The unsung conservationist

Few of Munnar’s former British tea planters are remembered with as much respect and affection as John Gouldsbury is. A veteran planter and ardent conservationist, he managed the sprawling tea estate where my father worked in the 1960s.

As a teenager, I often saw him cruising around the estate on his Francis Barnett motorcycle, a battered hat plastered over his silvery mane. Unassuming and independent, if he found an impassable ditch or stretch of road, he would just dismount and effortlessly heft the two-wheeler across. How he squeezed his 6-foot 5-inch frame into a small Standard Herald car, in popular use then, was a mystery. But he could be seen zipping around in one, a pair of wild boar tushes prominently adorning the bonnet.

No mean hunter himself, JG’s knowledge of wildlife was unmatched. When rogue elephants were proscribed in Munnar’s tea estates, it was he who always accompanied the authorised shooter to guide him in the crucial task of humanely dispatching the pachyderm. Once, it is said, a shooter developed cold feet when he failed to fell a rogue with his first shot; whereupon JG, ready with a standby rifle, leapt forward and expertly brought the beast down with a single shot.

Like Jim Corbett, his famous compatriot, JG soon hung up his gun to become a full-time conservationist. He headed the local Scottish tea conglomerate’s conservation activities for several years with distinction, contributing highly readable articles on local wildlife to the company’s widely circulated, bilingual in-house journal. These went a long way in spreading awareness among the 25,000-strong employees of the need to protect wildlife. In recognition of his expertise, JG was made a member of the Kerala State Wildlife Board and an honourary wildlife warden.

Poachers, of course, were JG’s bete noire. When one shot a tahr, the highly endangered wild mountain goat, JG fearlessly brought him to justice despite his high political connections. 

In 1971, the Kerala government took over the Eravikulam wildlife sanctuary from the tea conglomerate that had managed it for nearly a century. Fearing that poachers would have a field day, JG tirelessly lobbied with the authorities to declare Eravikulam a national park.

Quite characteristically, before he retired in 1975, he made an impassioned written appeal to all who mattered that a motorable road should never be built into the core area of the sanctuary. Thankfully, despite much lobbying to the contrary, this crucial request was heeded by the powers that be.

Crowning JG’s unrelenting efforts with success, in 1978, Eravikulam was declared a national park — the first in Kerala. Today, if it still retains its pristine, unsullied state and its wild denizens roam free and unmolested, it is only because of the absence of a motorable road into its interiors — thanks to JG’s farsightedness. To perpetuate JG’s memory, the bridle-path — the only means of access — snaking sinuously into the Eravikulam National Park has been named after him.