Rage against road kills
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COMMENTS 
Pune-based activist Vilas Kane has been documenting road kills of animals in Maharashtra. In the hill station of Mahabaleshwar alone he reports 600,000 snakes crushed by vehicles in a single year. So many kills can disturb the ecosystem
One thing led to another. For Pune-based documentary filmmaker Vilas Kane, a 20-minute film titled The End of an Innocent Life, shot over three years ago, led to a serious deliberation on how and why animals die attempting to cross highways and roads cutting through forests. Two years ago, his NGO Sakshatkar conducted a survey in the hill station of Mahabaleshwar, located around 305 km from Mumbai, and came up with the startling fact that almost 600,000 snakes were crushed by vehicles in an area of just 150 sq km in the span of a year.
Kane wants to take the issue further and has initiated a survey of road kills across the state of Maharashtra. To do so, he has asked hundreds of volunteers and wildlife enthusiasts to send him documented evidence of any road kill they happen to come across. In just over six months, Kane has been able to build up a huge databank of road kills, most of which were spotted on highways during the night.
“This is just the beginning. We have to cover 10,000 km of roads that run through the state,” he says.
What will he do with all the data? “The idea is to shock people with the figures. I want people to become more sensitive whilst driving, especially when passing through forests,” he says.
The End of an Innocent Life is a 20-minute film that was shot over a period of eight days in Mahabaleshwar. It was the sight of a checkered keelback squashed by a speeding car that led to Kane unearthing 172 such deaths in a week. “The road kills of larger animals have always generated debate and awareness campaigns, but similar cases of snakes have been ignored. What we have to realise is that so many kills can disrupt the entire ecosystem, and the repercussions will be known only after a certain period,” he says.
Armed with a digital video camera, Kane scouted around for dead snakes and realised to his horror that almost 45% of them belonged to the shield tail species which is endemic to the Western Ghats.
“There were a total of 12 species among the road kills that I filmed. These included vine snakes, bamboo pit vipers, trinkets, kraits and wolf snakes,” he says. Most of them had crawled onto the tar road to bask in the sun after heavy pre-October downpours. “This is also when the tourist season begins to peak and, according to the records of the toll collection department, upto 1,400 vehicles enter Mahabaleshwar every day,” says Kane.
Kane is hoping that the results of his survey will influence the concerned authorities to frame suitable policies that will reduce the number of road kills. And also create a large pool of volunteers who will spread the word among tourists visiting such areas. Another factor, he says, that could help avoid such road kills is to ban speeding in eco-sensitive zones. “During my research conducted in the Western Ghats and the coastal area of Konkan, I found that road kills of snakes, lizards and low-flying birds are usually due to the irresponsible driving habits of tourists. Very few accidents are caused by taxis plied by local drivers, because they are accustomed to keeping an eye on the road,” he states.
Kane’s second film, shot over 37 months, takes a look at the issue of small sea creatures getting trampled upon by tourists on the beaches of Maharashtra’s 720-km-long coastline. Titled Life on the Seashore -- A Pleasure Hunt, the film drives home the point that no one has paid attention to the fact that allowing people to drive their vehicles on the beach or letting horse-driven carts operate as a form of entertainment causes the death of thousands of snails and other living creatures that make the sand their home. “This upsets the ecological balance because snails and crabs help clean the beaches and remove dead fish and other carcasses that would otherwise end up rotting on the beach,” says Kane.
A Pleasure Hunt very subtly also drives home the point that increasing marine traffic has brought about changes in the environment, leading to the rapid destruction of aquatic lifeforms. “The fishing community that depends entirely on produce from the sea is now finding it difficult to survive. There has to be a debate on how to maintain the balance in our ecosystem,” he observes. For Kane, this film has triggered a desire to do a series related to the seashore. “This one is more general but my next lot of films will be focused on specific subjects,” he says. Meanwhile Kane has been showing his films in schools, to sensitise students about such issues. “It’s a beginning,” he says.
(Huned Contractor is a freelance journalist and filmmaker based in Pune)
Infochange News & Features, September 2009