Wildlife ~ Hatod

Shivpuri District has the third highest count* of liscenced guns amongst all districts in India, and it would not be unreasonable to assume that it has a substantial count of unliscensed firearms too. Beyond this, it has been the happy hunting grounds for generations of emperors, kings, and all and sundry ~ from amongst whom quite a few still "indulge" or even make a living off it, although hunting is completely illegal now. (*highest count of guns-per-district in India is immediately to the north, and second highest count is immediately to the south)

In just the three years that I have regularly been visiting Hatod, there has been a palpable decline in the wildlife population in terms of random and incidental sightings. This takes a special significance from the fact that we lie just a kilometer from the porous eastern stone-boundary walls of Madho National Park (260 sq km after recently being expanded north and east of us upto the Sind River at Amola and Narwar).

It must be said, however, that patience, luck and intrigue could have one still sight chital, chinkara, Indian gazelle, blue bull, sambar, four-horned antelope, blackbuck, sloth bear, wild dog, fox, leopard, panther, striped hyena, hare, porcupine, jackal, wild boar, and the ubiquitous common langur and rhesus maquaqe.

Avifauna includes cormorant, painted stork, peacock, white ibis, laggar falcon, sparrow-hawk, lapwing, woodpecker, pigeon, dove, babbler, mynah, parakeet, purple sunbird, peafowl, flycatchers, bee-eaters, kingfishers, egrets, and other water-birds of all kinds, pheasant, quail, parrots, mayna, and the golden oriole.

The entire area is also good reptile territory, with marsh crocodile, gharial, and a wide variety of other interesting fellows such as the mighty Indian python (amongst m-a-n-y snakes), the deadly varanus (no antidote to it's bite, and he can jump six feet at you), monitor lizards, salamanders, several varieties of frog (including at least one tree-climber) and tortoise/turtle, with everything inbetween.

Insects are found in mindboggling variety and numbers, especially through the monsoon.

Whereas we had thought him to be probably the last genuine migrant tiger we'd ever hear of, see the newsflash below

NEWSFLASHES Late 1997: A migrant tigress arrived as if from nowhere with two young cubs and lived upon the hill near The Last Resort for more than three months, before migrating away to unknown horizons in the winter. A calf attacked on our site by the family one night (probably as part of the cubs' training by mum) surprisingly survived a pretty grave mauling after the tigers were chased away with a lot of pot'n'pan banging by our staff. Amongst the many people who claimed to have actually seen the tigers in the course of those three months were the young daughter and grandson of our man Maiya (read about Maiya on the Pixpage), who accidently came within about twenty feet of the cats just across the canal from our site, on a separate occasion. Mid 1997: An excellent dog I was rather fond of got taken by a leopard in the early summer. Kalu ("Blackie" in Hindi) was the only dog I knew to be able to catch monkeys. 2002 UPDATE: The hill we adjoin alongside the Barhai was scatterred with poisoned grain by unknown persons to 'hunt' wildfowl in the winter of 2001-02

Another recent and noteworthy wildlife incident was the poisoning of the Barhai River (which flows alongside our site from the park, and back into it) soon after the 1996 monsoons. Fish of all descriptions and sizes upto five feet in length died en masse, and certain tribal folks were said to have had a party of it for days. One theory has it that the incident was a "traditional" jamboree, but no one seems to have ever heard of anything like it before ~ reports were that the fish all tasted "funny". Another theory suggests that it was more likely a small group of poachers trying out a new method of "fishing". Finally, a third theory (which I prefer) opines that the whole matter was just one indicator on how widespread has been the poisoning of our environment on perceived Agricultural Imperatives.

In the Indian agrarian sector today, there's literally bags of poisons of all kinds to be had all over the place (probably subsidised too), and the bottom line on any poisoned river could probably be traced to simple ignorance, oversights, and accidents.

Venison... 1/5 the price, by weight, of poultry chicken
Pheasant.. 1/5 the price of 1kg. poultry chicken, per piece (cooked)
Quail.... 1/4 the price of 1kg poultry chicken, per two pieces (cooked)
Fish from the lakes inside Madho National Park is available early mornings everyday at 1/3 the price, by weight, of poultry chicken
Free-Range Chicken costs 2-3 times the price of poultry chicken
Black-market Bounty for most big cats is about USD 1,000/- (to just drop one and report it's location)