Baba Dioum, a Senegalese forestry engineer, summarized it to three simple lines, “For, in the end, we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught.” We, the most evolved of apes, are the reason behind the Sixth Age of Extinction, after the dinosaurs. So, we are more potent than an earth-shattering meteorite; and that is not a compliment. However, we will always try to save those whom we love. On World Wildlife Day, let’s say hi! to a few animals in India that may not be with us in the near future, unless we begin to love them hard.

Ganges Shark

Along with our mighty river, its creatures are also in danger. This stocky shark, which lives in the Ganga is under threat of being wiped away from planet earth due to pollution of her home river, construction of dams on it, overfishing and so on. Really…? Blood…gore… We’re talking about saving Jaws? Yes, now even they require rescuing from the greatest of apes.

Ghats Warts Frog

It likes to hang out in moist tropical forests at an altitude of around 2,200m in the Western Ghats. It seems no princess has kissed this frog. Warts, you think? Nah…warts are no competition for elfin green money. It faces threats from commercial timber plantations and loss of its home due to agriculture.

Sangai or Manipur Dancing Deer

According to the 2016 census, there are 260 deer left in the wild, a slight increase from 2013. (Imagine if only 260 humans were left in the world! What…students of grade 6,7,8 of your school put together?) The Manipur zoo is successfully breeding the dancing deer maintaining our hope for the survival of the species.

Himalayan Wolf

The evil wolf of Red Riding Hood…wish it had more cunning than humans! The Himalayan Wolf is under threat of extinction, only 300 or so left in the wild, due to human activity. Darjeeling zoo and Kufri zoo are breeding these wolves in captivity. You might hear people talking about banning the zoos. What is the alternate plan to save various critically endangered species? Banning zoos, for all we know, might accelerate their extinction. Zoos give us an opportunity to see varied animals at close quarters and offer a large vista of possibilities to educate and sensitise people. Almost 50 million people visit zoos in India every year! Although it may seem ‘cruel’ from human perspective to encage animals, there are many advantages in it for the animals. The lifespan of most species is more than doubles in captivity. This is due to an abundance of food and water, no threat from predators and medical care.

Peacock Tarantula

This beautiful spider sports a brilliant metallic blue body. We are cutting down the forests where they live. Little Miss Muffet should never venture in the small forested area in Andhra Pradesh where this spider is surviving. But for how long?

Gharial

One of the longest of all living crocodilians, Gharial is found in our part of the subcontinent. Less than 235 of these long-nosed crocodilians are left in the wild due to…you don’t need a wild guess for that: human activity. Fishing, loss of river habitats, less fish for them to eat. And we don’t even seem to shed crocodile tears for them.

Okay, we might not have heard about the muscular Javan rhinos, or the cute little Forest Owlet, or the white toothed shrew (which is not shrewd but sweet Mr. Shakespeare), or the swarthy Leatherback Turtle, or the Kashmiri Stag with the most incredible horns, or the proud, straight-eared caracal or the desert-smart wild ass; all these and more who are on the verge of extinction from India. But what about the sparrows whom we don’t see in our garden any more? Or those formidable vultures no more circling our skies? Let’s just do what Roosevelt said, “The wildlife and its habitat cannot speak, so we must and we will.” For what would life be with a sunset where birds didn’t fly back to their nests? Not wild, for sure.

The writer is a columnist and author of fiction and non-fiction books. Her latest book is Wild in the Backyard.