Like the proboscis of a malarial mosquito the Andaman Trunk Road pierces the Jarawa forest. The road carries a steady stream of vehicles, bunched into convoys with guards. By the road are heaps of stones and the claw marks of heavy machinery: the road will soon be wider.

Just beyond, on either side, stretches the home of the Jarawa—lofty rainforests with tall dipterocarps and padauk, myriad trees and lianas, palms, cane, and bamboo. If the forest bears the human mark of the Jarawa, it is subtle and difficult to discern.

  • A convoy of vehicles on the Andaman Trunk Road (ATR).
  • The forest of the Jarawa…
  • Dollarbird on the lookout from a leafless Tetrameles branch.
  • The Andaman Trunk Road brooks no obstruction… and hurtles on…
  • Huge rainforest trees cut for timber lying beside the Andaman Trunk Road.
  • Ghosts of trees past: the mounds in logged forest…
  • A coastal mangrove with its aerial roots: holding on to land, only to be cleared for a resort’s ‘sea view’?

… This post first appeared in The Hindu Sunday Magazine on 1 January 2012 and on the NCF blog, EcoLogic, on 27 January 2012. Read more in The Wild Heart of India: Nature and Conservation in the City, the Country, and the Wild.