A trip to America - vis a vis wildlife talks
- Part 2 -

Usham Somarendro Singh *

When I reached the Conference venue, the volunteers of the Conference asked my name. All the participants name were so systematically arranged in order, like, the name starting with A' were in one line, B' in another line. Mine being Usham, they checked at U' line, and gave me my stuff in no time.

Conference schedule, notebook, pen, a bag 'not plastic', a cup which all participants have to use for drinking tea and water during the entire conference, because they didn't serve plastic cups. So, serving no plastic become more meaningful in conservation conference.

Conference was going on simultaneously in 7 or 8 Ballrooms and Halls because more than 2000 conservationist from around the world were participating. We chose which talk we wished to attend to. My talk was on 17th July in Ballroom E, on leopard-human conflict study in Jammu and Kashmir and to mention briefly, it contained quantification data yearly wise, identification of high conflict zones, reasons for conflict, community participation in conservation and about various solutions to mitigate conflict.

On the day my talk was scheduled, I was walking from my hotel looking for a cab, and then a car stopped by my side. The driver, a middle aged man asked me if I was going for the conference, I said Yes. There were two more inside, who turned out to be his wife and daughter. The daughter was a PhD scholar doing research on soil sciences.

She first asked me about my paper, I told her' today I have a presentation on leopards'. She was pretty fascinated; whether it was the subject of my paper, the leopards, or me, I don't know. As a courtesy, I also asked her about her subject, she replied about the study on soil sciences. So thus they took me to the Convention Centre, and 10 dollar of mine, the cost of the cab, was saved.

Amazingly when my talk was about to be delivered, I saw her again sitting in the front row of my hall. Why she was there but not in other halls, perhaps because she knew me since morning. My talk went quite nicely. An Indian named Murli Pai asked me questions.

It was quite interesting that there is some form of professional rivalry among Indians. I had earlier worked in WTI before joining WSOS. For me I worked for wildlife and I don't bother what others are doing, but then there is so called famous rivalry among organizations. So, perhaps WTI people were not happy seeing me presenting paper for WSOS.

So, this Pai working for WTI asked me many thundering questions. Later a participant from Sikkim, Acharya, a student award finalist who was there during my talk told me 'You really spoke like an expert'. Well I don't know whether I talked like an expert or not, but then I surely answered Murli Pai questions like an expert.

Then somewhere during the middle of the conference, I got to know about Asia Chapter Meeting. It was learned that SCB is held in one of the five continents every year and the next conference in 2009 was going to be in Asia. So, both China and India were claiming to host the conference. I also participated in the meeting.

There were many Indians, Chinese, few Pakistanis, Sri Lankans among many others and the two IUCN experts, I don't exactly remember their name; they were conducting the meeting. One of them was speaking and discussing and the other fellow noting down the minutes. There were arguments mainly between Indians and Chinese.

I remember Indians criticizing Tiger farming in China and the IUCN fellow mediating saying that US has the largest number of farmed Tiger. Then there were some good suggestion like the need for cross- border conservation. The meeting was mainly to highlight and include some of the major issues of the Asia in the next meeting. Then I also thought that I should give some suggestions.

After giving some thoughts, I put up a matter saying that, 'We the wildlife scientist in India work for years in National Park and Sanctuary and table a report. But the implementation part lies with the managers of those Park and Sanctuary. Most of the time, managers don't care to look into those report. Unless implemented, those findings in our reports become useless.

So if the managers can be a part of this conference'. IUCN fellow replied that it seem to be a good issue, but pertaining to India and why not a separate workshop be organized in India but not in SCB. Then one among many Indians immediately supported me saying 'SCB already have topic on bridging the gap between community and wildlife, and why not this is included and managers also join the conference.

Later on, I was told that the Indian, who supported me, was the product of Wll Dehradun and pursuing PhD in the United States. IUCN fellow also spoke about China saying they are doing many great things. He further mentioned about the work taken up by the Chinese Govt.

Since many Chinese are attracted towards the cities since it offer them more money, this creates an imbalance that many important fields like forestry, fishery and agriculture are neglected. So Chinese Govt. has initated programme to pay equivalent salary to those taking up these important yet neglected fields, perhaps one of the many reasons why China won as Conference organisor.

Then I met a Bengali fellow, settled as teacher in the United States and he drove us; a fellow from ATREE, an organization based at Bangalore, two Sikkimese, an Assamese from Aaryanak, a conservation organization in Guwahati, in his car. Then we went to Walmart and bought few stuffs.

I bought a George watch, which I gifted to my brother Usham Rajesh and he proudly wear it since his bosses in his office often enquired about the watch, few T-shirts for those Manipuri friends in Delhi, an American Tourister etc. etc. On the day I left Tennessee airport, it was holding so many passengers mainly the Conference participants who were heading their home, and I also fly back home.

Concluded...