I had joined the egroup of PfA (People for Animals) quite a while ago, as I was impressed by their objectives. But living as I do in South Bangalore, I had never been able to go for any of their programs in their Animal Welfare Center in Kengeri.

However, when PfA announced its Snake Workshop, to be conducted by a well-known herpetologist,Dr Gowri Shankar, from Agumbe, this Sunday, the 3rd June 2007, I decided that I would attend, and also use the opportunity to have a look around the Shelter.

Being a member of a group who have all taken the Naturalists’ Training Program run by Jungle Lodges and Resorts, I naturally spread the word about the course, and went there with a few of my friends. We found that the response was excellent…nearly 70 people had turned up!

We were met by Dr Somnath, the resident vet at the shelter, and soon, we all finished our registration formalities and settled down as Alpana Bhartia, the co-ordinator for PfA, introduced the NGO to newcomers. She said it was about 10 years old, having been launched in 1996 by her, along with Namrata Dugar, Gauri Maini Hira, and Arushi Poddar.

Here’s Alpana making the opening remarks:

After her speech, Dr Somnath welcomed all of us and talked about the Shelter. He is the vet who is resident at the Centre, taking care of the animals and birds 24/7. A very committed person, he talked of the goals of PfA, which are:

1. To provide mutual assistance about care, rehab and release of urban wildlife.

2.To encourage education in the community about wildlife and its preservation.

3. To provide care for wildlife prior to rehabilitation.

4. To assess damage and assume responsiblity for sick, injured or orphaned native wildlife.

5. To adequately prepare the animals for survival in the wild when they are ultimately released.

6. To create awareness about wildlife conservation.

The Snake workshop was one of the efforts by PfA to improve awareness amongst the general public. Dr Gowri Shankar, a herpetologist who works at the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station, Agumbe, Shimoga Distt, (foiunded by Romulus Whitaker) came and gave a very enlightening slide-show about various venomous and non-venomous snakes and how they should be handled. This was followed by a live demonstration with a large rat snake and a cobra. Obaviously, we were not allowed to take photographs. Dr Gowri Shankar impressed everyone with the depth of his knowledge about snakes, and talked extensively about king cobras, too.

Here’s Dr Gowri Shankar, sorry, the photograph is pretty bad, but in every other photograph I have, he is surrounded by people eager to meet and talk to him, and who are obscuring his face!

After the workshop was over,Dr Somnath took us around the shelter. Here I was allowed to take a few photographs. Part of the Shelter campus is allowed to remain a wilderness, where some of the animals are released in a kind of half-way house before they are released to the wild. Here are some of us, being conducted by Dr Somnath (in the blue shirt) along the trail:

We went through the various enclosures and were horrified to see how snakes are defanged by the snake charmers even though this means that they will die soon. Some kites had been brought in with wing fractures, and I was curious to know how birds could fracture their wings.

“There is a kite festival here, ” Dr Somnath said, where these birds have strings with powdered glass rubbed into them tied around their wings, and then they are made to fly and controlled from the ground.” While we stood horrified at this, he showed us star tortoises that had been smuggled in from SriLanka.” We cannot even release them back until we get the red tape addressed…we now need permission from the Karnataka Govt, the Indian Government, and the Sri Lankan Government…it’s very complicated” he said.

Some primates cannot be released immediately into the wild as others would immediately attack them. So Bonnet Macaques, for example, are slowly brought together to form a reasonable-sized group and then released into the wild, so that they will take care of each other, at least initially. Here is the Primate Cage at the Shelter:

Some very sick or old rescuees, like bears from bear dance shows, defanged and dying snakes rescued from snake charmers, maimed parakeets from astrologers, and so on, can never be released. For them, the PfA shelter becomes a hospice, a place where they can spend their last days in peace though not free of pain entirely.

But PfA also looks, as Dr Somnath puts it, at “the other side of the story”. If a snake charmer loses his snakes in the process of the rescue, the only livelihood for himself and his family is lost. So PfA also organizes bank loans for these people with the help of which they can grow herbs or other cash crops to sustain their earnings. “It is a complex situation”, he informs us.

PfA has also started a pet cemetery, where beloved pets can be interred. This has several spin offs, as the owners can come on the death anniversaries and perhaps pay for the food in the shelter on that day; they also plant trees in the memory of the pets.

Here’s one such beloved pet, which lies at rest here:

And when we visited, someone had just decorated his pet’s tombstone with love and affection: