Now news comes in that those with a taste for pelican meat can procure the bird for a couple of hundred rupees from the Nal Sarovar Bird Sanctuary in Gujarat. Other species like the Common Pochard or the Greyleg Goose are also in the market, it appears. This is a sanctuary, remember. A region policed by a team of conservators, forest officers and what not. And these are protected species, supposedly. Killing them invites a stiff fine and imprisonment.

A regulatory system alas is only as good as its regulators. After the expose on the Nal Sarovar Bird Sanctuary appeared, the feathers flew with the state'sforest department ordering an inquiry into the poaching of birds in this sanctuary. But why is it that any concrete action to check the flagrant violation of the Wildlife Protection Act has to wait until the crime is reported by the media? Gujarat's chief conservator of forests claims that he had received reports of poaching and raised the matter with local officials.

But why didn't he consider it serious enough to have ordered an inquiry earlier? Did he have to wait for the unassailable photographic evidence of poachers nonchalantly making their way with the crumbled bodies of flamingoes slung on their backs? It seems that the crime itself does not matter as long as it is not seen to occur. In many ways, the Nal Sarovar evidence of poaching symbolises not just indifferent forest administration but an equally indifferent public attitude to wildlife protection. A Salman Khan on a film shooting assignment in Rajasthan can hunt black buck between takes and G.M.C. Balayogi, the honourable speaker of the LokSabha, thinks nothing of partaking of exotic birds of an evening.

The horror of it all will of course sink into public consciousness at some stage. Unfortunately, it may then be too late. Dehra Dun's Wildlife Institute of India is organising a nationwide count of the Sarus Crane. Yes, even these large waterbirds, which have long been celebrated in epic and folklore, which are always sighted in pairs and have therefore come to symbolise constancy and fertility, are facing a bleak future.

Initial surveys have already recorded an alarming decline in their numbers. There are environmental reasons for their disappearance of course, changing land use patterns, the increased use of pesticides, rapid urbanisation have all contributed to their decline. But what has added to the tragedy in no small measure is the general indifference that the country accords to its natural life. The thriving cottage industry of wildlife poaching testifies to this very callousness.