“We have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received, and each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune.” –Theodore Roosevelt

We have commented elsewhere on the counterintuitive observation that hunters and fishermen are sometimes, perhaps even often, the best conservationists. (See Seth Inman’s posts from last autumn.) At least in the “North American Wildlife Conservation Model” established in the early 20th century it can be understood that way. Some environmentalists would call the slope between the two concepts a “slippery” one.

Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States was a very public example of this. Approximately 230,000,000 acres of wilderness, including deserts, mountains, wetlands and forests were placed into the public trust under his presidency. I wrote about his importance to the early conservation movement in the U.S. in a post called The Natural. At the time I wrote that post I purposefully avoided using the archival photographs that portrayed Roosevelt’s long history of hunting, assuming it wouldn’t fit with our Conservation point of view.

For hundreds of years in much of the world hunting was officially reserved for those with Title, wealth or both. Huge estates were set aside for their recreation, and whatever wildlife existed there was their own “fair game”. India was no exception and much of the national park system stemmed from the private game sanctuaries of the Maharajas.

Periyar’s roots are in the Nellikkampatty Game Sanctuary, established by the royal family of the former Travancore State in 1934. They built Edapalayam Lake Palace in 1899 to accommodate their guests at some of their favorite retreats surrounding the Periyar reservoir. In understanding the importance of wildlife conservation amidst the ever encroaching cardamom and tea plantations, the Maharaja appointed a game warden in 1933 who recommended the forest around the lake be constituted as a sanctuary a year later.

The photos below are from the family album of contributor Vijaykumar Thondamon. Taken in the 1940s and early 1950s (India officially banned all hunting in the 1970s) they illustrate a different era left behind by Colonialism and the like. Sobering as they may be, they illustrate well the differences between past and present in terms of how India currently defines the concept of conservation.

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