India's Snake Man: Snakebites, Tigers & Saving the Western Ghats | Nirmal Kulkarni | EP-24

The forest erupted, yeah.

There was a whole lot of langur screeching and peacocks doing things and all.

And 100 meters in front of us, there was a tigress.

My friend started crying.

You shared the story which changed everything for you.

So, what changed?

The way I looked at wild spaces.

We are so lucky to have been born in a country which has everything.

Right from deserts, to island ecology, to Himalayas, to coastal landscapes, to tropical forests.

But people do not know the value of certain things.

You have spent years documenting the Mahadai Bioreserve.

What is it that is special about it and why should people care?

Why Mahadai? Because snake means

Zeher, it will kill you.

That's all.

They don't even know the concept of non-venomous snakes.

There are different reasons for it.

One of it is that snakebite

is still an issue.

Do you think more fear will result in more deaths? Or less fear will result in more deaths?

Less fear and more awareness is the key, actually.

What should

be

my first step to make sure that I survive?

You know, it takes anything between 15 minutes to about two hours, two and a half hours to die of a full contact snake bite.

Scary.

Yeah, it's scary.

It's painful.

You brought a few species back from extinction and that's quite amazing to hear.

So what are the things that you do that eventually help bring that species back to life?

One is that...

We know that there is so much construction happening.

What, according to you, is the future for Goa's wild spaces?

I think Goa is facing this entire thing because...

Do

you see any hope?

When there is awareness,

there is action.