School children love to be part of his workshops. Even adults fight to make it to the list. Sandhya Rajayer meets herpetologist, National Geographic Adventurer and eco lover Gerry Martin
Strider is an apt name for Gerry Martin's company. Strider brings people to wildlife and sometimes takes the wildlife to people.
Apt because like Strider in Lord of the Rings, Gerry Martin, herpetologist and National Geographic Adventurer, is known to find his way up most mountain ranges in the vicinity of Bangalore even extending into the neighbouring Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu, in southern India.
On the day I am supposed to meet him in his office, I find that it is crowded with school children in different states of excitement, most of them accompanied by parents.
No, they are not queuing for tickets to the latest Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings movie. Instead, they are all agog with excitement because they are about to participate in a nature workshop hosted by Gerry.
It's a three-day workshop and the itinerary is one a nature lover would give his binoculars for: the first day participants will spend at a farm house looking at, touching and playing with common farm animals. Then they will learn about frogs and turtles and other local fauna and flora.
The second day they will learn about habitats of wild animals even creating a few as a group activity. On the third day they will set off on a trek into the forests.
A few parents are hoping that there may be some cancellations so their ward can find a place in the team. Others are thrilled that their kid has been included. Gerry Martin a.k.a Strider meanwhile is busy fine-tuning the programme sheet and answering queries some parents pose to him.
Since its inception in 2006, more than 1,500 children have participated in Strider's expeditions and activities which sometimes also involve tracking elephants and learning about the ecology of the area they are trekking in.
(And in case you think you are missing out on all the fun, there are Strider treks for adults as well, only these treks are a lot more intensive because participants carry their own stuff, set up their tents and cook their food.)
While on the treks, Gerry's business partner, Rohan Mathais who owns Jungle Retreat, an eco-friendly resort at Masinagudi, near the well-known tourist getaway, Ooty, is making documentaries on the Nilgiris biosphere reserve.
Strider intends to use the footage as educational tools rather than as raw material for a film for a commercial audience.
In February this year, Strider held its first herpetology workshop. Participants camped overnight at a private estate on the banks of a lake at Rathnapuri, near Hunsur, a little away from Bangalore.
The site made sense because the group was looking for water snakes. Gleaning hands-on knowledge about field techniques used in habitat conservation was a thrilling experience for many in the group.
They tracked reptiles, observed the indigenous wildlife of the habitat, interacted with the ecosystem and learnt about taxonomy first-hand.
At the end of the workshop many of the participants, novices even, learnt how to handle venomous snakes with ease. And just in case you are beginning to wonder whether all this was not a bit too risky, it was all underpinned by an on-site course in first aid for venomous bites.
The herpetology workshop was such a huge success with adults and children that they are all waiting for the next one to be announced.
Last month, a bus load of participants of an ornithology workshop went on a bird trail to Coorg, a picturesque locale a few hours away from Bangalore. A summer camp meant for 25 kids this year was extended into two back-to-back camps on public demand.
Obviously Gerry Martin has tapped into an idea whose time has come. The safety of operating from private estates adds to the feeling of security and the fact that permits are easily available makes it easy for Strider to operate and organise such trips.
While these activities are clearly aimed at improving the bottomline of the company, there's another facet to Strider's activities which is eliciting the interest of conservation activists and lay people alike.
You may have heard of restoring architecture, paintings even antique jewellery. What Strider is attempting to do is fairly on the same lines only this one involves the habitat of flora and fauna.
"There are many places that have been destroyed by industry, agriculture or just plain abuse," says Gerry.
"These areas end up being treated like unwanted Christmas gifts - people either begin to explore ways to exchange them for something of better value or see if they can better use it themselves."
Sometimes a company, which has a piece of land, may wish to give something back to the community but may not know how to go about it, Gerry begins to explain, and offers an example: "Once you grow tea on a hill slope you more or less ruin the soil completely and degrade the ecology of the place.
"On the other hand, if you become aware of the huge cost of eco depletion caused by the crop and want to allow the land to regenerate on its own it will probably take forever and not happen in the right way. You may end up regenerating weed species that would completely take over the ecology of the place.
"Attracting the right kind of (flora and fauna) is what we intend to do in our restoration projects," says Gerry.
Strider has already begun work on regenerating natural habitat in a barren strip of about 50 acres of land in the Nagarhole forest area, in Karnataka. The chunk of natural forest here was destroyed in order to grow potatoes specifically used for french fries.
For various reasons, the crop failed and the land was bought by the present owner who was keen to restore it to its original natural habitat and develop it as an ecotourism resort.
What Gerry finds exciting about this strip of land is that the surrounding forest area is intact which means their source for getting data on the wildlife, flora and fauna is easily accessible.
But while this particular strip of land is 50 acres, Strider is also ready to work on smaller patches even as little as five acres. Strider is already in talks with a few like-minded individuals and corporates such as BTC (Bombay Tea Company) which have holdings all over the Western Ghats.
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Gerry's brush with wildlife occurred very early in life. "I caught my first snake when I was five years old at my grandparents' farm in Bangalore," he says. Though his mom was terrified of creepy crawlies, she encouraged her son to learn more about reptiles and wildlife by getting him books on the subject.
"By the time I was in the 7th grade I could identify most of the snakes and lizards around," he recalls. "Most of my learning has been experiential on the farm which we later stayed on in Bangalore. I used to venture out at night hoping to sight the snakes I read about in books."
But Gerry was apparently not content with just looking at them because one day, while at Montford Residential School in Yercaud, (Tamil Nadu) he had to endure a caning after a snake was discovered in his dorm locker.
On another occasion he scared the daylights out of his dorm master when the latter opened a shoe box only to see a snake slither away.
By the time he was in the Grade 5, Gerry graduated to handling venomous snakes but was still a little wary of the big 'uns - Russel's Vipers and large cobras.
"The first time I handled a king cobra was when I was around 18," he admits.
Gerry owes his introduction to herpetology to the renowned Romulus Whitaker of the Madras Crocodile Farm fame based in Mammalapuram, Tamil Nadu.
After he flunked his grade 12 exam, he went to work at the Centre of Herpetology under Romulus Whitaker, working "more or less as a slave", he laughs.
"I used to run for coffee, clean the premises, shovel crocodile dung, eat, sleep and dream of reptiles ... I was just so grateful that I was allowed inside (the centre) and that I could work with reptiles and amphibians."
The hands-on experience he gained here under the tutelage of Whitaker, was something few academic institutions could have provided him. In fact it was an impetus for him to begin pursuing the study of habitat and ecology of fauna in a scientific manner.
"I found the learning here tremendously fulfilling," he says.
He hopes to find some of that satisfaction through the habitat restoration projects and in the models he builds.
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Having worked in the field gives Gerry a firsthand idea of the ecological health of the country.
So, how does he begin a restoration project?
We first narrow down the ecologically sensitive regions and find out who owns the areas in question, he says. The second step involves approaching the land holders to find out how open they would be to a habitat restoration project.
"We make it clear that we don't want the land as such but are willing to work with them to restore the habitat to its original ecological balance while at the same time creating a model to attract income to sustain it."
There are no set protocols to be followed in restoration projects, says Gerry. Reforestation of a tea estate in say, Mudumalai, in the Nilgiris, is different from reforestation of a tea estate in Wynad, in Kerala, simply because the soils are different, the animals indigenous to the area are different, the history of the use of the land is different ...
"So, every project is individual in its geography, soil, history, bio diversity and flora and fauna. Each calls for a customised model requiring several areas of expertise such as understanding not just animals and plants but soil structures, rainfall patterns and other parameters."
Above all the project operators would need to understand the objectives of the owner(s) of the land.
The plan that Strider would create for an individual or a company which owns say 200 acres of land and wants to restore it in a non-commercial way would be different from one who has say 50 acres and wants to convert the land into an eco-tourism resort, says Gerry.
The beginning
The idea of restoring land tracts was born during a trek that Gerry's team went on in June 2006.
"A small group of us were indulging in some wishful thinking when Rohan, my business partner, thought aloud that it would be really great if someone gave us 100 acres to create a model for reforestation," says Gerry.
They sounded out the ideas to a few other experts "and things just snowballed into action from then on", he says.
Gerry is sure that the idea will find takers as several tea and coffee estate owners in south India now live in Bangalore city.
There are quite a few who have also shifted to Coimbatore, a modern city in Tamil Nadu. Their exposure to conservation and ecological awareness has increased, he says.
The other good thing in favour of the habitat restoration idea is that agriculture is not giving the owners of the land the kind of financial returns they had been getting.
So they are keen to try new ideas, especially if they can be commercially viable as well. One obvious idea to tap into the commercial use of the land is eco-tourism, although not in the way that it is popularly understood.
Eco-tourism
Gerry Martin defines eco-tourism as an activity that gives something positive back to the environment and creates awareness of the role of all living organisms on earth.
"To some people, eco-tourism means piling a group of people into a four-wheel drive and going for a tour in a forest. I would say 99 per cent of what is popularly called eco-tourism is causing tremendous damage to the ecology.
"We would like to base our eco-tourism on the Earth Watch model where people who come to watch nature also contribute to it in some way ... The point is conservation is something that we need, as opposed to something that we want."
Gerry also sounds a note of warning: "Ignoring the warning signs is going to be disastrous for us in our own our lifetime. Forget about threatening your children that their children will not see flowers if they don't conserve water. It's all happening now.
"We see a change in weather patterns every three to five years. Nature throws up at least one disaster every year. Epidemic diseases such as chikungunya and dengue are here and we can't control them because the (natural) controls for mosquitoes have perished along with their natural habitat.
"Look at the weather in Bangalore," he points out.
"Bangalore used to be a place people treated like a holiday resort due to its salubrious climate. Now the air pollution is terrible, the summers are very hot and winters barely cold. I believe that the situation has gone beyond discomforts and inconveniences.
"When I was a child, the 'web of life' and 'keeping the balance' were all very academic concepts because they sounded hypothetical," he says.
"But not anymore. Now, they are very relevant. But because we live in an air-conditioned home, drive an air-conditioned car, watch movies in air-conditioned comfort, we are not affected by smoke from factories or dust from quarries or things like that."
And because we don't see or experience what is actually happening, we don't think it's happening, fumes Gerry.
Commerce and conservation
Is it possible to marry the worlds of commerce and conservation?
Of course, says Gerry, it's been proven to be possible all over the world.
"In South Africa, for example, they have come up with a habitat restoration plan. The government has sanctioned wildlife (rhino, leopard, elephant...) culling in state- and privately-owned nature reserves. Here, about 20 rhinos are killed a year so that 6,000 or so rhinos can be saved."
Some rich people who are keen to shoot rhinos for sport pay huge sums (in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars) so they can indulge in their fancy - legally. "And if they want the rhino's horn they pay a lot, lot more.
"This money goes directly into government funds allocated for conservation measures. Consequently, the funds make it possible for every herd of rhinoceros to be monitored 24
hours a day, by armed security guards, trained by commandos who are equipped with satellite
communication sets."
Poaching or illegal hunting is thus controlled, says Gerry.
"In certain parts of the world, people are willing to overlook sentiments to achieve the higher goal of eco conservation. The USA had only 12,000 alligators about 25 years ago. Today it has over a million alligators from planned culling. They call it sustained utility," says Gerry.
"I believe conservation can be a commercially viable proposition. In a place like India where close to 70 per cent of the population live under the poverty line how can you tell a farmer not to kill a crocodile which is posing a danger to him and which is perhaps competing with him for fish?"
Culling is not the only option, he admits. There are lots of other sustainable options which may need to be discussed and studied, he says.
CSR could be the key
Gerry believes that with Corporate Social Responsibility becoming a buzzword, large companies will be willing to work seriously towards protecting the ecosystems.
That is a reason why Gerry plans to involve organisations such as Wildlife Conservation Society, Centre for Wildlife Studies and the Indian Institute of Science, as much as possible in habitat restoration operations.
Their skills, he feels, will be useful in finding comprehensive solutions to build sustainable habitat modules.
The challenge is in finding solutions to the different geographies and scales, says Gerry. Is honey collection going to be viable? Is a combination of honey collection and eco-tourism going to be viable? Can spices be grown within certain forest types? Can the barks of some trees be used for medicinal purposes?
These are the various parameters we can look at to make the area self-sustaining for re-growing its original ecology. This makes each chunk of land a unique effort in finding solutions, he says.
Posing the right questions
Gerry and his team do not claim to have all the answers. "What we are saying is that we can help figure out the right questions that will lead to appropriate solutions.
"In about 18 months we should have a set of right questions and then we will be able to come up with the right answers. Until then it's going to be a lot of digging in the dirt and coming up with more questions."
Gerry feels that his team will be able to provide comprehensive data on how effective their work is only after about five years. "Then we will have our baseline data and we will be able to correlate it against results. We could say with a degree of certainty, for example, that so many trees have been grown in this area and because of that so many new birds have come in."
Before starting up Strider, Gerry worked for three years (2002 - 2005) in an 'introspective organisation' called 'I discover I' which worked with schools and corporates all over India to create models of effective education.
Gerry believes that children cannot be treated like data transfer banks. "They need to experience learning," he says. "How about teaching physics by going rock climbing? Using pulleys and inclines to teach kids about force and motion ...?
"If education is fun then e=mc2 will make a lot of sense to them. They will understand concepts much easier this way," he says.
Prior to his stint with 'I discover I', Gerry had his own television film production company that made films for National Geographic and the BBC. Gerry's films on snakes, scorpions, tigers and elephants were well received.
He also worked with National Geographic as an animal handler and wildlife consultant. Then in 2000, NG offered him the title of National Geographic Adventurer.
It meant that they would support all the wildlife work that he wanted to do in exchange for featuring in some of their ads, promoting their channel and having exclusivity on content.
At that time Gerry was researching among other things, breeding habits of King Cobras, waterborne lizards in Sri Lanka, amphibians in the Western Ghats and doing inventories on micro habitats.
But during all those years what he wanted to do was ecoconservation. So when he heard about 'I discover I' he grabbed the opportunity to work with it.
Has not possessing an academic qualification been a hindrance to his work?
"Research methodology is pretty simple to grasp," he replies. "We make the biggest mistakes in asking the wrong question. Understanding botany and biology is a lot easier than understanding astrophysics or quantum physics.
"When I joined the Crocodile Bank I had the good fortune of learning from international scientists who came to work there. They allowed me to work as their man Friday and my learning curve was tremendous. What I learnt there I could not have learnt in eight or ten years of college studies.
"In school I could not cope with Maths but when I needed to learn calculus for bio statistics, I learnt it by myself from a little book on the subject," he says.
But there were more life's lessons that he learnt from his various field studies.
"The rigour of working with nature, for example counting frogs of the same kind every night for six hours until 6 am all the while trying not to miss even one while the numbers ran into thousands taught me the value of discipline," he says.
"But perhaps the most important thing I have learnt from working with nature, especially snakes, is respect for all form of life; animal and human," says Gerry. This respect comes from understanding their place in nature and not out of fear or ignorance.
At 33, with new-born daughter Nahalia and his wife Yamini, Gerry is now putting all the lessons that he learnt to good use by redirecting a generation's attention back to nature.
