Table Mountain hides Himalayan blunder

It's not widely known that Table Mountain, the famous backdrop to the World Cup Cricket being played in South Africa, is home to the endange...

It’s not widely known that Table Mountain, the famous backdrop to the World Cup Cricket being played in South Africa, is home to the endangered Himalayan Tahr. And that backdrop is turning red, the colour of blood. The South African government has ordered massacre of this lovely, long-haired goat, since it’s an exotic species introduced from India. In fact, about half the population has been already wiped out.

The natural home of the Himalayan Tahrs is the Western Himalayas. At least four of this species were taken to South Africa by Sir Cecil Rhodes, founder of diamond company DeBeers, in the 1920s. They were housed in a zoo at the base of Table Mountain from where they escaped, bred and established a colony.

Recently, the South African National Parks (SAN Parks) authority, the government body which looks after the wild areas, decided that since the Himalayan Tahrs were an exotic species, they had to be exterminated as they were destroying the natural habitat. And then the bloodbath began.

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Incensed by this, concerned individuals from Cape Town formed a support group called Friends of The Tahr (FOTT) and sought intervention of the local courts which stayed the killing of these animals.

Jeanne Wadee, an active member of FOTT in Cape Town, says the ‘‘Indian public should know about this brutal treatment of an emblematic and revered Himalayan animal, before they are — like so many other species — doomed to extinction.’’

Now, thanks to the intervention of a large number of such groups from across the world and individuals, including Maneka Gandhi, there is hope that these animals could be brought back to India. This happened after FOTT approached Maneka, who was then a minister in the Atal Behari Vajpayee government, in the hope that India might provide a safe haven for these animals.

Maneka, wrote to the South African government, saying that ‘‘since these animals originally came from India, we would be happy to take these animals back as they are an extremely endangered species and would be very valuable to us’’. This stopped the killings.

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The Government then ordered the director of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehra Dun, to examine the possibility of airlifting these animals to a sanctuary in Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal or Kashmir. V B Sawarkar, till recently director of the WII, spent 10 days in South Africa on this task and said in his report to the Ministry of Environment and Forests that ‘‘the helicopter net-gun capture technique emerged as the best option for capture of Tahr.’’

This was almost a year back. The SAN Parks authorities are once again getting ready to kill the animals as the FOTT has not been able to raise the $ 150,000 needed for the capture and translocation of the animals.

Maneka says ‘‘the animals have to be saved as there are so few left in the wild and these would be a welcome addition in the Indian breeding pool.’’ Time is running out.