Trained and sensitised Arunachal Pradesh community saving snakes, thanks to Mysore herpetologist

Killing of a King Cobra during the coronavirus lockdown near Arunachal Pradesh capital Itanagar made Arjun Tsering Phinya sad.

"Had they informed me, I could have rescued the snake. Even today I got four calls and managed to rescue one," said Tsering, who along with a group of youths have been rescuing snakes in the villages around Eagelnest Wildlife Sanctuary in West Kameng district and thereby preventing human-snake conflict since 2017.

Another group is similarly responding to calls from villagers living near Pakke Tiger Reserve in Pakke Kessang district.

A community network to protect the snakes and other reptiles around two major wildlife habitats became possible due to training provided by Gery Martin, a herpetologist based in Hunsur in Karnataka's Mysore district. "Areas surrounding the sanctuary has some of the most venomous snakes like king cobra, monocled cobra, mountain pit viper living amidst human habitation.

There have been instances of people killing snakes for fear of being bitten. This worried us. So in May 2017, I invited Gerry to help us. His awareness meetings with the forest staff, doctors, and locals helped us mobilise the community towards our goal of saving the snakes. Nearly 23 snakes including venomous King Cobra and monocled cobra have been rescued and released into the wild so far," divisional forest officer of Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary, Millo Tasser told DH over the phone.

Arjun and Dorjee Phuntso Marphew, another youth was sent to Hunsur for an 11-day training in Gerry Martin Project, an NGO run by Martin, which has been helping forest staffs in many states to reduce human-snake conflicts.

Ten local youths led by Arjun and Dorjee conducted awareness meetings in schools, community halls, and markets and tried to bust the myths about snakes. They shared their phone numbers and even pasted the numbers in busy places offering help to rescue snakes. "All snakes are not venomous. And even the venomous snakes do not release the poison unless they are attacked. But most people consider snakes as enemies and kill them. We tried to spread the message that snakes help our farmers by eating the rodents. Our awareness meetings have changed many people's perception and today I get about four to five calls almost daily," said Arjun.

Martin told DH that he trained the teams in the safe and ethical handling of snakes, both venomous and non-venomous. "They also learnt how to identify different kinds of snakes, do snakebite first-aid, etc. Both teams have created a massive difference in their respective ranges and sanctuaries and have brought about tremendous mindset shifts amongst the communities where they work."

A team of forest staff in Pakke also took a 10-day long training from Martin. "The training helped us how to identify the snakes and catch them using ethical means. The rescue of reptiles and snakes is different. Snake rescue involves lots of risk and community people are not as compassionate of snakes compared to mammals. But people's attitude is changing now due to our initiative," Pakke forest range officer, Kime Rambia told DH.

With nearly 80% forest area, Arunachal Pradesh is home to a large number of endangered snake species. Discovery of a new species of a venomous pit viper near Pakke in July last year elated many but a video of a king cobra being killed, which went viral in social media in April invited many conservationists' anger.