Gaurs like humans, humans like Gaurs - At Valparai

In my recent visit to Valparai, I heard and witnessed many instances where animals and humans live together, with & without conflicts. In Valparai, every single person, even a child would have a leopard story to tell. Same way, everyone will have an elephant encounter story too. I have heard from them that in night, sloth bears come and explore the recycle bins in the bus stand, which used to be a busy place in the day time. There are SMS system, where messages are sent to all estate owners and workers about elephant movements, every morning, just like we get traffic alerts in cities.

It is a common scene to see Gaurs in the middle of tea plantations in Valparai. The local people do not disturb them, and leave them alone till they cross the other side of the plantations. 

But, the tourists don't leave them.

We saw a huge herd of Gaurs - with 2 males, 7-8 females, 2 calves in the middle of the tea plantation. 

 

Locals don't care and leave them alone

While we were watching the Gaur herd from a distance, a car came and stopped right next to the Gaurs. They were not walking stable, might be they are all drunk. They got down the car and walked straight to the herd. Seeing them, the Gaurs started moving away.

They wanted to take pictures of the Gaurs in their mobile phones. They started shouting on the Gaurs to come closer. But as the animals don't understand their language, and they were all in a threatening mode, the herd started panicking. To add to the chaos, 2 of them started throwing wooden pieces and stones over the animals.

 

Tourists walking towards the Gaurs for a photo session

We didn't have a choice, other than shouting at them to move away. I shouted to the maximum, as I was the only one who knows the local language, and made them get into the car. But 2 of them still were staring at the animals, waiting for them to come down. We immediately called the forest officials using one of a local naturalist, and reported the incident. Later we came to know that they had to pay some penalty for their bravery.

While coming back, we saw the herd grazing peacefully at the bottom of the hill. It was a pleasant scene to watch them from a far distance.

In the middle of the plantations, the Gaurs grazing peacefully

Lion tailed Macaques of Valparai

  

I visited Valparai recently. Valparai is a Taluk and hill station in Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu, India. It is located 3,500 feet above sea level on the Anaimalai Hills range of the Western Ghats. It is a beautiful place where you can find different species of birds and mammals. Some of the endemic and endangered fauna lives here among humans.

Lion tailed macaque is one of the highlights of Valparai visit. This is an endangered animal, and can be found only in the Western Ghats of South India. The lion-tailed macaque (Macaca silenus), or the wanderoo, is an Old World monkey.

From the 1st day noon till 2nd day noon, we didn't find a single lion tailed macaque, other than sign boards in the road saying "Lion tailed macaques crossing area". After lunch, we saw them in the roads, near PudhuthOttam estate. There were around 100 macaques. I had seen them only in images, and I thought it would be bigger. But surprisingly they were smaller than the grey langurs. Also they were not arrogant like the Bonnet Macaques we see in our cities. The males are beautiful and majestic, bigger than females.

They were all involved in various social behaviors like grooming one another, etc. Young ones were playing with mother's tail and juveniles were fighting with each other.

 

These macaques used to cross the hill, and the road near this estate happens to be on their way. They spend some time here and explore the area for finding any food opportunities.

Sadly, they get killed by the fast moving vehicles while they cross the roads. Fortunately, the "Nature Conservation Foundation" (http://ncf-india.org) have taken steps to avoid these magnificent creatures get killed. There are volunteers who spend considerable amount of time standing in the roads, with boards with captions - "Lion tailed macaques crossing, Go slow", and control the traffic according to the macaques' activities. When the macaques run or play in the road, these volunteers chase them away to the sides and watch carefully like mothers handle the kids in our homes.

When vehicles like lorry/bus approach them, they shout and show board, and make them slow down. At one instance, I saw one of the volunteer almost stood in the middle of the road in front of a lorry risking his life, to make the vehicle slow down.

 

Lion tailed macaques running towards vehicles for food options.

An NCF volunteer running towards the vehicle to avoid macaques getting hit.

A vehicle stopped for LTM.

The NCF have made bridges over the road, for the macaques to avoid accidents in the road. But they sometimes prefer the natural path. In below images, you can see the artificial bridge and a macaque avoids it.

 

Artificial bridge made for LTMs to cross the road.

But sometimes, they don't like artificial path.

All the locals respect these animals, but many of the tourists don't. They stop the vehicles near the animals, feed them, and make them come closer and take pictures with mobile phones, etc., which leads to many accidents. Littering is a major problem which everyone ignores or do not care. Littering causes serious trouble to the environment, and sometimes they end up fatal.

 

A LTM exploring a plastic cover

In the below picture, a lion tailed macaque feeding on a burfi packet thrown by a generous animal lover. I heard from a local that someone thrown a pickle bottle to a macaque and the macaque started feeding on it. Not sure what happened afterwards.

 

A LTM trying to eat a Burfi packet thrown by a tourist.

Everyone should realize the impact of littering and should take responsibility in not throwing their wastes at wherever they like. It will be good if they behave the way they behave in some foreign cities like Singapore, in cautiously not throwing wastes.

Hope someday humans realize its value.