is undesirable are pointless and one must look at each particular case on its own merit. Bharatpur had been subject to grazing over 250 years and had nevertheless maintained huge populations of waterbirds. So it was unlikely that banning grazing would improve it as a waterbird habitat. Even if one advances it as a working hypothesis then the proper scientific approach would have been to try stopping grazing over one portion of the wetland, monitor the consequences and then to extend or reduce the area over which grazing was stopped. None of this was thought of at all and to the best of my knowledge Salim Ali never expressed any regrets at the death of several people as a result of the ill- considered action of stopping grazing over the whole area once for all.
Salim Ali had a most charming personality and has become a cult figure. Followers of his cult, a huge number of city-based nature conservation activists, the Wildlife First walas, spin a cobweb of ecological jargon without any scientific basis. Ours is a vast country with ecosystems ranging from high reaches of Himalayas to coral reefs of Andaman and Lakshadweep. Its rivers range over the great Ganga, Yamuna and Brahmaputra to shorter rivers like Vashishti, Kali, Mandovi and Periyar on the West Coast. A vast proportion of our lands are under cultivation, both under canal and groundwater irrigation and entirely rain-fed. More and more of the country’s surface is being built upon with burgeoning concrete jungles of cities and a growing network of roads and highways. This entire system has to be kept in view while thinking of conservation of biodiversity or even
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