Through a chronicler’s lens: Interview with wildlife photographer Percy Fernandez
Job interview with Percy Fernandez, wildlife photographer who is Professor and Chairperson for the School of Media and Interaction, Manipal Academy of Higher Instruction, Dubai, UAE.
HE environment is certainly dealing with an unexpected emergency. The present vicious cycle of biodiversity disaster and intense cross-continental climatic activities jeopardises the availability of air, food stuff and water essential for human survival. It also adversely affects the sense of assured shelter, security and predictability of life that human beings require to procreate and perpetuate future generations on the earth.
Local climate Analytics and NewClimate Institute, each dependent in Germany, have predicted a 2.9 °C rise in international temperature by 2100. Are the earth’s animal and plant species confronted with a further mass extinction?
With COP26, the 26th United Nations Local climate Transform Convention of the Parties, just acquiring been held in Glasgow, Scotland, from October 31 to November 12, it would seem proper to just take a search at the essential position played by wildlife photographers in documenting what stays of the planet’s wilderness, with which humankind shares an intertwined destiny.
“I try out to go as generally as I can to catch the planet’s last frontiers and photograph what’s remaining of the wild animals in their natural habitats. What if they won’t previous 10 yrs on?” stated Percy Fernandez, Professor and Chairperson for the College of Media and Conversation, Manipal Academy of Increased Instruction, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). He has followed his passion for wildlife images in true earnest for the previous two decades. He straddles the planet of academics, journalism and wildlife images with a sense of mission. At current, he works on wildlife assignments in collaboration with Nikon Center East and Africa and has just returned from a journey to Pantanal, the world’s largest wetland ecosystem, in the Brazilian Amazon that endured large wildfires in 2020. The world will experience the impression of this ecological disaster for a long time to come.
Excerpts from an job interview with Percy Fernandez.
My first impressions of character and wildlife had been formed all through my continue to be at the Sainik College in Amaravathinagar, at the foot of the Anaimalai Hills in the Western Ghats [in Tiruppur district, Tamil Nadu]. We utilised to see elephants frequently congregate at the edge of the reservoir to drink h2o. The reservoir experienced heaps of crocodiles in it. There was a crocodile farm near to the faculty. Leopard visits had been popular.
One particular evening, I was fascinated to see two cobras entwined around the faucet within the law enforcement station premises wherever we employed drink water every night after participating in. Bison and elephants roamed these hills and so did deer and wild boars. The wild boars would feast at the watermelon farms around the oval floor. As boys, we applied to trek to Chinnar and Munnar in Kerala. The extend experienced tigers and leopards. We noticed a great deal of sandalwood trees as we neared Chinnar. That was a very long time in the past.
I also have fond memories of my continue to be in the hostel at Jawaharlal Nehru University though executing my PhD. Peacocks applied to dance on my balcony in opposition to the backdrop of the Qutb Minar in the distance. Foxes and Nilgais had been a common sight in JNU. At night, skunks moved about on treetops.
In owing time, I frequented Corbett, Ranthambhore, Kanha, Bandavgarh, Nagarhole, Bandipur, each and every of these national parks focused to safeguarding Indian tigers is one of a kind. I have walked very a bit in the Indian Himalaya. It necessitates a life span or extra to travel and explore the heart of the Indian wilderness, depart by yourself to take a peek at the full planet’s biodiversity.
Because now I am based mostly in Dubai, the Masai Mara [National] Reserve in Kenya is not considerably away. I have been commonly travelling to the Mara and the Amboseli [National Park, Kenya]. Recently, I was in Kamchatka, Russia’s Significantly East, house to the greatest density of brown bears. They feed on the salmon that swim upstream from the Pacific to spawn. 20 for every cent of the wild Pacific salmon go to spawn in Kamchatka. It’s rather a spectacle to see the bears in Kurile Lake, found in the wonderful and wild Kronotsky Nature Reserve.
I am just again from Pantanal, Brazil, following a jaguar-mapping vacation. Tens of millions of animals had been burnt to demise in very last year’s fire in the world’s major wetland ecosystem.
Mother nature, particularly wilderness, has a calming outcome on the intellect. Every topography is exclusive because of the landscape, flora and fauna. Kotagiri or Coonoor, for example, is idyllic we see herds of bison browsing by means of the tea gardens there or an occasional barking deer vanishing into the bushes. The lush forests and the tach , which means meadow in Himachali, over Rola in the Good Himalayan National Park in Himachal Pradesh are home to the Western tragopan and the Himalayan monal. After for virtually a day, we had been adhering to the marks of a snow leopard all through a trek that I did with a handful of close friends from Kargil to Srinagar in Kashmir.
It is an indescribable experience when I am in the mountains or in the forests [or in some other landscape], no matter whether it is the forests of Nagarhole in Karnataka or the desert in the UAE or, for that make a difference, the grasslands of the Mara.
1st of all, wildlife pictures is a extremely individualistic engagement. You have to have a extremely genuine passion [for it] and infinite endurance to get a photograph capturing the moods of wild animals. It is also vital to have an understanding of the species and to observe the behaviour of the topic cautiously.
But wildlife images is considerably much more than that. It ought to simultaneously mix expertise of natural record, biodiversity, improvement, guy-animal conflict, conservation procedures, and so on. As for me, I analyzed sociology, anthropology [and] have been a journalist, all this provides me my perspective.
In the course of checking out the similar places often, we find several phenomena happening over time. In Masai Mara, alongside with a couple photographer close friends, we followed this group of cheetahs every single time we visited from 2017 [onwards]. This was the greatest coalition ever to be noticed in the wild hunting together. In 2017, they have been five of them, named Tano Bora [which] in Masai signifies the Fast 5. It is the safari guides in the Mara who identify the animals. Of the 5, two had been brothers, and the relaxation of them were from distinctive mothers. This phenomenon has in no way been noticed ahead of in the wild.
Consciously, photographers ought to just take treatment not to disturb animals in the course of shoots. It’s quick presently to get a shot of a leopard or a cheetah with a major glass, say a 600 or 800 mm, from afar. On a few occasions, cheetahs have jumped onto jeeps. On many situations, lions, cheetahs and leopards have walked straight to us, seemed us in the eye, and skirted all over our jeep. You just continue being still and quiet. There are photographers I know who ventured to get shut-ups or very low-angles and got their cameras crushed by elephants or chewed off by lions.
What Sir Attenborough did in his life time made a profound affect on a lot of of us. With no him, we wouldn’t have recognized how stunning our world is. He created us very seriously think about the way we lived and how it influenced our world. Wild Karnataka is an exquisite documentary on the wildlife in Karnataka narrated by Sir David Attenborough.
Wildlife photographers perform a crucial job, for starters in documentation. By capturing more than a period of time, severe photographers can chronicle natural historical past and the partnership amongst guy, mother nature and the wilderness. Their operate can support offer insights to industry biologists, local climate adjust experts, economists and enable in formulating policies for the betterment of our earth. Wildlife photographers act as the vital connection involving the status of biodiversity and the conservation efforts.
Currently, there are many teams out there scanning the distant corners of the world and filming character, birds and [other] wildlife. Mostly, they are commissioned. These productions are highly-priced affairs, with the crew paying a minimum amount of seven to eight weeks at a place. But with technology ushering in a new series of reasonably priced, lightweight cameras, it could be a activity changer for aspiring wildlife movie-makers who when thought it was an costly affair. I have been teaming up with good friends to make shorts. I have also been collaborating with Nikon Middle East and Africa.
The viewpoint has modified just after the pandemic. People have started off using their existence on earth significantly. They really do not want to consider something for granted any much more. Now confronted with the local weather crisis, every person is taking a wider viewpoint that humankind’s incredibly existence on the earth is by itself dependent on the nicely-remaining of mother nature and its biodiversity.
The biorhythm accountable for the earth’s seasons has gone. You barely get to witness plainly demarcated seasons any more. That is for the reason that of the depletion of biodiversity and wilderness. The polar [ice] caps and glaciers have receded in entrance of our eyes. We have searing summertime temperatures and winters are not so chilly any much more. When I went to Kamchatka past calendar year [August], I met a photographer from Siberia who mentioned that at her location the winter temperatures which utilized to be minus 35-40 °C until lately had risen to minus 15 past yr. The temperature increase, on the a single hand, and then an unprecedented enormous snowfall, on the other, [resulted in] a more substantial soften afterwards that submerged villages of Kamchatka.
Globally, until nations around the world collectively acquire a stand and start off guarding biodiversity and the wilderness, local weather catastrophes will increase.
The dwindling of foods for a species has an adverse influence on the species population in excess of time. The park rangers of Masai Mara inform me that previously all through the Excellent Migration year, a million wildebeests made use of to migrate from the Serengeti to the Mara to feed on the grasslands the herd requires a massive foodstuff supply to feed and breed there. Now two alterations have taken area in the migration. The biorhythm has changed. The crossing around that applied to get position in July/August, now starts early in June. Secondly, the wildebeest quantities have dwindled. The adverse foodstuff problems at the breeding grounds could be a motive for this. Due to the aridification of the land, the savannah may well not be sturdy any more to help great figures [of animals]. The planet’s biodiversity can be stored intact only if we retain the habitats and food chains intact.
Yet another example is the dwindling [number] of brown bears in Kamchatka as the population of the fatty salmon coming to breed in Kurile Lake has vastly minimized. The bears have to attain entire body pounds right before they go for hibernation through the severe winter season months. But overfishing for salmon, a human-induced disturbance of the meals chain and the ecosystem, has had a telling outcome on the bear inhabitants. For nutrient biking and finish wellbeing of the ecosystem, not only are the legendary animals on top rated of the food stuff chain vital the little insects, amphibians, modest birds down to invisible microbes are all equally critical.
It is a tall order. You have to guard the wilderness. This will come from policy adjust, which suggests injecting a great deal of resources into the natural environment spending plan of nations around the world. In excess of the a long time, we have witnessed only an increase in poaching and decline of wilderness. You just can’t established the clock back again an extinct species can’t be introduced back to life. Having said that, a single that is endemic and faces the threat of extinction can be revived [if there is] business political will.
Leena Mariam Koshy is an unbiased writer dependent in Kozhikode, Kerala.
