cantonments and British-owned tea and coffee estates, to build teak ships for the British Navy, but all this depletion was never brought out in the open in absence of proper documentation and by shutting out all public scrutiny. All along the foresters were misusing their regulatory policing powers with impunity to harass the forest and forest fringe dwellers and extort bribes and other favours from them. At the same time, they were favouring the rich and powerful such as the British tea and coffee estate owners, Railway companies and somew hat later forest-based industries such as paper and rayon mills.
Salim Ali
Salim Ali, a key figure in forging forest and wildlife management policies in independent India, was a remarkable man. He was a friend of my father and I first met him at the age of 14. Charmed by his knowledge, his enthusiasm, his wit, I decided to become afield ecologist like him. My father had been a member of the Bombay Natural History Society since early 1930’s and he gifted me a Life Membership on my 21st birthday in 1963. So, ] spent a lot of time with Salim Ali at the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) and on many field trips over 3 decades from 1956 to 1986 when he passed away at the age of 90 years. I also had the privilege of jointly publishing with him a paper on the communal roosting habits of birds. He once told me that there have been many man-eating tigers, but he was among the few tiger-eating men. He andhis good friend and collaborator Dillon Ripley had shot and eaten tiger steak in Khasi hills.
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