Dear David Attenborough,

Belated wishes for your 100th birthday!

Last weekend, my kids and I were watching your 2020 documentary, David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. Like countless families around the world, we have seen your amazing films and love your work. However, a crucial perspective about ecological crisis is missing in this film. An aspect, I believe, children need to encounter, which is why I am writing this letter.

Early in the film, you say, “My first visit to East Africa was in 1960. Back then, it seemed inconceivable that we, a single species, might one day have the power to threaten the very existence of the wilderness.” This is true. But children should also learn that not all communities of the world are equally to blame for the crisis.

They ought to know how European colonists and game-hunters killed wildlife in huge numbers across Africa, as evidenced in John MacKenzie's book The Empire of Nature. They must know that British in India killed an estimated 80,000 tigers between 1875 and 1925 – romanticising the elimination of wild animals as a 'royal sport' and describing it as a part of ‘civilising’ India. They must be aware about the mass killings of over 30 million bison by Anglo-American settlers, a phenomenon intrinsically connected to the genocide of Native American communities, whose survival depended on the bison.

Along with this history of destruction, children should learn about the communities for whom hunting meant something completely different. They should be familiar with the San indigenous community from southern Africa, who ask for forgiveness from the animals they hunt to feed their families. Or, the coastal and island communities that never hunt more fish than necessary, while observing seasonal restrictions in regions where fish breed.

This kind of restraint and economy is seen in the words and actions of Dersu Uzala, a hunter from the indigenous Goldi or Nanai community. Akira Kurosawa’s Oscar-winning film (1975) by the same name is based on the Russian explorer Vladimir Arsenyev’s memoir published in 1923. In the film, Dersu admonishes Arsenyev, “Why you throw meat in fire? Tomorrow we go away, tomorrow other fellow sit here. They don't find no meat, so they no eat.” Arsenyev asks, “Who's going to be here?,”  to which Dersu replies, “Lot of fellows. Weasel come here, woodchuck, crow come here, mouse too. Plenty other fellow in wilds.” In the book, Dersu stops a soldier from shooting a sea lion that they could not retrieve, calling it a sin. He also prevents the killing of a noisy crow near their campsite, saying the crow wants to eat too. 

In the 2020 film you describe the mass migration of animals as follows: 

"The Maasai word “Serengeti” means “endless plains”…the next morning, one million wildebeest…a few days after that, they are gone, over the horizon. You can be forgiven for thinking that these plains are endless when they could swallow up such a herd. It took a visionary scientist, Bernhard Grzimek, to explain that this wasn’t true. He and his son used a plane to follow the herds over the horizon. They discovered that the Serengeti herds required an enormous area of healthy grassland to function. That without such an immense space, the herds would diminish and the entire ecosystem would come crashing down."

I feel we need to provide the children more context here. They should know that a year before you first visited East Africa, the British colonial government banished the pastoralist Maasai from the Serengeti on the pretext of protecting it, despite being well-aware that the Maasai did not hunt or eat wild animals. When they did hunt a lion – to protect their cattle or as a warrior rite of passage – it was carefully regulated and never done out of malice or as a sport. Children should also know that half a century earlier, the British had driven the Maasai from other traditional lands to make room for European settlers and that their dispossession continues till date.

The indigenous Maasai people had lived on the Serengeti for centuries, grazing their cattle alongside wild herbivores. They had been following the same rainfall and grass growth patterns which affect the movement of wildebeest, zebras and antelopes. Would children really believe that a community which lived alongside this migration for generations, had no understanding or cultural memory of it?

Ecologists have been studying the movement of pastoralists and their herds for years, in a process called "transhumance." Their work has revealed a rich and complex relationship with the ecosystem, ranging from seed dispersal and containment of wildfires to improvement of soil health and biodiversity. A recent report estimated the annual worth of pastoralist activities in Kashmir at around Rs 6,000 crores ($625 million). The role of traditional Maasai practices in the conservation of grassland biodiversity has also been researched and recognised. In fact, the United Nations has declared 2026 the "International Year for Rangelands and Pastoralists." The intent is to shift global policy from treating pastoralists as encroachers and recognising their contributions to ecosystems.

You note in the film:

"The point for me was simple – the wild is far from unlimited. It’s finite. It needs protecting. And a few years later, that idea became obvious to everyone."

I agree that it is very important to understand the need for conservation. And, who better to speak of this than indigenous people who have lived as a part of the natural world for centuries?

Children need to comprehend the consequences and dangers of treating forests as commercial enterprises. British imperial forest policy turned vast tracts of dense evergreen and deciduous forests into teak plantations in peninsular India and oak-coniferous forests into pine plantations in the Himalayas. To extract timber, they destroyed diverse ecosystems which had been generations-old homes of tribal communities. 

In order to see what this living ecological knowledge looks like, children should be taught about the Kadar adivasi (the term for India’s indigenous people) community in south India. In the illustrated book, Walking is a Way of Knowing in the Kadar Forest (2017), Madiyappan, an elder, tells the authors how to read clues in the forest:

"The floor of the forest is like a mirror – whatever goes on above is reflected below. From the black inky smudges on the shrubs, I know that a troop of Nilgiri langurs has passed by, for the smudges are actually their pee.” He adds, “The forest is like a storehouse of smells; how can you learn about the scent of the civet, leopard, tiger or gaur from talk? These are things that you can know only directly. People like you use books to understand the forest…Most of us can’t read a word, but we use all our senses, our entire body, to hear the stories of the forest."

Children should see how Madiyappan, who depends on the forest for his survival, only takes from it what he requires.

“Only fools cut down the entire hive: what is the point? If you leave the part where the bees live intact, they will rebuild the store rooms of their hive soon and you can get honey from the same hive the next season too. But if you cut down the entire hive, all the bees will die and you will have to search for honey all over again!”

Such conservation-oriented thinking emerges from generations of living as one with the forest. It is the kind of knowledge that India's Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, attempted to preserve while correcting historical wrongs.

The deep regard for all life – at the heart of adivasi world views – is best expressed by the poet Jacinta Kerketta in her poem "Why is the mahua not plucked from the tree?" A mother explains to her child why they have to wait all night for the flowers to fall:

“When all night long the tree / Is writhing with pangs of birth / How could we shake a branch, tell me? / How could we pluck the mahua, say, / From a tree forcibly? / We wait for the mahua to fall, / For we love them, is all."

Picture books like Mor Dungri (2018) offer a glimpse into life in a forest in Rajasthan, India. Another book, for slightly older children, Woodsmoke and Leafcups (2015) explores the life of the Durwa community in remote central India, appreciating how, in their own way, the Durwa people lead a materially and culturally rich life.

You would agree that children have an innate sense of justice. Would they not, then, ask why indigenous communities around the world are being forced out of the forests? What the logic is being expanding tiger reserves that displace adivasi communities? How deeply unjust is it to forcefully transfer forest lands to mining companies? 

Given the chance, children would immediately recognise the ecological and ethical wisdom of indigenous communities. They would see, as the anthropologist Hugh Brody writes in his foreword to Woodsmoke and Leafcups, that "in the stories, rituals, songs and everyday realities of the people …may lie much of what humanity both needs and yearns for." Perhaps, they would also guess that the way out of this environmental crisis is treating indigenous communities as equal partners in conservation, as opposed to communities to be 'civilised.' 

I thank you again for your remarkable work, Attenborough! I trust you will receive this letter in the spirit of shared concern for life on our planet. 

Sincerely,

Anish Mokashi

Anish Mokashi teaches at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, and works on science education at school and university levels.

Opinions expressed here are that of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Azim Premji University.

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