Forest babus build wall against science

[Guest guest]

Link:

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1061027/asp/frontpage/story_6922553.asp

 

Forest babus build wall against science

G.S. MUDUR

 

New Delhi, Oct. 26: Forest officials across India have been denying

scientists access to protected wildlife reserves or demanding

payment and even unethical authorship favours to permit entry,

leading conservation experts have alleged.

 

Without citing instances, a 14-member group of ecologists and

wildlife biologists has said research in wildlife reserves is today

dictated by the whims of a forest bureaucracy that has absolute

discretion whether or not to allow entry to researchers.

 

" Scientific inquiry is being throttled in a field where it is most

urgently needed, " wildlife ecologist M.D. Madhusudan with the Nature

Conservation Foundation, Mysore, and fellow ecologists warned today

in the journal Current Science of the Indian Academy of Sciences.

 

Researchers recounted to The Telegraph how one doctoral student was

denied permission to study primate behaviour in a forest in southern

India, and how wildlife officials sat for months over a proposal to

tag sea turtles, preventing the project from taking off.

 

In another case, scientists dropped a proposal to study wild

herbivores in the Northeast after forest officials dictated terms on

how to conduct the research, imposing such unrealistic conditions

that it was not worth pursuing, a scientist said.

 

" The when-and-where is not important, it's the why that we're

concerned about, " Madhusudan said.

 

" The problem is that the system does not provide incentives for

forest officials to support research, " said Kartik Shankar, a

biologist at the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian

Institute of Science in Bangalore.

 

" Some forest officials are enthusiastic and have helped us, but the

system doesn't thank them for it. In some cases, it has even cost

them in some ways, " Shankar said.

 

In their Current Science paper, the ecologists said permissions have

been denied without any justification. When access is granted, it is

often done with restrictions based on bureaucratic whims.

 

One set of researchers was charged several hundred rupees per day to

enter a protected area for research. In some cases, officials have

demanded co-authorship in research publications as a condition for

permission to conduct research, alleged the ecologists.

 

Some scientists believe that by stifling research, forest officials

prevent independent scientific audit of wildlife management

practices.

 

" In many instances, research results or observations of researchers

have been viewed as a source of embarrassment by the forest

departments, " the researchers said.

 

This is particularly so where the research explicitly deals with

illegal activities such as livestock grazing or hunting in protected

areas.

 

Scientists argue that research is needed not just to document

wildlife, but to also address problems related to conservation.

Without assessment, it is difficult to pick the best conservation

action or make corrections.