Overview

""Full of intrigue, deception, family loyalty and hardships, a glimpse into the daily lives of the people who are the guardians of India's remaining wildlife and gives a much needed dose of reality. It should be read by every well-meaning conservationist."" Ruth DeFries, Recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant and Professor of Ecology and Sustainable Development, Columbia University The Buxa Tiger Reserve, in the forests of northern West Bengal, was meant to protect tigers. The tigers have largely disappeared. What remains is a forest shared by elephants and several thousand villagers, an arrangement neither side chose. Conservationist Nitin Sekar arrived in Buxa as a Princeton graduate student studying elephant ecology. He left with a much harder set of questions. The Elephant Jungle weaves Sekar's years of fieldwork with the life of Netra, a villager born inside the reserve who became his field assistant and, eventually, his friend. Netra grew up taught to fear the same animals his religion taught him to revere. He came to know individual elephants by name and temperament, some gentle, some dangerous. Through Netra, Sekar came to understand what it actually means to live alongside endangered animals. Through the elephants, he came to understand what conservation costs the people we rarely consult. A 2010 Indian government task force called the human-elephant conflict tragic for both sides: ""Both are victims. Both are victims of victims."" The Elephant Jungle is an extended meditation on that line. It is a book about elephants, and it is also a book about poverty, democracy, the long shadow of colonialism, and the limits of good intentions in a crowded world. First published in India in 2022 as What's Left of the Jungle, the book was longlisted for the Tata Literature First Book Award and shortlisted for the Green Literature Festival's Honour Book Award. This is its first US and UK edition.

Full Product Details

9781968679088

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Tab Content 6

Countries Available