M. K. Ranjitsinh, 86, one of the country’s leading conservationists who has spearheaded several programmes for wildlife protection, has not lost his love and instincts for documenting and, where possible, saving magnificent creatures of forests and mountains whose numbers are shrinking.

Mountain Mammals of the World is a wonderful, highly readable compendium of the larger mountain mammals of the world, living some 2000 metres above sea level. “In the last few years, I have made special efforts to see these animals that I failed to observe in my youth,” he says as he narrates his encounters with some of them. With wonderful photographs and maps, he tells you of the status, behaviour, and ecology of 58 species and a total of 119 mountain mammal taxa of the world. Among them are gravely threatened species with no godfathers – not even the snow leopard and the stately hangul. “Of all the terrestrial regions, the mountains are the most difficult to police and protect from poachers, and they are also the most fragile,” he says.

The book is both exhilarating and academic as Ranjitsinh delves into the copious notes and observations he has made of animals seen across the world. He tells you how nature has endowed these animals with special features to withstand the harsh mountain weather.

With its immense mountain ranges and high uplands, Asia has the world’s greatest mountain species. The great wild sheep, the argalis, the great wild goats, the ibex, markhor, tahr, takin, and chiru all evolved here and spread to Europe, North Africa, and North America, he says. The book recounts the state of the mountain gorilla, snow leopard, Tibetan lynx, mountain wolves, bears, equids, tapir, and many more.

A brush with gorillas

I loved the chapter on the mountain gorillas and the two hours Ranjitsinh spent with them at the Virunga National Park, Rwanda. His group came across 16 gorillas, who scrutinised them for a while, then relaxed. Since gorillas feel threatened if you stare at them too long, the visitors were cautious not to show their excitement. The huge silverback male, weighing over 200 kg, lay resting his head on his arm like a human but kept watch over his flock and the tourists. Young, not-yet-silver-backed males and females were in groups some distance away from the dominant male. An infant and a sub-adult played with him, and he embraced the infant as if in an idyllic family. The grandma of the gorillas sat some distance away, grabbing and hugging infants as they played around her till their mothers took them away.

Weighing about 100 kg, Grandma spotted the humans some 7 metres away and, tilting her head, charged at them. She stopped short of Ranjitsinh, looked into his eyes, touched his left flank, and suddenly left to join the troop. Ranjitsinh instinctively touched her shoulder, but there was no response. However, the guide chided him for touching the gorilla, which could transmit human pathogens to them. It was one of the author’s memorable moments of a close encounter with a wild animal.

Today, the mountain gorilla habitat is confined to the Virunga chain of mountains, which spans the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda, and to the Bwindi Impenetrable Forests, 25 km to the north. The Virunga population is restricted to about 450 sq km, and the Bwindi one to about 330 sq km. Their reluctance to wade through waters and apparent inability to swim rivers hinder their dispersal.

From a population of 450 to 500 in the 1950s, the gorilla numbers shrank to 260 in 1978. Over 40 percent of their habitat was in the process of being converted into agricultural land when governments took stringent action and raised funds for their protection through ‘gorilla tourism.’ This paid dividends, and currently, there are about 604 and 400 gorillas in the two habitats. However, the biggest threat to their long-term survival is high human density around the Virunga mountains.

Tracking the ghost of the mountains

“No feline in the world can equal the snow leopard in regality because of its habitat’s grandeur and rarity,” Ranjitsinh writes. The magnificent snow leopard’s fragmented and isolated range extends over 1.8 million sq km in Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Bhutan. The estimates of their population vary from 4000 to 8000. In India, the potential snow leopard habitat is 1,28,757 sq km across the Himalayas in seven protected areas.

In treeless uplands shrouded in sheets of snow, camouflage is crucial for survival. The snow leopard changes its coat to a lighter hue in winter to survive undetected in the open terrain. Its main prey, the bharal or blue sheep, too has an efficient camouflage mechanism. Most species living in below-zero-degree temperatures develop a layer of underwool, which sheds in summer. The thickness and quality of this underwool, called pashm in Kashmiri, varies with the climate in which they live.

Though only 60 cm at the shoulder, the snow leopard has well-developed chest and leg muscles and a meter-long tail, insulated with fur, required for maintaining its balance. In Ladakh, where it is known as Shan, Ranjitsinh saw a female curled up like a ball with its tail wrapped around it like a muffler.

Snow leopards avoid human proximity. A study in west Nepal showed that the densest population of snow leopards was in areas where the human population was less than 1 per 100 sq km, an important trait when preparing conservation strategies and creating protected areas.

Running from bears in Dachigam

While there is awe for snow leopards and gorillas, people are terrified of meeting a bear unarmed. In America, it is the grizzly bear; in Asia, it is the Asiatic black bear, though it is not the largest bear on the continent. Keen observation of an animal’s body language usually tells you what transpires in its mind, but not with black bears, whose body language does not indicate if it will leave or lunge. With good eyesight and probably better hearing, it is more aggressive than the smaller sloth bear and the larger brown bear. Unlike carnivores, bears use their paws, not their jaws, when attacking humans — swiping viciously at the face or scalp.

In India, black bear density is two to three per 100 sq km, but in Dachigam National Park in Kashmir, it is 48 per 100 sq km. This is the highest density of the species recorded in the world. There are two oak groves, not indigenous to the region, in Dachigam, planted by Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir. The wild apple, grape, and apricot that now grow in Dachigam may have been generated from the seeds of fruits consumed by bears outside the park and deposited in their droppings. However, the bear’s predilection to raid agricultural crops, particularly maize and fruit plantations, leads to conflict with humans.

In December 1960, Ranjitsinh had a memorable encounter with a black bear in Dachigam. He and forest guard Mir found a disemboweled hangul yearling killed by a leopard. As he stepped out for a better view, Mir shouted “hapur” (bear), and 15 m to their right was a hulking fellow squatting over the viscera of the hangul. Head thrust forward belligerently, he eyed the intruders even as they started inching back. Mir lost his nerve and shouted at the bear, who then lunged at them, snarling. The two bolted in different directions, but Ranjitsinh’s leg got caught in a creeper, and he fell on his face. Lip bleeding, he lay on his chest, face covered, hoping he would be spared a mauling. When the bear vanished, he scrambled to safety but refused to have his lips stitched – the scar, a reminder of this encounter.

The Indian Himalayan brown bear, with a population of about 300 individuals in the wild, is one of the most successful large mammals of the world. In November 2019, Ranjitsinh saw eight brown bears feeding together from an Army waste food dump in the Mushko Valley in the Kargil area of Ladakh. Similar feeding was seen near wayside restaurants that have come up on the Srinagar-Leh highway. The Tibetan blue bear, smaller than the brown bear, can be seen occasionally in the Changthang area. With increasing horticulture, agriculture, and animal husbandry, Ranjitsinh fears rising conflicts and retributory killings of bears.

Climbers, unlike any other, horned and hooved

The Asiatic ibex and the vicuna are magnificent creatures that few write about. The ibex is the only animal found across the three continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe. It is most commonly depicted in petroglyphs of rock art on the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan and the mountains of Ladakh.

Markhor, ibex, chamois, and rocky mountain goats have developed hooves with hard outer edges and soft, rubbery bottoms to provide traction and firm footholds on rocks and precipices. The Tibetan antelope, which lives on an oxygen-deficient plateau over 5000 m high and has to run long and fast to escape wolves, has developed oversized nostrils to allow the intake of a large quantum of air to compensate for oxygen deficiency. The network of capillaries in their nostrils keeps them warm despite the huge volume of extremely cold air.

The male ibex is distinguished by its long, curved horns. In Rowland Ward’s Records of Big Game, the first 14 longest horned ibex were from the Tien Shan mountain area of Kyrgyzstan — the longest being 151 cm. While the male looks distinguished, 95-100 cm at the shoulder and 90 kg heavy, the greyish brown females are half that size and non-descript. Old males in summer have russet-chocolate brown coats offset by a cream ‘saddle’ on their backs. The dark beard is sprinkled with silver hair. The spongy cushion pads on their hooves enable them to grip rocks and ledges, and they develop a heavy layer of pashm to insulate them from the cold of the snowy high altitudes.

The ibex herd size varies from three to 40 animals, but there can be as many as 200. Ranjitsinh has captured beautifully the mating habits of the ibex, which have a long life span of 15 years for males and 17 for females. The snow leopard is the natural predator of the ibex. Wolves also prey on them on level terrain, such as the Mongolian Gobi and Deosai plateau in North Kashmir. Brown bears are known to scavenge on ibex killed in avalanches, and golden eagles are known to kill their kids in the Sayan and Tien Shan mountains. But a far greater threat is from feral dogs, which now hunt in packs as the fleeing ibex gives its high-pitched birdlike whistle.

The long-necked Vicuna

In the Pampa Galeras National Vicuna Reserve of Peru, elegant, long-necked creatures with upright ears can be seen in the sea of rolling tussock grass. Their body and neck are deep cinnamon, and they have a white bib of long hair. With white circles around their eyes and large expressive liquid eyes, these are the vicuna of the volcanic terrain of the central Andes.

Thousands of years ago, the property of the Inca kings, these beautiful creatures were saved from extinction by giving the local population a stake in their survival — and earning them the pseudonym “the bank of the poor.” The kings would round them up every three years and shear them off their fleece before releasing them. The fleece was made into fabric for the sun temple and its priests. There were an estimated 2 million vicunas at the height of the Inca Empire. But after the Spanish arrived, about 80,000 vicunas were killed annually. The 1825 decree of Simon Bolivar, the liberator of South America from Spanish rule, against the killing of the Vicuna was unsuccessful, and by 1965 their population was down to 6000. In 1966, Peru established the 70,000-hectare Vicuna Reserve, and the survival of the vicuna began.

In the 1986 CITES meeting, Felipe Benavides, a conservationist, helped change the vicuna management policy by moving it from Appendix 1 to Appendix 2 to allow international trade of vicuna fiber. In 1991, Peru gave the local Campesino communities legal custody of the vicuna and exclusive usufructuary right to its fleece. By 2012, the vicuna population was estimated at 4,60,000, and it was called “the bank of the poor.”

The book introduced me to many new animals and their chances of survival in a world seething with human greed and shrinking habitats. It’s a large and voluminous book, difficult to hold and read, but each page offers food for those concerned about the world’s diminishing fauna.

Banner image: Gorilla numbers have declined from a population of 450–500 in the 1950s to just 260 by 1978. Image by Carine06 via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).