It’s intriguing how certain species of wildlife tend to draw closer to humans once they realise we pose no threat to them. Perhaps nowhere in South India is this better exemplified than in the fauna-rich tea estates girdling Munnar, Kerala’s popular tourist destination.
The fearless and friendly Nilgiri tahr roving the Eravikulam National Park near Munnar is one such outstanding example. But another notable (though less publicised) example is a herd of gaur that frequents a golf course at Kundaly about 25 km from Munnar. It’s perhaps the only course in the country where gaur regularly share the greens with golfers.
Almost every evening, the herd of around 10 to 15, emerges from the adjacent forest and lumbers on to the nine-hole course. As golfers look on, the herbivores graze nonchalantly on the course, unperturbed by their presence. When all is quiet at night, gaur have even been known to wander into the unfenced front yard of the clubhouse. Nocturnal and gregarious by nature, they roam the golf course overnight and return in the morning to the jungle.
Local plantation workers have been familiar with this scenario for decades. Visitors and tourists, however, are intrigued, quite naturally, by this phenomenon, for the mighty gaur is known to be feared even by the tiger and can be extremely vicious when provoked or threatened. In the mid-1990s a planter-friend in the Nilgiris had been fatally gored by a gaur that he was trying to rescue from a pit into which it had fallen. It is also on record that Toby Martin, a British planter in Munnar, was viciously attacked in the early 1900s by a bull gaur that he had shot and wounded. He escaped narrowly.
At Kundaly the frequent exposure to humans over the years, often at close quarters, appears to have largely rid the gaur of their fear of man. Indeed, one night recently, a planter found the entire herd milling around his car, their eyes glowing phosphorescent in the headlights. “I had no option but to wait for them to move off the road”, he grinned, relieved that his car wasn’t damaged in the melee.
Sadly, the flip side of this picture is that the ‘tameness’ of the gaur makes them vulnerable to poaching, of which there have been several cases in the past. Since then preventive measures have been tightened.
On a recent visit I found about 10 gaur, including a couple of calves, grazing on the golf course that was liberally littered with their fresh droppings. Seemingly unconcerned about my presence, the herd continued to forage coolly while a big bull slaked its thirst in a rivulet hardly 10 metres from where I sat in my car.
Knowing the gaur’s unpredictability, I cautiously ventured out of the car to take a few photos from about 15 metres away from the herd. Apart from drawing a few curious and cursory glances, I noticed no signs of hostility. However, a young bull, its head upraised, kept eyeing me suspiciously all along, possibly irked by the camera’s flash.
Taking care not to disturb the herd, I watched as they hungrily cropped the grass on a fairway. The fearsome horns of the adults gleamed dully in the sunlight filtering through the trees while their sinewy white-stockinged legs contrasted sharply with the dark brown of their ponderous bodies. It was truly a sight to warm the cockles of a wildlife conservationist’s heart.
George N. Netto is a Munnar-based freelance writer with an abiding interest in wildlife and environmental conservation.
