Rom Whitaker: sharing the love for reptiles and amphibians

‘I am still hooked’
The Statesman 31 Jan 08;

ROM Whitaker is a legend. Presented with the 2006 Sanctuary-ABN AMRO Lifetime Service Award, he has been largely responsible for making reptiles and amphibians more acceptable to humans who usually recoil at the very thought of a snake, crocodile or lizard. What follows are excerpts from an interview:

What accounts for your lifelong love affair with herps?
While growing up in the USA, we mainly lived out in the country in northern New York state. Non-venomous snakes abound there and as a five-year-old, I was already catching them and keeping them as pets. Amazingly, my mother was totally supportive of my strange pursuit. I was interested in bugs and spiders too, but snakes were the most! Coming to India could have been dangerous for a snake-crazy kid but I survived my childhood and the fascination for snakes and other herps just grew and grew.

It grew to the point where you actually started a snake park, right?
Yes, that was in 1970. And it was called the Madras Snake Park, now the Chennai Snake Park. I am happy to say it is still going strong and has hundreds of thousands of visitors per year, half of them children. The Trust is run by a retired IAS officer, B Vijayaraghavan, one of those rare officers who always had a deep interest in wildlife and educating people.

Tell us about the Croc Bank? Are you still a part of this?
The Madras Crocodile Bank Trust was set up in 1976 to act as a gene bank
for all the world’s crocodilians. Today, it is home to 14 species of crocodiles, 14 species of turtles, lizards and snakes. It is also a premier institution for herpetological research and houses one of the best herpetological libraries in Asia. It is at the forefront of herp conservation in India with a major turtle project in the north, the new gharial conservation initiative and a research base in the Andaman Islands. I was the director for about 25 years until I stepped down in 2001. I’m still a trustee and advisor at the Madras Crocodile Bank.

Was there ever one defining wildlife moment you can identify that changed your life forever?
When I was about five years old, some little friends I was with, up in northern New York, killed a harmless snake. I put it into a jar and took it home. My older sister, Gail, was horrified and that impressed (and I suppose, saddened) me so much that I went right out and caught a live one to bring back and admire its beauty and grace. I was hooked then. I am still hooked today.

You are hooked to a life-threatening involvement, if I have it right. Are you actually allergic to snakebites? And what happens if you do get bitten?
Yes, I’m allergic to some snake venoms and also the anti-venom serum. I have no desire to die just yet and I am extremely careful in my old age. When I was in my wild 20s (the age at which you are “invincible”), I had a few serious snake bites, which taught me some important lessons that stuck with me all my life!

What is the real status of thegharial and can we save it?
There are just about 200 adult gharials left alive in the wild and the pressures on their survival are mounting by the day. Gharial survival is inextricably linked with the survival of our northern rivers (as are the fates of river dolphins, turtles, migratory waterfowl, otters and famous fish like the mahseer and hilsa). While some of us may be interested in the conservation of different species, a concept we call “wildlife management”, the real problem is “human management”. Unless the realisation that we are losing all of our rivers hits home, we will not only lose the wonderful gharial and the other river creatures, the stage is also being set for huge die-offs of our fellow human beings who are dependent on these rivers for survival.

If you had the resources, what kind of herp research would you most wish to undertake?
As we all know, good, effective conservation can only happen with good research as the basis. For the gharial, we need to know what their territories are, how far they migrate and what the critical factors are in their riverine habitats that determine whether they survive or not. For the king cobra and python, we need to know how far they roam, whether they have a home range and how large they grow. All this research requires dedicated field people and some fairly expensive radio telemetry equipment. The same argument holds true for the long list of other endangered herps like the leatherback sea turtle (the Andaman and Nicobar nesting beaches are some of the best in the world) and the myriad species yet to be described in the Western Ghats, Eastern Ghats and the North-east.

How could farming possibly help save the last 200 gharials?
The gharials were heavily hunted for their skins. The remaining populations were then limited to the few riverine habitats that weren’t destroyed by dams, barrages and siltation. Now they are being finished off by competing fishermen who always resented the closure of fishing in Protected Areas. Gharials (and muggers) are easy to rear in captivity from eggs collected in the wild and much more profitable than fish. Why catch fish for a small income when a reptile can earn you much more? Croc (including gharial) farming, (where animals are bred for the sale of skins) could ironically save the species if done right.

You have long championed people-oriented conservation such as the Irula Cooperative’s snake venom industry, the Irula Women’s Society’s tree planting programmes and, of course, the croc farming that you and I disagree about. Where do you stand with regard to the proposed Tribal Bill?
A uniform Tribal Bill for all tribals all over India may be a laudable idea but shows how badly the lawmakers have done their homework. What happens when each nuclear family develops into one or more families? Is there another 2.5 ha. available for them too? This is a complicated issue to which too little thought has been given in the face of real and perceived people’s problems and political pressures. Having roamed Indian forests for half a century, I know what human presence in a forest does and it’s rarely positive. If we can’t keep at least that four per cent Protected Area that India has left inviolate, we are dooming one of the richest wildlife legacies on the planet.

Thanks to field studies in different parts of the world, it is now apparent that “rescue” of wild animals and translocation to new, unfamiliar places is likely to end in disaster, snakes included. Do you have any message for the many snake rescuers around the country on this?
This is a tough question because very often when you get a snake call, unless you take a snake away from a household or garden, it is likely to be killed. It would be best to release the snake as close as possible to the place of capture, but in urban areas this is generally not an option. Since snake rescues must, under law, be done with the permission of the Forest Department, an area for release should be chosen with their help and approval that has the basic food, water and shelter requirements for snake survival. This means calling on the help of experts in field herpetology, essential if the rescue and release programme is to have any meaning.

Are there any young herp persons on the Indian horizon that give you reason to hope?
There are a good bunch of young herp persons in India now, more than I could have ever imagined back in the ‘60s when I was starting to get serious about studying and protecting them. They need training, encouragement and in the long run they need jobs in this field, which will only happen when the government, corporates and universities start taking conservation and research more seriously.

Do you have a message for kids?
My main message is something most kids already know: reptiles and amphibians are just about the most fascinating creatures in the world. But it is difficult to make grownups aware of just how wonderful and useful these animals are. It is up to kids to educate their parents and all adults (whose minds generally get closed to the wonders of nature) and open their minds to our dependence on the survival of wild places and wild creatures.
— Sanctuary Features