Nature Restores! What virtuous consequences has the lockdown led to?

‘Nature Restores’ - Undisturbed daytime nesting!

The October 2018’s Cyclone Titli, and the floods that followed, left huge piles of waste over about 8 km of the Rushikulya coast, Odisha which resulted in keeping the nesting Olive Ridleys away in 2019.

 

Nature’s splendid maternity ward wonder! 

As the sun begins to light up the eastern sky, Olive Ridley mothers heave themselves back into the sea after arribada. 

 

February 2018. Rushikulya.

But this year in March 2020 - lakhs of Olive Ridley turtles displayed the unusual phenomenon of day-time mass nesting at the Rushikulya rookery coast. Undisturbed mass nesting of Olive Ridleys at Odisha’s Rushikulya rookery was possible due to the restrictions in place for the COVID-19 threat. Is this a sign of Nature ‘restoring’ the earth in this time of COVID-19? 

    So, is nature 'resetting' the earth in this time of lockdown … is the earth really ‘healing’? Are animals ‘reclaiming the planet’? Has nature ‘triumphed’? The answer is yes and no: it depends on what you are looking at, the angle you are interpreting it from! In this write-up, we will briefly examine through an anecdote ‘What exactly do we mean by Nature restoration?’, ‘What virtuous consequences has the lockdown led to?’ and ‘Sync of the mankind with Nature since ages’. In the end, we will explore how we can sustain this ‘Nature’s Restoration’ by just changing our outlook.

1990s - Trysting with ‘Nature’

Since 1992 we are living in a home that nestled in the lap of a lush half-acre garden in a tribal town of Kandhamal of Odisha whose administrative setup comes under the 5th Schedule of the Indian Constitution. Those days the garden was unruly but had a rich band of old trees of mango, guava, jackfruit, casuarina, pomegranate, water-apple (jamrul), and mud-apple (chiku). The frontage had red, white, and yellow champas blooming through the year while multi-hued seasonal blooms like phlox, petunias, gerberas, dianthus, marigolds, sunflowers and chrysanthemums would delightfully fill up the carved out flower-beds in the lawns.

    Dense foliage and fruit-laden trees ensured a steady stream of avian visitors into our home. Those were days when traffic was much less compared to what it is today. Mornings, therefore, were calm and quiet; we waking up invariably to the songs and calls of the choristers in our home grove. Orioles and parakeets would perch for long hours feasting on the fruits, unperturbed by human presence or by the dogs whose number grew from three to seventeen over the years. Crows, pigeons, mynas, and koels abounded in the trees and in the large courtyards, their calls, chirps, and coos as omnipresent as their day-long activities. With many skylights all over the house, hundreds of sparrows lived with us, their twittery chirps stamping the house with the charm of unadulterated homeliness. Birds and birdsong were an intrinsic part of our everyday lives, their presence taken much for granted. But as the years rolled by, the count of avian visitors waxed and waned … and finally to a stand-still.

    The onslaught of concrete, use of pesticides, and lack of skylights and thatched roofs, birds disappeared in our surroundings. Sadly this tribal city has lost all its sparrows. With scarce access to open spaces and our cooped up lifestyle in the company of gadgets ensured that we hardly notice or understand the beauty of the environment around us or its criticalities. Music from i-pods and i-pads rules our lives but our generation has no idea about the marvelous sounds and vocalizations that nature has gifted us.

[A painting of ‘Pale-capped Pigeons/Columba punicea’ – Acrylic on Canvas]

 Lockdown vs. Nature’s restoration

Nowadays waking up to the ringtones of alarm, was a regular morning habit for my father, until the 21-day countrywide lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic began from March 24, 2020 midnight. He couldn’t quite recall seeing ‘5 Pale-capped Pigeons/Columba punicea’ in our garden, the rare species of pigeons that had been classified as “vulnerable” by IUCN. Infact, except for a few sites in Thailand, this bird has not been sighted for years in any of its known habitats. He watched in awe and it was his first sighting of a flock of preening ‘Pale-capped Pigeons’ and the feeling was truly elating for him!

What could be a more enriching experience of ‘Nature Restoration’ than this!

    With human beings cooped up in their homes because of COVID-19 lockdown, in India and elsewhere, the flora and fauna have come out to reclaim spaces from where it had been elbowed out. The world is certainly a quieter place in these days of the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With cars off the streets, seismologists investigating earthquakes in London, Brussels and Los Angeles report that the ambient noise levels are so low they are now better able to detect even smaller seismic events in these cities. 

    After decades, the River Ganga has started breathing again. It is rejuvenating, marine life is returning and its water in certain stretches has been classified as 'fit for drinking'. Industries that discharge effluents in the river are shut and humans who pollute the river are stuck indoors, due to the lockdown.

    The residents of Jalandhar in Punjab, woke up to a scintillating sight of the Dhauladhar mountain range and at the same time the waters of the Venice canals has a surprising sight – not just a clear view of the sandy bed, but shoals of tiny fish, scuttling crabs and multicolored plant-life.

    Already, data shows that the main cities of India are recording much lower levels of harmful microscopic particulate matter known as PM 2.5, and of nitrogen dioxide, which is released by vehicles and power plants. The sudden fall in pollutants and the subsequent blue skies signal a dramatic shift for India - which has 21 of the world's 30 most polluted cities, according to the IQAir AirVisual's 2019 World Air Quality Report

[Source - Internet CNN]

‘Live in sync with nature’

Mankind has been singing the song of the wild from prehistoric times. This is depicted in the primitive cave paintings of Bhimbetka, where 10,000 years ago, man illustrated every facet of nature that harmoniously co-existed with him. Early man’s destiny was inexorably entwined with nature; from nature, he derived sustenance and shelter and this led to the early understanding that it was the forces of nature that enabled his survival. All ancient and indigenous cultures, therefore, display a rich tradition of ethical protection of nature.

[Stone Age rock shelters with paintings at Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh are the earliest known traces of human life in India.]

[The Pashupati Seal is a steatite seal  of the Indus Valley Civilization.]

[Representative image of scared groves found in India which is on the decline.]

    India has a rich ecological tradition of “sacred groves” – forests that were marked for temples and deities and thus received protection from any kind of human encroachment or activity. In fact, the tradition of “sacred groves”, which continues until today in parts of the western ghats, has resulted in large pockets of rich biodiversity that are believed to be the last resort of many endemic species, which are otherwise not seen outside these protected areas. Our traditional folklores and festivals eulogize nature in its myriad forms.

    Taking cues from the virtuous consequences of the lockdown, it can be asserted, “Though the mankind has lost the chord of interconnectedness in the universe, still we can find this lost chord with our wisdom, intense efforts & sacrifice to restore some balance and to reconnect sensibly with the elements that are the basis of our sustenance. Only then will there be harmony in our existence!” 

Changing our ‘outlook’

We can develop technologies to overcome nature and re-shape our environment. There is no doubt progress in science and technology has served humanity well over centuries and they will continue to be called upon to serve society for centuries to come. What we will need, however, is an outlook that seeks to harness our knowledge of science to work in harmony with nature, rather than attempt to bulldoze it. 

    Man and Nature have been woven inexorably since the beginning of the human race. The attempt, therefore, should be to maintain complete balance with nature and its many aspects so that the tuning between human beings and their nurturer remained harmonious!

Author:

Somesh Ranabijuli

Madhusudan Law College, Cuttack, Odisha