Arunima Singh who is a resident of Lucknow and staff of the Turtle Survival Alliance (TSA) – India, conferred with the NatWest Group Earth Heroes Save the Species Award 2021 not just for her exceptional efforts towards saving turtles, tortoises, crocodilians, and Gangetic dolphins, but also for devoting a large part of her time to a crucial activity: Raising the awareness levels of riverine communities and the general public about these freshwater species.
Since 2011, Arunima has led grassroots conservation efforts to safeguard North Indian tortoises and freshwater turtles, crocodilians, and Gangetic river dolphins, as well as expanded scientific knowledge and capacity building for various target groups with the goal of inspiring local action.
Arunima Singh has played a pivotal role in advocating the urgent need of conservation breeding programs in the state of Uttar Pradesh for several of India’s most threatened tortoises and freshwater turtles.
From 2013 onwards, Arunima has made several different efforts to ensure conservation. She has educated more than 50,000 children from rural and urban communities. She has taught them about conserving freshwater reptiles. This has played a huge role in saving over 28,000 turtles, 25 Gangetic dolphins, 6 marsh crocodiles and 4 gharials in the last 8 years.
“As a child, I would often visit the river with my grandparents to watch and observe aquatic life. I guess without really knowing it, my passion for conservation came from the imprint those visits left in my mind. These visits growing up would help create a sense of belonging within me and establish a close connection with aquatic life,” she said.
“Dr. Shailendra gave me an insight into how I could be involved with wildlife conservation in the long term and gave me opportunities to obtain a greater understanding of it in areas like the Chambal Valley. In 2011, I began doing some volunteering work with the TSA and enrolled in a small awareness and educational programme at Lucknow University for wildlife conservation. Upon completing my Master’s degree, I got involved full time in conservation work of endangered freshwater turtles, tortoises and other aquatic species. At present, I’m also pursuing a PhD focussing on freshwater turtles,” she added.
As an intern joining the TSA, her vision was to develop assurance colonies for all Indian turtle species under one roof. She had even obtained a small grant to work on this idea.
While building these assurance colonies to start with, the TSA-India programme started looking for a more in-situ approach in the selected tributaries of Ganges to safeguard turtle population.
But when Arunima started working towards building assurance colonies, she also started getting more calls from the enforcement agencies about endangered species of turtles rescued and confiscated from smugglers, who would earlier simply release them back into the wild. There were no such centres to first rehabilitate these confiscated turtles.
“The first consignment we helped rehabilitate was around 300 spotted pond turtles (Geoclemys hamiltonii) near Etawah and Mainpuri in 2015. We brought them to the KGRC and cared for them for 60 days before releasing them back into the wild. However, at the time, these turtles, particularly soft-shelled ones, suffered from high mortality because of the uncaring way in which they were translocated by the poachers,” she says.
In the same year, they received another consignment of 500 smuggled Indian Tent Turtles (Pangshura tentoria circumdata) and Indian Roofed Turtles (Pangshura tecta) at the KGRC. It was during this operation, they met with Arvind Chaturvedi, a police officer with the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) and a man Arunima describes as “very committed to wildlife conservation” as well, who helped confiscate this consignment.
“Since 2017, we’ve helped rescue and rehabilitate thousands of turtles every year, giving them care and releasing them back into the wild. Before our intervention, there was no rescue and rehabilitation centre for freshwater turtles in UP. There was no management plan in terms of what to do with these rescued turtles, and there was a lack of enforcement and awareness as well,” she adds.
Arunima believes that governments and NGOs working on the ground must coordinate their efforts better to help on-ground smugglers involved in poaching and translocating these turtles and finding out alternative means of improved livelihood opportunities as these on-ground smugglers often come from impoverished backgrounds.
Also, she believes enforcement organisations have to do a better job of recognising where the demand for endangered freshwater turtle species come from and understand how this business works.