Save your mama!

A couple of days back, I saw Maneka Gandhi on India TV discussing the recent rise in killing of wild animals and smuggling of various products thus obtained, especially across the border to Tibet. It seems, wearing animal fur is the new status symbol in Tibet. The statistics she mentioned were shocking. And more shocking was the fact which she emphasized that how easy it is to obtain skin stripped off poor animals gunned down illegally.
She offered solutions as well. But also pointed to the lethargy of the government by stating that not a single offender has been punished for poaching or smuggling animal products in the past few years. Arrests are made, but a couple of months later, one finds the fat scooped out from beneath Tiger skin hanging shamelessly above the law-executers leather waist-belts. Big names are sometimes noticed by the media only to publicize the name more than the felonious crime he/she was a part of.
The situation is very dismal. Laws are there. NGO's are there. Forest security authorities do their best to prevent hunting. But yet the crime is far from achieving a historical status.
Yesterday there was a report in the newspaper about Orrissa government planning to 'denotify' a part of a sanctuary, to allow mining of bauxite by an Anglo-Australian company. I wonder if the world would run out of its aluminium supply if its not obtained from this area adjacent to a homely habitat of tigers, deers, and scores of other mammalian and avian species! They are here only for cheap land and labor.

The photograph above of a night in the forest may be the last reminders we'd tell our grandchildren of the existence of something so beautiful on our planet.
Wildlife conservation is a scientific venture. Its not an issue of sentimentality towards animals who cannot run faster than the bullet chasing them. Its about saving our home. Its more than obvious that once wild animals like tigers and lions are wiped off (by being killed by hunters or perishing after running out of food supply due to killing of prey by hunters), the forest land would be open to fearless human encroachment. And human beings don't live in forests. So forests will have to go. With the flora, all the fauna dependent on it by the rule of evolution, would vanish. How do we think are we going to survive without all that?
We all are aware of the fine balance in an ecosystem, the food chains and webs, we learned them in school. Or did we? Although the market of poaching is dominated by the not-so-educated class, the buyers are mostly the effluent 'educated' ones. I don't want to give stats and details of this killed animal trade, but I am sure that majority of people don't really care that such a dangerous business is flourishing day after day. No wonder the government has bigger issues like illiteracy and poverty to look after(?).
Our planet is perhaps the only one in the entire universe that could support evolution of life so brilliantly that an intelligent species like ours took birth. But it happened over billions of years! I believe that the rule of nature is not extinction of old species but evolution into new species. The more fitter one replaces the worn out ones. And that happens on its own pace. We as meddlers are spoiling perhaps the greatest show in the universe. Also, how much ever hi-tech we become, we are still gonna be homo sapiens. We depend on our mother earth to survive.

The purpose of this post is to spread awareness about spreading awareness among the readers. Look, its high time that we start acting and thinking responsibly. Its for our good and the good of our children. We have to protect our home by at least not harming it. Don't buy wild-animal products, join wwf on line and contribute, plant trees, learn more, use private transport as less as possible. There are a million ways to help us save us. We at the least should take care of ourselves.