Water for Wildlife in India

T HE Palamau jungles in Bihar in north-east India consist of sal forests in undulating country.In January this year it was clear that the unprecedented drought was going to affect the wild animals very seriously, and while help was forthcoming for the people and their domestic animals there was none for the wildlife.The failure of the monsoon rains for two consecutive years with the resultant loss of crops brought grim tragedy for the villages, and to add to the distress the water level in the whole of Bihar has gone down.With money kindly sent by the Animal Welfare Board, Madras, and other emergency donations, including £50 very kindly donated by the Fauna Preservation Society, my husband and I with some volunteers were able to start proceedings.The Chief Conservator of Forests, Bihar, Mr. S. P. Shahi, a very enlightened and keen conservationist, allocated to us three jungle blocks in which to operate, with a forest bungalow as a base.He visited us there, and I accompanied him on tours to other areas in an effort to awaken forest officialdom at all levels to the seriousness of the drought, and to see what waterholes had been provided for animals.The heat ranging to 116 degrees Fahrenheit was unbearable as we drove through hundreds of miles of parched dry jungle.Every river was dry, and nullahs which sometimes contain natural pools in normal years had dried up, some for the first time in living memory.The situation in the 200-square-mile area was horrifying.In Kumandih Block the three small waterholes dug by the Forest Department in March held only two to three inches of water, and by mid-May had dried up.In the hills the local tribal people showed us two small stagnant rock pools which were closely overlooked and surrounded by freshly made poachers' hides.The only oasis was the small sanctuary of Betla, where the Forest Department had installed water-troughs which were filled daily by a jeep water tanker.The wild elephants had left the sanctuary in March in search of water, but herds of gaur, the Indian bison, cheetal, sambhar, wild boar and barking deer could be seen congregated at these waterholes in the mornings and evenings.The first task was to establish a main source of water supply; since there were no UNICEF pumps within 50 miles, we found it by digging deeply into the dry bed of the Auranga river.Mr. N. K. Chaudhuri supervised the making of a 12-foot-square hole, and installed a handpump and pipes to enable drums brought by jeep trailer to be filled.In the nullahs that were dry we installed 45-gallon drums cut lengthwise to form tin troughs which we filled daily by jeep trailer; they were immediately used by small herds of cheetal, barking deer, peafowl, red junglefowl and myriads of small birds.Panther pugmarks, bison, wild pig, porcupine and monkey marks were also found, while near our hole in the Auranga there were pugmarks of three tigers in the sand.Tribal people, out in the forest picking biri