Have you ever dreamt of sporting an elephant's trunk for a day, or perhaps fluttering around with butterfly wings? Our playful musings on such animal appendages kick off a journey into the heart of elephant conservation with Vivek Menon. The founder and executive director of the Wildlife Trust of India and chair of the Asian Elephant Specialist Group joins us, Dr. Monni Böhm and Justin Birkhoff, to share his origin story—from birdwatcher to elephant defender—and the formation of an organization that has blossomed into a global conservation powerhouse.
From a small spare bedroom operation to a force of 250 staff and 22 field stations, Menon unveils the extraordinary growth of the Wildlife Trust of India and its crusade against species decline. The man behind the mission also reveals how the shutter of a camera lens offers him solace and the unexpected ways social media has bridged his message with the next generation.
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Links:
Wildlife Trust of India
IUCN SSC Asian Elephant Specialist Group
Have you ever dreamt of sporting an elephant's trunk for a day, or perhaps fluttering around with butterfly wings? Our playful musings on such animal appendages kick off a journey into the heart of elephant conservation with Vivek Menon. The founder and executive director of the Wildlife Trust of India and chair of the Asian Elephant Specialist Group joins us, Dr. Monni Böhm and Justin Birkhoff, to share his origin story—from birdwatcher to elephant defender—and the formation of an organization that has blossomed into a global conservation powerhouse.
From a small spare bedroom operation to a force of 250 staff and 22 field stations, Menon unveils the extraordinary growth of the Wildlife Trust of India and its crusade against species decline. The man behind the mission also reveals how the shutter of a camera lens offers him solace and the unexpected ways social media has bridged his message with the next generation.
---
Links:
Wildlife Trust of India
IUCN SSC Asian Elephant Specialist Group
So we're ready to almost literally address the elephant in the room. We're joined by Dr. Vivek Menon, who is the founder and executive director of Wildlife Trust of India and the chair of the Asian Elephant Specialist Group. I'm Monni Böhm.
Justin Birkhoff:And I'm Justin Birkhoff. Welcome to the Protect Species Podcast, where we celebrate biodiversity and converse with conservationists biodiversity and converse with conservationists, Justin slight curveball question before we start.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Yeah, if you had to have an animal body part for maybe like an hour or something, which one would it be and why?
Justin Birkhoff:Oh, that's a good one. I mean, wings sound like they'd be a lot of fun, but I don't know if I'd want wings to replace my arms, or wings in addition to arms. So like butterfly wings maybe, like that would be fun, they'd be pretty, but they're very fragile.
Dr. Monni Böhm:I'm not sure I feel like this is this is really a segue for you to tell me what you want.
Justin Birkhoff:Pretty pretty yeah, that's because I think monarch wings really just monarch butterfly wings, yeah, I really don't like you right now.
Dr. Monni Böhm:However, I have obviously spent many an hour thinking about this. I would like to have an elephant's trunk instead of my nose, not in addition to it, because that would look really weird. I mean, it's the best. I will probably not give it back.
Justin Birkhoff:Who's going to come and take it? I don't know.
Dr. Monni Böhm:But I said, if you just had it for an hour.
Justin Birkhoff:After that hour I would not want to give it back. What is so exciting about an elephant's trunk that you really want like as opposed to like an okapi's tongue where you could like clean your ears with it?
Dr. Monni Böhm:Yeah, can, can you carry a watermelon with it though?
Justin Birkhoff:this is, this is the bar. Right here is can I carry a water? You have hands. Only two, only two.
Dr. Monni Böhm:True okay, and the amount of time is that I could do with an additional hand would also be good alternatively, I could just have an elephant's trunk. Why do you not think that it's actually going to improve my face? I mean, in all reality, I think I would look pretty good. Have you seen ganesha?
Justin Birkhoff:that's true, and you could snack while you were typing. That'd be pretty handy too.
Dr. Monni Böhm:That'd be cool, I could have a shower while typing, maybe not on a keyboard. That's not good um, but you could have a shower whenever you want to. You can just wander about, just have a quick little drink.
Justin Birkhoff:It's pretty awesome, just do a bucket next to your desk, really annoy people by just kind of reaching over and stealing things from their desks, so given the fact that I sit very close to you. I would literally annoy you all day long with my truck. I thought you're not allowed to have an elephant's truck, based purely on the fact that we sit across from each other at our desk.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Speaking of sitting across from each other. You know what else I really like about elephants.
Justin Birkhoff:No, please tell me. I'm deeply interested and a little alarmed alarmed again.
Dr. Monni Böhm:I probably spent a little bit too much time on this, um, but I once invented a new game called elephant poo shot putt did?
Justin Birkhoff:did you keep your amateur status so you can compete in the olympics?
Dr. Monni Böhm:absolutely excellent.
Justin Birkhoff:When do we expect to see you in the olympics?
Dr. Monni Böhm:for this I mean, you know, at the moment. We're just still trying to make it an olympic sport, um, but I don't really see why it wouldn't, because it's but it's like normal shot putt. So if you like, you know track and field, it's got all of that. But the sump that it makes on landing, do you like awesome do?
Justin Birkhoff:you bring it in close to your chin, of course, you get a little on your face really well, it's generally quite dry isn't? It.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Oh okay, it's generally all right, but it also sticks together quite well on landing, so I think it's probably easy to measure. That's good.
Justin Birkhoff:So you like the number one ranked.
Dr. Monni Böhm:What's the Shot? It Putted it what is the verb?
Justin Birkhoff:I don't know.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Shot putted it.
Justin Birkhoff:I don't know. Anyway, the lingo and the rule book are still in development, so you know we're working on that first. Does that mean you're the world ranked number one shot putter, I mean? I?
Dr. Monni Böhm:sincerely hope that nobody else has taken up the sport, because that's the only chance I have.
Justin Birkhoff:Okay. So other than the fact that you want to officially shot put elephant dung and you would love to have a trunk for an hour but never give it back, which means more than an hour what do you find?
Dr. Monni Böhm:fascinating about elephants. I once wanted to really be an orphan elephant keeper. I used to dream about baby elephants. I used to dream about baby elephants. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'd seen a program about orphan elephants and a project where they were looking after them in Africa, I think, and I was so obsessed I kept dreaming about it every single night afterwards.
Justin Birkhoff:I mean that's great, but watching videos of elephant orphans like run around, just run amok, just absolute chaos all the time, which probably really leads into why the fact that you'd really love to have a trunk correct and then just play football with them.
Dr. Monni Böhm:I think it would be not. Not with a trunk, with a ball okay but with the elephants as in the elephants, the baby orphan elephants play football with you. No, again, that sounds like they're kicking me. You know what I mean. We use a ball. Maybe I'm not the one, maybe I'm just not the one to explain you participate in their game of football.
Justin Birkhoff:I think is the way you're trying to phrase that.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Okay, good, excellent. Yeah, thank you very much.
Justin Birkhoff:You're welcome.
Dr. Monni Böhm:English is not my native language.
Justin Birkhoff:I'm not sure if that's helping either of us.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Probably doesn't Shall we maybe get on with the podcast.
Justin Birkhoff:We should probably move towards that.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Excellent. What are we doing here?
Justin Birkhoff:We're going to be speaking with Vivek Manan, who is the chair of the Asian Elephant Specialist Group, and we're going to talk a little bit about Asian Elephant Conservation, how he got involved in Asian elephant conservation and really kind of learn what the status is, what the big challenges are and what he thinks the next steps for Asian elephants is going to be.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Do you think it would be okay if I asked him if he ever wanted to have an elephant's trunk instead of a nose?
Justin Birkhoff:I mean, if we have time, I'm going to encourage you to ask him really, because because I'm curious how one how he'd respond, just kind of like a physical response to that, and then also what his actual answer might be. I think we should ask all of our guests. We should also ask him if you can make an elephant noise impression, because I can also do that.
Dr. Monni Böhm:But I will not do that for the sake of our listeners and also for you know, I don't know my general face it goes a bit fast anyway, that used to also be an obsession of mine. Anyway, let's move on. What elephant noises?
Justin Birkhoff:yeah, that tracks.
Dr. Monni Böhm:There's nothing about that that is remotely surprising I used to make a really good seagull impression I can't wait to experience that oh, you can believe me on with the podcast good morning vivek.
Justin Birkhoff:How are you doing today? Not too bad, not too bad, thank you. Excellent. It's a little bit warmer today than it was yesterday. Yeah, it was indeed. It's supposed to be like 20-something today, I think Celsius, for those that care.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Thank you very much.
Justin Birkhoff:So, vivek, you know to share with the guests kind of. We'd love for you to introduce yourself briefly and talk a little bit about, kind of the overall work that you do, and then we'll dive in a little bit deeper.
Dr. Vivek Menon:Yeah, like you said, I'm Vivek Menon, a conservationist from India. I've been working for now 36 years in conservation in various forms. I started as an ornithologist, as a bird person, and then graduated to larger mammals, especially the elephant. I've also been, I suppose, what you might call a serial entrepreneur in the nonprofit world. I founded five NGOs. Oh, wow.
Dr. Vivek Menon:And the fifth of which, the Wildlife Trust of India, has taken a life of its own and, starting from a spare bedroom in my home 25 years ago, has grown into one of the larger and hopefully more effective conservation organizations in India. So that's what I've been doing.
Dr. Monni Böhm:So how did you get into conservation? What's your origin story?
Dr. Vivek Menon:so to speak. So there's no one moment when I decided and many people, some rather well-known people, have asked me this on stage, including David Attenborough, and I didn't have an answer.
Dr. Monni Böhm:It's like I don't know how did you get an answer, david? I mean honestly.
Dr. Vivek Menon:Absolutely so. When you don't know, you ask a question back, and I did exactly that and he said age 11, watching a pair of newts mate in my father's pond. So he was very specific, very specific.
Dr. Vivek Menon:I unfortunately do not have such a story. But since I was young there were two things. One is we were then at that time my father and my mother brought us up in a town which is the foothills of the Himalayas. So the school we went to made sure that we were hiking and trekking all the time in the Himalayas. So I suppose that inculcated in me a love for nature and walking in nature and appreciating nature. But I also used to keep animals and birds, all sorts of animals and birds. We lived in a large house.
Dr. Vivek Menon:Both my parents were rather busy people and did not come to the part of the house that I stayed in, and so I used it entirely to keep everything from monkeys to owls to eagles. That's quite the little menagerie. So, yeah, one did it and one should not have done it, I suppose, looking back, but I comfort myself in saying that at least some of those animals were rescued and should have been looked after by somebody, but others I bought off the trade, which is why one of the first things I did when I was a professional conservationist was to address the illegal wildlife trade, because I knew quite a bit about trading by buying these birds largely birds of the traders when I when I was a teenager okay, cool, yeah, that's how I stumbled into this.
Justin Birkhoff:Yeah, I think, I think that's an interesting kind of point, because there are people that are in this field that very much have that kind of that singular gestalt moment where they're like this is it, this is what happened. But I also think there's a huge number of people that are in this field that bring other passions and other interests and they do kind of just stumble into it and you know like, you don't have to, you don't have to have this as your life's goal from you know, from an early age, to really make a big impact and how did you get into it, Justin?
Justin Birkhoff:How did I get into it? Oh, I stumbled into it.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Very honestly.
Justin Birkhoff:I started as an undergrad student, as a pre-med student. I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon. That was my goal in life.
Dr. Monni Böhm:And then I discovered and I think we're all safer for it, that's because we're all working in conservation.
Justin Birkhoff:Maybe, just maybe, and I had some experiences with, you know, hmo insurance in the United States, cause we don't do socialized medicine here, and I really didn't enjoy it because it wasn't what medicine should be.
Justin Birkhoff:Um, and I was taking an animal physiology class and studied diving behavior and Northern elephant seals, uh, which was very niche, but another elephant in the room, another elephant in the room, um, and that that was really kind of what kind of sparked that as an original interest and then, kind of a fun happenstance, ended up working for a zoo that was styled as a safari park and really got exposed to what conservation was from there, and so it was just kind of this an opportunity that arose, and at the time I thought it'd be a fun summer job while I figured out where the rest of my life went. And 16 years later I'm still doing it and still love it. So it was just very much kind of a stumbled into it and I can't imagine my life doing something else. But when I found this it wasn't something I'd imagined for myself either.
Dr. Vivek Menon:It's very strange because Zeus played a part in my life as well and again stumbled into it completely. I was just walking the local zoo Delhi Zoo when I was in my first year of graduation. At that time I had an interest in animals. I kept animals, as I said, I walked in nature, but I was not doing anything professional.
Dr. Vivek Menon:And I was walking through and I saw a man, a young man, casually approach a pheasant cage where there was a silver pheasant, I still remember, which came right up, probably looking for a handout, and instead this chap took out a cigarette that he was smoking and stopped it in the eye of the pheasant Right.
Dr. Vivek Menon:And I did what a young man would out a cigarette that he was smoking and stopped it in the eye of the pheasant. And I did what a young man would, which is I caught hold of him and beat him up and dragged him to the director's office and said this is animal cruelty and what is this? And the director did whatever he had to do with the chap, but then later he told me that I don't. I don't have staff to manage this and you know we need volunteers and you are a young man and you are in university. Why don't you get a band of your friends and come and help me run the zoo if you can do a volunteer program? And that's what I did. So that is my first organized bit of stuff that I did. I gathered a group of first-year students and went to Delhi Zoo. All got shiny new badges as volunteers and tried to assist the zoo.
Dr. Monni Böhm:That's awesome. I suppose that brings us neatly to the next question. You know a much bigger endeavor than this Delhi Zoo endeavor the Wildlife Trust of India. What is it? What's its mission? What are you guys working on?
Dr. Vivek Menon:So Wildlife Trust of India I founded in 1998, so that's 25 years almost to the date and it was started when there was a little vacuum in India in terms of nature conservation. Two of the largest organizations had gone through a transition. There was a niche for doing work in the field, which, in our sense, was not research. We had given ourselves a niche of conservation action. That was a big blank. There were people doing research, there were people holding fundraisers and cocktail parties for wildlife, but there were very few people going out there and reversing what we now in IUCN call reversing the red, or working on species to ensure that they come back from decline, whether it is in terms of enforcement and wildlife crime, whether it was in terms of rehabilitation of animals, whether it is in terms of land securement or species recovery, you name it. There was a gap in the field.
Dr. Vivek Menon:So Wildlife Trust of India was founded on those principles of trying to identify, at that time, three or four ideas which later over the years, we started calling our big ideas, and we have now nine of them. And nine big ideas are enough for nine lifetimes actually. Yeah, I mean I can give you one example of our land securement big idea. India conserves nearly 6% of its land surface under the protected area networks of the government and the big idea of the Royal Air Trust of India is to add 1% of India to that through a privately buffered that's an ambitious goal scheme.
Justin Birkhoff:That's phenomenal.
Dr. Vivek Menon:So that's a hugely ambitious goal. Right, so we're in 0.02 or something after 25 years, but that's what a big idea should be, which is how can you work towards something that's a little beyond you when you think of it, but in a lifetime or two, that should be what you leave for posterity.
Justin Birkhoff:Yeah, yeah, and, like you said, it's ambitious but it's not unachievable and it has, it'll have a lasting impact. And to say that you know this organization that you mentioned. You started 25 years ago, the small group in a spare bedroom that's now on its way to, you know, a percentage of an entire, you know, subcontinent of protected areas. Absolutely incredible, thank you, thank you. So how, how has the organization grown over 25 years? So it started with a small group and it is is flourished and grown. So how, how big is the staff? And is there a kind of a central location of focus or does it really span the entire country?
Dr. Vivek Menon:It spans the entire country we have. The headquarters is in Delhi, in New Delhi, and that's actually the only city office we have. We have 22 field stations across India, from the high Himalayas to Marine, and I employ, I think, full-time something like 250 staff at the moment. So yeah, it has grown.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Beyond a bedroom.
Dr. Vivek Menon:Yes, I'm so happy it has grown beyond my bedroom.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Can you imagine 250 people in there?
Justin Birkhoff:That would be quite tricky yeah, yeah, um, so I think we're we'll talk more about the. You know about elephants specifically, but one thing that you know you mentioned that you're you started as an ornithologist um, you have a pretty significant instagram presence. You post regularly. There are some absolutely stunning images of birds in particular, but every taxa of animals in it. Why is that a wonderful outlet for you? What is the value that you see in sharing these images and your journeys?
Dr. Vivek Menon:Yeah, that's a great question. Well, there are two parts to it. I mean, one is the whole photography thing, which has been my go-to thing for peace within myself. I go and photograph animals and birds. That I'm not working on, because if you only put elephants, that's more like work.
Dr. Vivek Menon:Yes, that's true, and when you look at large mammals especially, I can see the issues. My mind is working on what is to be done to save them rather than enjoy the beauty of the animal. It's sad to say that, but I rarely look at an elephant now and not see issues concerning the elephant. Yeah, I can still look at small birds and not necessarily know what's wrong with them. I know what's wrong with the world, but not necessarily with that individual, that species, et cetera. So I can take my mind off that and watch the beauty of the bird. And birds are beautiful and have brilliant song and they're found everywhere. I was just taking a walk yesterday through your zoo and spent five minutes looking at a brown-headed cowbird. It may be very common to all of you and I was amazed at the song. It was sitting and singing in what I would consider very frigid temperatures. I don't know why it was singing, but it was singing.
Dr. Vivek Menon:To keep itself warm To keep itself warm and yeah, so I have nothing to do with brown-headed cowbirds. I could just look at it and enjoy it and take a photograph. But in terms of social media, I'm not just on Instagram. Actually, I've got a bigger presence on Twitter, if you care to follow me, and LinkedIn. These three are my platforms and I've been on it only less than 15 years, so in my career, relatively recently. And that happened actually because of a young girl who worked for me in the comms division of the Wildlife Trust of India coming to me one day and saying, sir, I'm your comms officer, but you don't tweet and we youngsters want to see tweets. At that time, twitter was a big thing and we want you to tweet. And I told her I have no idea what tweets are. I mean, I thought birds tweet. We were all there at some point.
Dr. Vivek Menon:I'll teach you. She said I'll teach you. And I said that's fine. If a 22 year old boy or girl tells you that they will teach you something, you better learn. Yeah, correct. So I took her out to a word and she was good to a word, came every morning to my office and helped me tweet. That's phenomenal. And I got hooked and I said, okay, I can just put what I feel like in my car or traveling and, mind you, I travel a lot. I travel 20 days a month for the last 35 years. So as I move, I can string these pieces of my thoughts together, put a picture and before I knew it, I had 20,000 to 25,000 followers and I said, good God.
Dr. Vivek Menon:I mean the world wants to actually listen to what I've got to say so it's a great means of communicating, and I think communicating for conservation is so important because we live in our little, you know, worlds where we think we are doing great stuff and saving all these animals. What we need to do is to mainstream it. We need to get it to people who are not conservationists. The lesser conservationists there are professionally, the better world we'll have, actually, if everybody does a little bit.
Justin Birkhoff:Yeah. So I have a follow-up question for that TikTok. Have they got you on TikTok yet you?
Dr. Vivek Menon:see, they tried. They can't because in India it's banned.
Dr. Monni Böhm:It's a Chinese app.
Dr. Vivek Menon:Unfortunately, my government doesn't like China, so they banned TikTok, that's one platform less to engage with, I would have liked to see the lesson plan from like a 15-year-old.
Dr. Monni Böhm:This is how you learn how to TikTok. Today we do interpretive dance. I don't a lesson plan from like a 15 year old. This is how you learn how to take talk. Today we do interpretive dance. I don't know. That would have been really cool.
Dr. Vivek Menon:Yeah. We it keeps you younger as well. When you learn a new thing and a new app, and yeah.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Oh, absolutely yeah.
Dr. Vivek Menon:It's fun.
Justin Birkhoff:This podcast is a production of the global center for species survival of Indianapolis. We record all the episodes in the Beatle Financial Media Studio, made possible by a generous gift from Eric and Elaine Beatle.
Dr. Monni Böhm:I think we're going to take our conversation now to what you would call work, because we're talking about elephants now, I'm sorry about this, so let's focus on elephants. You're the chair of the Asian Elephant Specialist Group. Now, to everybody out there listening who might not know what a specialist group is or does, can you explain a little bit of what that entails being a chair of a specialist group?
Dr. Vivek Menon:Yeah, so the IUCN is the world's largest group of both civil society actors and governments and individual specialists who come together under various commissions of the IUCN.
Dr. Vivek Menon:One of the largest commissions is the Species Survival Commission, which basically engages in species survival, and it does so through an incredible network of nearly 10,000 volunteers at varying stages currently 8,500, but has reached 10,000 people who work on everything from ladybirds to elephants and the idea is to get the world's expertise on that particular taxon together in a specialist group, and therefore the Asian elephant specialist group luckily works only on one species, the Asian elephant.
Dr. Vivek Menon:There are specialist groups that work on hundreds of thousands of species, such as the fungi specialist group, and the Asian elephant specialist group therefore concentrates on the survivability of this magnificent land animal the largest we have in Asia and uses in a voluntary sense the expertise of today 120 members approximately, who come together both virtually and sometimes in person to try and assist in planning, assessing and finally, either directly acting or catalyzing action which help in the survival of the Asian elephant. I've been honored to chair this group for the last eight years and I've got another couple of years to go, I suppose, in this term, and 10 is a nice round number for me to have assisted in strengthening this group and it's been fun.
Dr. Vivek Menon:So what does the future look like for the Asian elephant? I'm, by nature, an optimist. Yesterday, when I was freezing here, I was an optimist.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Were you optimistic then too.
Dr. Vivek Menon:Today is already a better day.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Oh, there you go.
Dr. Vivek Menon:Excellent. So in conservation you have to be in it for a long, long run. And the Asian elephant, interestingly, from the time I started my career 35 years ago to now, does not seem to actually have gone down in numbers dramatically in most parts. And when I started my journey the number was 21,000 to 25,000 in India, and that has gone from 26,000 to 30,000 now. So actually a minor increase, right. And in the world it was 40,000 to 45,000. And now it's gone 45,000 to 50,000. So actually a minor increase. And in the world it was 40,000 to 45,000, and now it's gone 45,000 to 50,000, so actually a minor increase.
Dr. Vivek Menon:However, that does not mean all is well. Number one 50,000 elephants period in the world in the wild means it's still an endangered species, given that it's long-lived, given that it has only one calf at a time, given that the social structure of the animal, the movement patterns of the animal, require vast areas of land for it to survive. We'll keep it endangered for a long time to come. Actually. And what's more worrying is, although the total number of animals have almost remained the same, but it's eroding from the edges. So in countries such as Vietnam, cambodia, indonesia, the numbers have dramatically declined over the years and this overall population stability, so to speak, is because of hugely increasing numbers in India, sri Lanka and Nepal. So South Asia seems to be going up. Southeast Asia not so good.
Justin Birkhoff:So the total population numbers hides some of that local drops.
Dr. Vivek Menon:That's right. That's right. And it's very important to look at local drops because before you know it it could hit the center, the core. And remember that elephant lifetimes are much like us 60 years longevity average can live upetimes are much like us 60 years longevity average can live up to 100, just like us. So if you look at a few elephant generations to see change, it may be beyond your lifetime and you may think all's well now and then you might see a sudden drop when a particular era for a population is over.
Justin Birkhoff:Yeah, the age demographic is important because if you have an animal that lives such a long time. But there's a lack of recruitment, so a lack of juveniles moving up into adult stages. You know, again it's something that overshadows. You know the pure numbers are not just, you know they're not the best metric right.
Dr. Vivek Menon:That's right, and especially when, for example, poaching targeting only males and only large males therefore, healthier males could completely skew even male-female ratios, and not just juveniles, but skew both just the number of males existing in the population, but also skew the number of healthy males who are passing on the genes that are so critical for a species to survive.
Justin Birkhoff:So you mentioned poaching there. What are the kind of the three biggest threats that Asian elephants are currently facing?
Dr. Vivek Menon:Yeah, that's a great question, because when I started my whole journey, I actually started in anti-poaching.
Dr. Vivek Menon:I told you earlier, that trading was something that I knew, frankly, because I used to trade myself innocently as a young boy, but part took in that thing. But you know, know better, do better, right? Yeah? So after I finished my post-graduation I didn't actually take a research job or get into conservation through a normal ecological lens. I actually started with a senior colleague of mine to set up traffic in India, which was not then a thing people talked about at all, which is the illegal trade in animals, a thing people talked about at all, which is the illegal trade in animals. And while he focused on the tiger bone trade, I actually focused on elephant and rhino.
Dr. Vivek Menon:These are my initial years of work, and those initial years of professional work meant that I did everything a scientist should not do. I went undercover, I busted criminal rings, I traded in all sorts of things in my life power. I busted criminal rings, I traded in all sorts of things in my life. I went into 13 countries and that was good. I was young, I had a lot of adrenaline and, as a result, worked with Interpol, worked with all sorts of people in busting criminal rings.
Dr. Vivek Menon:Now, in that at that time, poaching was a huge problem for India, when I say a huge problem. The world knows of the African elephant poaching simply because it's been better documented and also perhaps the scale, the number of elephants being poached was always higher in Africa. But, as I said, when we are talking about 25,000 elephants at that stage in India and only 2,500 being males, adult males, and of them not many tuskers left in several populations because tuskers were being individually chosen and poached. So even the males that are left were more machinas, were adult male elephants without tusks. I mean, if people don't know, I suppose it's a good time to say that in Asian elephants only the males have tusks and only some of the males have tusks, unlike the African elephant where both the male and the female have tusks. So if you go after an Asian elephant, you're killing only males, right, if you go after them for tusks.
Dr. Vivek Menon:So there was a major problem for elephants, especially in southern India during those periods of time, and so I worked a lot in trying to figure out where does this ivory go, and I tracked it into the Far East, japan, china and tried my best to stop that going out of India. And later, when I graduated from my undercover days and traffic, I spent a lot of time which I still do in a UN convention called CITES. I went as an NGO and then I went as the Indian delegation for years and years and now I go as IUCN. But whatever the hat I wear, I've been in that convention for 32 years now, trying to talk about why ivory or rhino horn should or should not be traded internationally. And my position, india's position, is that it should not be traded internationally, even if individual sovereign countries have their own.
Dr. Vivek Menon:But putting it on the international market, severely threatens an animal that is so dependent. And sensitive to that trade and sensitive to that trade, very sensitive to that trade.
Justin Birkhoff:So two other do you have? Oh, I'm sorry, that was fine, I got stuck on one. No, it was immensely interesting.
Dr. Vivek Menon:That period of life so overtook me.
Dr. Monni Böhm:I'm sorry, sorry about that I can't remember what the question was. I remember he. Sorry about that. I can't remember what the question was.
Dr. Vivek Menon:I remember he wanted three threats. So at that time my focus was really on poaching and trade and over the years it's moved, now that poaching and trade in India seems to have been controlled pretty well. It doesn't mean it's wiped out, it doesn't mean you can take your eyes off the ball, but poaching has been more or less controlled wonderfully by the forest guards and Forest Service of India for tigers and rhinos and elephants not on one species, the focus has really shifted to space Elephant. If you were to explain an elephant in four words and I do that to little children, I do that to heads of state all my life- and now to us.
Justin Birkhoff:I've done this, and now to us Four words Big, intelligent, social nomad.
Dr. Vivek Menon:If you know these four words, you know an elephant. And big. Any child will tell you that an elephant is big. But biologically big has meanings. It's a mega herbivore. It's beyond a certain tonnage. It needs a certain amount of food. It needs a certain kind of food, or rather two kinds of food, and it needs the browse and the graze, C3 and C4 carbon. So it has to move because it's big.
Dr. Vivek Menon:You can't settle an elephant. You can settle some kind of people, but you can't settle a nomad, or it's a bad idea to settle a nomad. So similarly, which is why I called an elephant a nomad I know it's an anthropomorphic term not normally used for animals, but I personally like the word nomad for an elephant better than a migratory species. It's not truly migratory, although it's in the convention of migratory species, but it perambulates almost cyclically from one place to the other and the whole biology depends on the fact that it moves and the forest or the grassland regrows behind it and then it comes back. Now, if you settle an elephant, such as in Southern Africa where you've put in fences around all the population, then it eats itself out of the habitat and then you come to this extraordinary question as to whether there are too many elephants. So it's not the question of too many elephants, it's the question of too many elephants at that spot. If you allow the elephants to go across a natural regime of movement, you would not have that problem.
Dr. Vivek Menon:So in India we have been working a lot on corridors. The whole concept of elephant corridors was enshrined in a publication that we did 15 years ago called Rite of Passage, which actually at that time documented the 88 corridors in India. Now there are 101. And some people applaud and say, oh, you've got more corridors, it must be good for elephants. No, it's not good.
Dr. Vivek Menon:The reason you have more corridors is as less intact habitat and as habitat fragments, you have smaller and smaller passageways connecting to habitats. So that is number two the habitat fragmentation and the inability because of our linear infrastructure. It could be roads, it could be railways, it could be power lines, it could be canals, especially these sort of linear infrastructure that we build. That stop elephant movement is the second big threat. And the third is sometimes because of this and sometimes because of the other reason that the elephants are intelligent, which I told you, we have got into a situation of human-elephant conflict which has actually overshadowed any other conflict in the world, which has actually overshadowed any other conflict in the world, and African friends of mine would be always very it's good for them to know, when they talk of conflict and the levels of tolerance that are there in many parts of their world, to know that in India, elephants kill 400 to 450 people a year.
Dr. Vivek Menon:Wow and we call it God and we protect it. And if an Indian touches an elephant he goes three years to jail, right. So very strict laws to protect an animal that actually kills you and kills 450 of your family or friends or kin. So it's an extreme problem and today I think that is the big problem that's facing the elephant, not in terms of the number of elephants that are being killed in retaliation, which actually in our parts of the world is lesser than the number of people who are being killed but because of the erosion of the love. Elephants, by nature, are creatures that evoke awe and love. At least in my part of the world, people love elephants.
Justin Birkhoff:They do in this part of the world as well, but they don't love elephants.
Dr. Vivek Menon:When they kill you, yeah, or they kill your child or they kill your father Right, so that love is being eroded as we talk about. If we don't find more permanent solutions to human-elephant conflict, I'm afraid that that will be our big issue.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Justin, or rather is our big issue. Oh sorry, justin, you just recently went to India. I did For an Asian elephant specialist group meeting. Still very jealous, no bitterness in my voice. Was this the kind of stuff that was discussed there? Or is what happened in India stays in India? Is that the rule right now?
Justin Birkhoff:No, it was definitely.
Justin Birkhoff:I mean, it was a privilege to go.
Justin Birkhoff:It was my first IUCN SSC specialist group meeting and I was very honored that it was with the Asian elephant specialist group that does so much wonderful work across its range, and conflict was really kind of a central core of the main conversation.
Justin Birkhoff:Um, and I think, you know, having that face-to-face meeting really allows people to connect in a way that as great as Zoom has been through the, you know, through the COVID experience like being able to sit in the same room and have discussions with people from a variety of different range countries, from different cultural, religious backgrounds and really kind of hone in on like these are the issues that we share. What are the solutions that people are trying in different places, how are they working and realizing that they're not cookie cutter, that it is going to be very much. You know what happens in Southern India and what's happening in Central India and Northern India isn't the same, the solutions aren't the same, but you know that FaceTime was incredible to watch and to see how the government officials and the NGO, you know, representatives interacted and had this true love, as you know, as you put it, this absolute love for these magnificent animals was really quite impressive.
Dr. Monni Böhm:And we had a little bit of peace and quiet here. We did have peace and quiet here.
Justin Birkhoff:I'm so sorry about that, Um, but I think you know we, we, we spent, you know, four days in meetings, sharing experiences and learned lessons, and that love for elephants really culminated in the trip to corporate national park. And you have this wonderful group of people that have dedicated their lives to Asian elephants and to go out and see a family group in the wild. And this complete and utter joy and like, unbridled, like passion and love that all of these people had for this animal.
Dr. Vivek Menon:You know it wasn't that magnificent to see it was incredible A group of experts who should have been seeing elephants all their lives and could have been bored, but no, they were standing on top of their seats.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Jockeying for position elbows and just like these giant, like face splitting grins looking at each other, and the entire that's our people today are people too exactly, but the rest of the evening everyone was sharing.
Justin Birkhoff:You know we were all at the same spot watching the same group of animals and we all shared our photos with each other and this is like this shared passion, was really incredible to watch and you know it is. I think the power of the ssc and the specialist group to bring this shared expertise and passion and love and joy for the animals that they're protecting was really on display. When you know my trip my short trip, sadly to india- and and justin's been on this level ever since coming back I haven't shown my pictures, yet but yeah, sure but it's so important that that connect, isn't it?
Dr. Vivek Menon:oh, absolutely all of us. It's not just you, yeah, but all of us need that connect with the natural world to keep us going. We do.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Is this a time to say I've also been to Corbett National Park. I saw a tiger, though.
Justin Birkhoff:Oh rude. There was one of our trucks that saw a tiger and they had the I don't know the joy of lording it over everybody else. And the worst part is the Jeep that I had been in. We had stopped at the same watering hole and there was a group of deer and apologies, don't remember which kind of deer tiger food spotted deer, I think. Yes, spotted deer, and they had startled and we all gave kira a hard time because she had just stood up to take a picture. We're like oh, you scared all the deer. And then we moved on and it turns out that kira hadn't startled all the deer. There was a tiger that had approached that we hadn't seen and we we missed viewing it at the waterhole by three minutes. But the jeep behind us had the pleasure of being able to watch this magnificent creature you see, we were saying it.
Dr. Vivek Menon:And david says a tiger sees you a thousand times for each time you see the tiger.
Dr. Monni Böhm:So I was watching you and kira so kira is one of our colleagues from the SSC chair's office that we work with a lot for our listeners, and I just love the fact that you just immediately were like oh no, it must have been Kira startling them, rather than thinking maybe it's something else.
Justin Birkhoff:We should get her on the podcast one day we should ask her about it so she can explain herself. Yeah, so I think you know it was an amazing experience. It was my first time to India, but really, I mean, going out into Corbett National Park was truly wonderful, but the reason I was there was for this meeting and to be able to experience and participate in it. Was a wonderful experience and it really does speak to the power of what the specialist groups are doing, you know, talking about what the state of the elephants are in each of their countries, what the current plans are, if anyone has any ideas or input on how those plans could be improved. And then you know these national action plans that are being, you know, being put out and then putting those plans into, you know, into action, putting that all this conversation to work was really quite, quite incredible.
Dr. Monni Böhm:So, vivek, we've obviously talked quite a bit about the IUCN and the kind of work that it does, but you've been working with it for a pretty long time now. What do you see it's? If you had to sum it up in like I don't know one sentence, take-home message of what the value is of this enormous network of people, what, what would you say to I don't know passerby in the street who's like are you seeing what? Um, how would you explain it? Or why is it needed?
Dr. Vivek Menon:yeah, I mean you can't explain a thing of the complexity that I've seen is in one sentence yeah, the passerby on the street or the person who does not know conservation would know of the IUCN, I think I suppose largely through the red list, which is.
Dr. Vivek Menon:I mean words like endangered or critically endangered or threatened are English words but to the common person is used to describe the status of an animal, and that's one of the things that IUCN does, which people now take it for granted, that they know that an elephant is endangered and the day all of us finish our jobs, by the way, the elephant won't be endangered and we could move it down to a lesser threatened category.
Dr. Vivek Menon:But I think the magnificence of IUCN and, by the way, I'm on the global council now as well, not just on the specialist group but also on the global board, so to speak, of IUCN and of organizations that are committing millions of dollars between them to save species, brings them together and offers them these spaces, these intellectual areas where they can come together under various task forces, under various specialist groups and discuss their ideas and hopefully come to a common goal.
Dr. Vivek Menon:Because in this world, I think one of the reasons we don't achieve conservation goals as quickly as we would like them to be achieved is because we all do our thing and there's very little interplay of our ideas and our programs in such a manner that we achieve common goals. So IUCen allows that you have a cat specialist group where a German cat specialist who's chairing it, by the way, german-swiss can sit with a government which has that cat across the world it could be from any nation and with an organization sitting in the US who's pouring millions of dollars into that cat conservation and plan as to what we can do to save that particular species. So IUCN has that convening power and that technical brilliance of the shared tens of thousands of volunteer brains that have been lent to this organization to achieve that goal. That's the brill tens of thousands of volunteer brains that have been lent to this organization to achieve that goal. That's the brilliance of it.
Dr. Monni Böhm:That's a wonderful point to wrap it up, I suppose. Thank you again, vivek, for chatting to us, and thank you for everything that you do for the IUCN, for the Asian Elephant and for the Wildlife Trust of India. All of that started from a bedroom. You, at home, can start it too, if you really want to, so let that be our inspiration.
Dr. Vivek Menon:It's wonderful to come from India to Indiana.
Justin Birkhoff:We're so glad you're here and, to echo Mani, we appreciate you taking the time this morning and we appreciate the work that you do and the assistance that you've given this office, as we've come on board and tried to help the specialist groups do what they're doing a bit more effectively, and it's been a pleasure.
Dr. Monni Böhm:Justin wants clearly another invite to India. I would turn that down.
Dr. Vivek Menon:Which is there for everybody at the Global Center Excellent.
Justin Birkhoff:Then you won't be jealous next time.
Dr. Monni Böhm:I'm off now to pack my bag. Okay, bye.