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Your grandparents saw it? Well you can’t - By Aaron Ambrose D’Souza.

Think I’m kidding well… think again. Ask the oldest people (older people know what I’m talking about) you know about what used to live in your backyard I’m pretty sure you don’t see them anymore. Especially in places like Kemmanu since according to the WWF there has been a 58% decrease in the biological diversity from 1970 to 2012 and freshwater environments are the ones hit hardest. Well if you still think that’s nothing give it some years and then the next generation will be asking “fish in the river you’re joking right?”

Since you lot can’t take it seriously without examples here is a cool one. Have you ever seen an Otter? Those cute little animals used to live at our shores noisily keeping people up at night but now due to us poisoning our rivers with trash, fertilizers and pesticides (which if you think about it are just more trash). We probably hunted the rest down. Don’t you dare think it is just Otters (Neeru naayi in Kannada, Udhka Sunhi in konkani) though we’ve lost much more than that. Our waters not only had otters but also dolphins, turtles at the shore all of them gone. Heck we used to call dolphins ‘water pig’ and eat them and turtle eggs were probably cheaper than chicken eggs in their heyday. There probably more such animals. You must be thinking that’s in the past nothing we can do about that now. If you were then you’re wrong.

Since we still didn’t learn our lesson from killing of entire populations. Meet our latest victim clams (and crabs since they feed on them).Clams (murvai in kannada, Khube in Konkani, koiyal in Tulu) are pretty popular around here. We used to go to the shores to pick them up and eat them, then a few years back we started seeing loads of trucks filled with sand moving around. Where did they get the sand you ask?? From our river of course destroying the clams habitat in the process and then we continued to scrounge of the remains and now we get our clams from elsewhere. I hope that made you think at least.

In case you want change all this there are quite a few things you can do and you can start by not throwing thrash into the river or stop others from doing it. If you’re thinking of selling sand of your shore please stop. You can get more information on this topic by reading the ‘Living planet report’ by the WWF. If you’ve seen any animal disappear over the years please mention them in the comments.

Aaron Ambrose D’Souza.

Also Read:

How plants save the world on a daily basis. Click  Here

Flora and Fauna of Kemmannu (Thonse) by Aaron Click  Here