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OFFTRACK:
Pithoragarh,
Uttar Pradesh
 Smell
of Death
Conservation
efforts have only compounded the musk deer's agony
By
Subhash Mishra
The
musk deer is a shy animal. Making it even more difficult to spot in the
wild is the fact that its habitat is located at altitudes over 10,000
ft. But that hasn't stopped men from ruthlessly hunting it. With its legendary
essence costing Rs 5 lakh a kg, a dead male musk deer can pay handsome
dividends for a poacher. And if its use in fragrance-making isn't bad
enough for the poor animal, musk is also prized for its medicinal value.
For the deer, it has turned out to be literally the essence of death.
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| The
Musk Deer: A shy animal |
But what
if the government bred the deer in captivity to harvest musk? Wouldn't
these benign animals then be taken care of? You wouldn't be more mistaken.
The fate of 17 virtually abandoned deer at the Musk Deer Breeding Centre
in Pithoragarh, Uttar Pradesh, paints a sorry picture of conservation
efforts.
The Pithoragarh
project took off in 1973 as a result of the late prime minister Indira
Gandhi's concern at the deer's declining numbers. A breeding farm was
established post-haste under the Union Ministry of Health (moh) for extracting
musk for medicinal purposes. The number of the highly endangered deer
at the farm grew from two to an impressive 29. But incredibly, in the
33 years since its inception, the Delhi-based Central Council for Research
on Ayurvedic and Siddha (ccras)-the farm's controlling and supervisory
authority-has extracted musk only thrice. In these years, the ccras has
been unable to justify its raison d'etre: to develop a viable method of
extracting musk.
To be sure,
the devil-may-care attitude of the moh hasn't helped matters; the officer-in-charge
of the centre K.C.Tewari stays in Ranikhet, over 150 km away. G. Velugemi,
director ccras, says extraction of musk was stopped after the death of
a musk deer a few years ago. "The highly sensitive animal died while
vets were extracting musk surgically," says Velugemi.
Criminal
Neglect: The animal keepers in Pithoragarh tend the 17 remaining deer
in almost surreal circumstances. The huts housing the animals are in bad
shape. The deer, which are used to romping about in the eastern Himalayas,
languish in 30-ft enclosures. The rusted and tattered wire-mesh fencing
can't keep out predators. "We have to fend off leopards with lathis,
and the absence of lighting compounds our problem," says a warden.
And with no vets around, the untrained keepers double up as paramedics.
Fodder and water are in short supply too and have to be fetched from miles
away. For a body that receives an annual grant of Rs 25 crore, the ccras'
attitude amounts to criminal neglect.
The project
has failed to develop the required expertise for extracting the musk essence.
Velugemi is now planning to send some of his vets for training to Russia
and China where the musk extraction method is standardised and has been
successful. In these countries the musk is scooped out from the deer.
Scooping is safe for the deer and is easy to implement too. And after
a period of about two years, the musk grows again in the navel of the
deer.
L.K. Sharma,
joint director in ccras, says the purpose of setting up the farm has not
been achieved. "The mortality rate of the musk deer has gone up in
the recent past. The project needs a complete revival if it has to be
saved," he says. The moh is now planning to shift the Musk Deer Centre
from Pithoragarh but Sharma says his department is actively considering
whether it should abandon the project.
The Pithoragarh
project is one of only three such projects in the country, the other two
being in Chamoli, Uttar Pradesh and Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. While the
Shimla project is basically for educational purposes, Chamoli doesn't
have a happy ending either-the four surviving musk deer there have developed
a soil-bound disease.
So will somebody
finally buck the trend? A senior ccras officer at Pithoragarh has an explanation
for the state of affairs: "Five years ago a team of vets came from
Delhi to extract musk but the animal died during surgery. Since then no
efforts have been made." So long as the officials in charge of its
conservation continue to mouth such inanities, the musk deer-of whom fewer
than 25 survive in captivity-will have no reason to fawn over its God-given
gift.
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