Cologne, Germany, has additionally been working with Solega for a few years as a result of their language comprises a lot of their conventional ecological data.
“The Solega’s ability, like other indigenous communities in India, to adapt their activities to reduce conflict with wild animals, as well as their extensive traditional knowledge on various aspects of forest ecology and animal behavior, has made them conservationists. Conservation of local biodiversity and struggle to protect endangered species. Their presence in the forests of BR Hills should not be seen as unusual, problematic or contrary to conservation goals, but as a distinct advantage should be known, given that they have already lived for generations as stewards of the forest,” concludes the paper.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
