Eco Warriors: 6 leading activists, conservationists and scientists on what lies ahead
Debadityo Sinha was in Mirzapur way before an OTT show glamourised its violent earthiness. Unlike the show’s protagonists, he plays saviour to a lumbering resident of the forests – the sloth bear. His choices of weapon, in contrast to the trigger-happy stars on screen, are a camera, public interest litigations, a sense of responsibility and doggedness.
The 32-year-old has been threatened, offered bribes, slapped with allegations of misconduct, but it’s all par for course in environmental activism. In his careful, deliberate manner, Sinha explains: When there is land at stake, it’s always political.
Sinha, who grew up in Kolkata, was always interested in campaigning for the environment. But his activism was catalysed when he moved to Banaras Hindu University’s campus near Mirzapur for a Master’s degree in environmental sciences and technology over a decade ago. This was a sparse, upcoming facility still under development on roughly 2,700 acres. There were no smartphones, barely any cellular network, electricity for a few hours every day and nothing to do post morning classes. What he had in abundance was time and access to the jungle – Mirzapur is one of the most forested areas in Uttar Pradesh – getting familiar with local communities, waterfalls and the wildlife. It was here that he got introduced to and familiar with the sloth bear.
The turning point came when the organisation he founded in 2012 – Vindhyan Ecology and Natural History Foundation – decided to take on a proposed thermal power project in Mirzapur by Welspun Group (later sold to Adani Group) citing a threat to wildlife. When the National Green Tribunal in 2016 quashed the environmental clearance (EC) granted to the project, Sinha’s team earned some success, though it was short-lived. An Expert Appraisal Committee last June recommended an amendment to the earlier EC, bringing the project back to life.
That process helped him understand the region better. With the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), he did a two-year project, mapping the sloth bear’s habitat and then a seven-month-long camera trap survey for their protection. Unlike other bears, this nocturnal species that does not hibernate has evolved in the Indian subcontinent, though it’s either extinct or negligible in numbers in neighbouring countries.
The danger to this bear comes from poachers and game hunters, who use its body parts, especially bile from the gallbladder, for supposed medicinal reasons. The beasts also sometimes get into confrontations with local villagers, though by nature they are wary of humans. While the practice of using bears as dancing entertainers has largely stopped – it gets cover under the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act – there is supposed to have been a 40 per cent decline in the number of sloth bears in the last three decades.
“Their home range area, habitat, is not big,” says Sinha over a video chat from Noida. “They are smart enough to know which village is safe for them. But incidents of attacks happen when people don’t know how to react when they come face to face with one. Sloth bears can be aggressive.”
Read this article on GQ India website