The bison’s last bellow
By Manohar Malgonkar

HAS anyone seen a bison lately? I haven’t and I happen to live in what used to be a haunt of bisons, the environs of a wildlife sanctuary — in the rains we often saw them from bedroom windows.

But what’s so special about a bison that it should be a matter of concern that they have all but vanished from our midst?

If you ask that question, it just shows that you have never seen a bison — not a full-grown male in his prime. He is the biggest of all bovines and also, the most handsome, the king of the species; no Toledo-bred fighting bull, or our own khilari or even Merril Lynch’s rampant, earth-pawing mascot-bull, can stand comparison with him. In stature, in the arrogant grace of his stance, he glows!

Only a hundred years ago, as Hobson-Jobson tells us, they were to be found in all "the large forests of India, from Cape Comorin to the foot of the Himalayas," and hunted by ‘sportsmen’.

As to ‘sport’, shooting a bison with a heavy-bore rifle was not much different from shooting your milkman’s buffalo, for the bison is a shy creature, nocturnal, a grass-eater and quite harmless to man or animal. He was hunted because his head made such an impressive trophy on a wall. And this fact itself ensured that he was killed only selectively, and certainly not for his meat because he belongs to the gou — or ox — species and no Hindu will touch his meat.

So when the Raj gave over, there were still quite a few bisons in our forests. But with independence the forests began to be ruthlessly exploited by loggers and the mining industry and rapidly vanished, as did the wild animals which lived in them. At the end of the 70s the only bisons still left in the country were in what were declared to be our sanctuaries, such as the one near which I live, that of Dandeli.

In India, a wildlife sanctuary does not mean what the dictionary says it does, but a declaration of intent that the wild animals residing in it are protected. Their hunting is banned, but that is about all. Commercial exploitation of forests, timber extraction and strip-mining for iron and manganese ores, goes on unrestricted, and explosives such as dynamite and gelignite are in constant use.

Most of the animals that lived in these sanctuaries have perished, and the few still left inhabit the remoter patches of forest which are relatively undisturbed. It is a safe bet that even these last survivors in our sanctuaries will have vanished in another 20 years — if not sooner.

Such a development — of the world’s most handsome wild ox becoming an extinct species — would be looked upon as a shameful failure of trusteeship on the part of any country that had inherited it. But in India it is vastly more deplorable because we profess to hold the species in high esteem, indeed veneration, what with the cow being holy and the bull — as Nandi — the diligent doorkeeper of all shrines dedicated to Lord Shiva.

So we’ve failed to protect our bisons, but then so have the Americans, haven’t they? They say that once their vast prairies positively crawled with bisons, and now there are absolutely none in the wild state — meaning the handful that are still there in zoos or private parks.

Alas, that is only too true. The Americans killed off their bisons by the thousand for money — to sell their meat or pelts — or sport. But is that any reason for us to do our bisons what the Americans did to theirs?

Our bisons! — their bisons! — but surely they’re the same animal!

Not really. Sure, they look the same in books and films, except that the American bison is covered with thick hair. But when you see them at close quarters, you notice how different they are.

In the mid-seventies, I had to go to America and while there, earned a few extra dollars by giving talks which had been arranged by friends. These speaking engagements also entail a parallel obligation of having to eat a gruelling round of formidable American meals. During this trip, at a town called Lock Haven deep in the hilly, forested area of western Pennsylvania, I had noticed one of those enormous advertising hoardings on which was painted a herd of bisons. It stood near a restaurant-cum-store which, I was told, was run by a man who owned a vast area of land and raised his own herd of bisons: in the store you could buy a bison-skin rug; in the restaurant you could order a bison steak.

My host at Lock Haven was James Dayananda, the head of the English Department at the Lock Haven College, and he took me to lunch at the aforesaid restaurant-store. I neither wanted to eat a bison steak and had no intention of buying a bison-skin rug, but asked the owner of the place whether it was possible to see his bisons.

"They’re up there in those hills," he said, waving a hand. "You’re welcome to take a look."

So, after lunch, dressed as we were in coats and ties, and in city shoes, Dayananda and I went trudging into those hills, looking for bisons. These were not wild animals, but they were not tame, either, and took some finding, grazing placidly in a fold of the hills a mile or so away. They were woolly as sheep and much, much smaller than our bisons. Because the wind was blowing from them to us, and since, like our own bisons, they cannot see very well, they let us come within a few feet before noticing our presence and scampered off.

I later discovered that there are any number of these bison farms in America where the animals are kept in near-natural conditions, for their meat and hides. And that , surely is one way of making sure that the species itself will not be extinct.

But what a way! I can almost hear the snort of contempt. How can we, a people brought up to look upon cow-killing as a mortal sin, keep bisons for slaughter even if by doing so we will be preserving the species! It is all very well for the Americans, where beef is regularly consumed in vast quantities. First they killed off their prairie bisons by the thousands for money and fun, and now are we to praise them just because they save a few bisons in their back-yards as though they were pigs or sheep — for the purpose of slaughter? The bison was a wild animal, remember, whom God intended to roam the forests at will. Not to be kept fenced in bison farms!

Well, this aspect, too, is the subject of a concerted save-the-bison drive in America. More and more of America’s super-rich are taking a personal interest in wildlife conservation. Their role-model may be said to be the redoubtable Ted Turner, the billionaire owner of CNN. Turner has bought a vast patch of forest which he has turned into a bison sanctuary. Here they will live just as they once used to before the founding fathers ever came to America’s shores.

Turner has come out as the champion of a vanishing species. A hundred years from now, a batch of schoolboys taken round hit bison sanctuary will be awed by what they see.

To be sure, we, too, have our super-rich, and in the past they have gifted us hospitals, schools, colleges, playing fields, bathing ghats, and temples and more temples. Maybe one or two of them will want to do for our bison what Ted Turner has done for the American bison. Because experience shows that, without some such intervention, the species is doomed. The government just doesn’t give a damn, and the WWF can do little more than protest. What is needed, just as much as their millions is the energy, the drive, the organising expertise of someone like Dhirubhai Ambani who just won’t take no for an answer.

Who?

When , a hundred years from now, if our schoolboys are taken round a sanctuary and can still see some bisons, who will they be thankful to?