October 14, 1945 – June 7, 2024
By Neha Sinha
The doomed golden mahseer. There is excessive development and construction in Karbi Anglong. Construction of too many highlands in Kaziranga (is not good). Politicians should have love for the land and its people. Leopards should not be caught unnecessarily.
These are just some of the varied subjects of the emails Dr. A.J.T. Johnsingh would send me; receiving an email from him was like opening a box of chocolates. To paraphrase Forrest Gump, you never knew which one you would get. Like the skilled ecologist he was, A.J.T. was concerned with each and every wild animal and wildlife habitat. A pioneering and intrepid wildlife biologist, he had walked both well-known and little known forests of India. He served as Dean, Faculty of Wildlife Sciences, at the Wildlife Institute of India, and was a friend and advisor to many wildlife students and scientists. And beyond the science and meticulous data collection, his accounts of wild animals were tinged with a deep, abiding affection. He studied the dhole, an animal dismissed often just as a merciless hunter, for years. In July 1984, exactly 40 years before I pen this obituary, Johnsingh wrote tenderly in Sanctuary Asia about trying to stay concealed from a mother dhole: “My fear stemmed not from any possibility of aggressiveness on the part of the dholes, but from the fact that they, being extremely shy, would move their pups to another den at the first sign of any disturbance.”
We lost Dr. Johnsingh on June 7, 2024. He had been ailing for some time, but death always comes as a shock. With his passing, wildlife conservation has lost a bold voice and a much loved mentor. He had called for landscape-level conservation and functional wildlife corridors much before these became catchwords.
In his book, On Jim Corbett’s Trail and Other Tales from Tree-tops, A.J.T. paints a vivid picture of an old male dhole from Bandipur. He called him Bent Ear. He wrote:
[Bent Ear] appeared to be the leader of the pack and was extremely fond of the pups. When the pack made a kill of a small animal, the pups would run to him pestering him to regurgitate extra meat. I soon developed a strange affection for this aged hunter who flitted freely through the forest. He led a daring life. Alone and unafraid he slipped without any hesitation through the thickets which I entered with much reluctance, with bated breath and a tense body. When he suddenly disappeared in April 1978, I felt a pang of sadness which stayed with me for a long time.
A.J.T. advised institutions such as Nature Conservation Foundation and WWF-India. He served as a senior scientific advisor at WWF-India from 2005-2024. “Johnsingh was a walking directory. He knew every vine, tree and animal. He commanded a balance of insight and foresight, and expressed that in a very practical way. He could handle issues such as tiger conflict in the Nilgiris, speak to seniors in the Forest Department, and help shape our landscape programmes. We have walked 22 km. together in one day,” remembers Ravi Singh, CEO and Secretary General of WWF-India.
And while A.J.T.’s passion was infectious, he never stopped learning. “In 2006, he led a training session for the field staff of the Wildlife Wing of the Forest, Environment and Wildlife Management Department, Government of Sikkim. It was a light trek in the Fambong Lho Wildlife Sanctuary, where he would stop at every second step and pick up a spoor, herb or leaf to describe it. There were quite a few local young forest guards who found this engaging and were giving the local names of plants to Dr. Johnsingh and like a student, he was writing them down. He was actually teaching all of us how to do a nature trail and document evidence,” shared Dr. Dipankar Ghose, Senior Director- Biodiversity, WWF-India.
Others remember A.J.T. as a great biologist who also loved a good laugh and a great anecdote. “I first met Dr. Johnsingh in Kanha in 2010. My colleague and I were novices – student volunteers on a research project. With some hesitation, we went up to him and introduced ourselves, hoping that the legendary ‘A.J.T. JOHNSINGH’ would care to speak with us for a bit (or at the very least, not outright dismiss us). An hour later, we found ourselves still standing there, while he regaled us with hilarious stories from his various sojourns across India.
Later that year, during the first few months of my MSc course, I began to explore the idea of working on dholes. Digging through literature, I found one doctoral study each decade since the 1980s that had tried to understand this strange yet interesting animal. Of course, the one that stood out was Dr. Johnsingh’s seminal work from Bandipur. I read every word of it. Repeatedly, obsessively. When the time came for my dissertation work, not by design but by happenstance, I ended up working in Bandipur. I cannot lie – it felt like an accomplishment in itself, walking the same roads that A.J.T. had walked three decades earlier, studying – plausibly – the descendants of the dhole packs that he had once spent time studying,” shares Dr. Arjun Srivathsa, DST Inspire Fellow at the National Centre for Biological Science.
A.J.T.’s son Mike Johnsingh tells me about his father’s tremendous fieldcraft: “In the forest he never threw caution to the winds, he respected elephants and gave them a wide berth. That’s the reason for his success in survival, while walking through numerous elephant forests. He enforced that discipline of caution in the forests, with all those who walked with him, mercilessly. We never got the “look” for chatting in Church, but dare we speak in the forest loud or for no reason.
He introduced us to goral spotting during our drives from Delhi to Dehradun while passing through the Shivalik mountains near the Rajaji National Park, and he beat everyone hands down in picking up the elusive goral, camouflaged into the brown Shivalik slopes. I still don’t know how he picked them up while the rest of us struggled.
He loved angling mahseer and trout, and we also fell in love with it. But it was not the chase which motivated him, but the serenity of nature where we went for angling, which drew him. His large collection of rods and the whirring of the reels with a fish on, has now gone permanently silent.”
As I write this, I too remember A.J.T.’s incredible level of detail. One particular letter from him (2017) comes to mind.
“Neha, some time ago I read your article on corridors. India has not done much for its wildlife corridors and the situation may continue this way. When a forest area is closer to a growing city, it is difficult to protect the area around the forest as the growing city will swallow it. This can be seen in the Bannerghatta National Park. The NP status protects the forests and its denizens. One day during a day drive I saw seven sambar, some gaur and many chital. One male tiger lives there.”
Recounting the precise numbers of animals he saw was exactly his style. And I always saw him speaking up even for a single tiger or a clutch of gaur. A.J.T. lives on in his many journal papers, popular books, and articles. Here is hoping we can do some modicum of justice to the wild animals and habitats he loved so dearly.
Neha Sinha is a conservation biologist and author of Wild and Wilful – Tales of 15 Iconic Indian Species. She heads Policy and Communication at WWF-India.
