Bahar Dutt

January , 2007

Monday , January 29, 2007

Chasing crocodiles in dacoit land


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It's the land of the dacoits. This is Chambal- a landscape made famous by Bollywood film Sholay. My mission is different. I am here to investigate why the Indian gharial the top water predator of the river Chambal is facing extinction. Few even know about this weird creature with the weird name. Named after a ghada or a 'pot' due to the round snout at the edge of its very long nose, the gharial is distinct from its cousin the Indian Mugger also found in the Chambal waters. We have stationed ourselves in Gwalior. We head out everyday through the by lanes of rural Madhya Pradesh- towards the small town of Amba that lies on the edge of the river Life here is much the same- globalisation, coffee outlets and flashy restaurants haven't reached this part of rural Madhya Pradesh. And in a small way I find that very....


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More about Bahar Dutt

Bahar Dutt is a wildlife conservationist by training. She has worked for the last ten years on crucial wildlife conservation projects in India and abroad. In England she worked at the world famous Jersey Zoo set up by naturalist Gerald Durrell and was involved in assessing the conditions for release of endangered primate in the Amazon forests. . She has over 10 awards to her credit including the Ramnath Goenka Award in 2006 and the Wildscreen Award , UK and the Young Environment Journalist Award 2007. As an environment editor at CNN-IBN she has done a range of stories travelling to far and forgotten corners of this country to expose the nexus between the mining mafia, politicians and corporates. She has posed as a furniture maker to expose the illegal trade in banned timber in the Western Ghats, and the nexus between the police and a mining company in the Niyamgiri hills of Orissa. One of her most dramatic exposés involved a cement company of global dimensions that had been operating illegally in the forests of Meghalaya on the India-Bangladesh border. More recently, she and the CNN-IBN team exposed the operations of a miner in Goa who had illegally devastated forest lands. Their story led to the shut down of the mine.
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