New Delhi   

Turtle `hunter' finally gets her due

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: India's first woman herpetologist, J. Vijaya, has finally got her due. Nearly two decades after she was found dead, at the age of 28, her name has been formally given to the cane turtle that she spent so much of her time studying.

According to the Sanctuary Asia Magazine, Peter Praschag, the son of Reiner Praschag, and several other herpetologists analysed the DNA of Reiner's now-dead turtles and recently re-named the turtle Vijayachelys silvatica in her honour.

It is a monotypic genus, which means that there is no other turtle like it to share the name of Vijayachelys.

Young Viji came to Madras Snake Park as a volunteer in late 1978 and after graduation started working full-time here. Romulus Whitaker, her boss at the Madras Snake Park, put her onto freshwater turtles and later when Edward Moll, Chairman of the World Conservation Union's Freshwater Chelonian Specialist Group needed an assistant for a nationwide survey of turtles Whitaker recommended Viji, who was just 22, for the job, says the magazine. The survey got underway in August-September 1981 and Viji travelled up to West Bengal (the major consumer of freshwater turtles in the country) to meet up her team members.

They began their work from the meat markets; here thousands of Indian soft-shell turtles and narrow-headed soft-shell turtles came for sale during the winter months. The price of turtle meat plummeted from Rs. 18 to Rs. 5 per kilogramme during these months; "It was cheaper than beef," Viji noted. What Viji was doing wasn't easy. The areas she visited for her work were the `wild west' of India and the black-and-white pictures she took of the gory sea turtle slaughter on Digha beach in West Bengal and in the meat markets of Calcutta, shook the public when India Today magazine ran them in the early 1980s.

According to the magazine, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi took action and overnight sea turtle exploitation was cut to a trickle. Meanwhile, the forest cane turtle (at that time Heosemys silvatica) was at the top of the agenda of the Freshwater Chelonian Specialist Group.

Viji decided to look for these obscure little turtle in Kerala, which hadn't been seen for 67 years. Only two specimens of the species had ever been recorded previously. Viji planned her trip to track the turtle and made contact with the Kadar tribals in Chalakudy seeking their help for the job.

She was finally able to find a cane turtle in July 1982 and that shot her into the international limelight. In December 1982, one of the female cane turtles Viji brought back laid a clutch of two eggs. She also discovered that this species wasn't a vegetarian as earlier thought and from knowing virtually nothing about it, Viji made a quantum leap in documenting what this turtle was about, says the magazine.

Completely at home in the forest, Viji is remembered as an excellent field biologist whose best traits were her perseverance and her ability to observe. In 1984 she was invited to do her Masters from the Eastern Illinois University and in 1987 returned to India to do field studies. She was found dead in the forest she loved.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

`Television is tougher than theatre and films'
Payment issue holds Delhi Metro from reaching Gurgaon
Thought-provoking works of art
Turtle `hunter' finally gets her due
Khanna panel report paints a grim picture about the Capital
Changing equations marginalise Ram Babu
A new twist to the Ghazipur slaughterhouse project
Traces of drugs, alcohol found in samples
UGC to launch Mass Communication course on Internet from July
Judge gets justice after 11 years
13 dance bar girls arrested
Briefly
In the Capital Today
Reader's Mail

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu