Amboli Herp Haven

April 2004: “Varad! Snake!" and with that, Sameer was running off towards a small patch of grass. I rushed after him, in time to spot a Monticollar's trinket snake Coelognathus helena monticollaris disappearing into a hole in a nearby wall. Sameer was able to catch the snake, photograph it and take a scale count, after which it was released. Our first day in the forest of Amboli, in Maharashtra's Western Ghats had begun well. It was October 1999, and we were accompanying the participants of an entomology course organised by the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS). The four days we spent in the area were magical, yielding 10 interesting reptile species and marking the dawn of my intimate relationship with this ‘herp haven'. 

Herps are a neglected group of vertebrates, both from the aesthetic and scientific aspect. Though the word usually brings snakes and lizards to mind, herpetofauna in fact comprises both amphibians and reptiles. These were the first land vertebrates on the planet and they currently inhabit all types of habitats; aquatic, terrestrial (above and under the ground), arboreal and sometimes aerial too! Cold-blooded animals, they require very specific environments and are sensitive to disturbances, which is why they are regarded as key indicator species. Species that inhabit pristine forests are very rarely seen in degraded habitats.  India's two main biodiversity hotspots - the Western Ghats and northeast India - have high densities and diversities of herps.

Amboli is located in the Sindhudurg district of Maharashtra, close to the Goa-Karnataka tri-state border, in the Western Ghats. We followed up our first visit in 1999 with a monsoon survey the next year. It was foggy and raining day and night, and the clear weather of the previous October seemed worlds away. My colleague and ‘herp-guru' Vithoba Hegde had visited this area in 1995 to document amphibian diversity and he accompanied me during this survey. This was my first major field exposure to the amphibians of the Western Ghats and over the course of the next five days, together with Sameer Kehimkar, a good friend, committed naturalist and great ‘herp spotter', we examined about 13 species of amphibians and 12 reptiles.

On one of our night searches, we visited a nearby forest, part of which was ‘developed' by the Forest Department and was earlier known as ‘Forest Park'. Though part of it is disturbed due to tourist activity during the day, there are still large, relatively undisturbed and semi-evergreen forests patches, adjacent to the village.

After some initial searching in an open grassland near the village, packed thick with cricket frogs Fejervarya sp., we heard some interesting calls from rainwater puddles near the road. A competitive orchestra was in full flow, each male frog trying to drown out the others to attract the females. We finally spotted the ‘singers' on the edges of these puddles - Koyna toads Bufo koynayensis, a colourful toad endemic to the northern Western Ghats, and thus far only reported from Amboli and the Koyna Wildlife Sanctuary in Maharashtra. We were off to a good start!

We slowly moved towards the Forest Park, I was constantly quizzing Vithoba about the different calls coming from the bushes and trees bordering the road.  The Forest Park itself was bursting with the calls of different frogs. “The tik.. tik... tik... call coming from those bushes is a Philautus, the other loud call coming from that grassy area, which is like trik... trik.. trik... is from Microhyla," and Vithoba went on, while I struggled to assimilate such a wealth of information in such a short time.

We soon heard another call, loud and short, coming from the trees bordering a cement water tank. Aiming his torch beam towards a frog up on the tree, Vithoba happily announced that it was the beautiful Malabar gliding frog Rhacophorus malabaricus. This species is more common in the southern Western Ghats and Amboli is probably its northernmost limit.

 

We also spotted an interesting frog, later identified as Ramanella mormorata by amphibian expert Dr. S.D. Biju (Sanctuary Vol.XXIV No.1, February 2004), who visited this area with me. Rom Whitaker and Indraneil Das recently rediscovered this species from Goa and ours was the first report from Maharashtra. Sameer had made it his mission to track down some caecilians (legless amphibians), hitherto not reported from Amboli. For four days and nights, our search for caecilians proved futile, until one morning, we spotted one under a stone in a small patch of grassland inside the evergreen forest. To our delight, this turned out to be a species new to science, and a new record of this genus from Maharashtra. It was later named Daniel's caecilian Gegeneophis danieli, after BNHS stalwart J.C. Daniel and described by me in collaboration with Dr. Mark Wilkinson and Dr. David Gower, both caecilian experts from the British Museum of Natural History, London. This genus was earlier reported from Kerala and Karnataka, making this yet another southern Western Ghats component far from its earlier known range!

During one of our night searches, we heard some interesting calls. Vithoba thought they were birdcalls, but Sameer was not convinced and so we decided to ascertain the truth. We were in a degraded forest patch, composed of medium-sized bushes, without any streams. After a careful 20-minute search, Vithoba spotted the ‘culprit' under a bush, and within five minutes we had spotted several more. These were Humayun's wrinkled frogs Nyctibatrachus humayuni, an endemic genus and species of the Western Ghats, generally seen in fast flowing forest streams and hence also called the torrent toad. At the time, we found their presence, despite the absence of any streams, remarkable, but the same area a month later was crisscrossed with torrential rivulets! It is possible that this was an undisturbed forest, which has been recently degraded.

Amboli's reptile fauna is also remarkable. On one of our monsoon night searches, Sameer spotted a black snake in the open grassland near the village. Though it initially looked like a coral snake, closer observation identified it as the white-bellied shieldtail Melanophidium punctatum, earlier reported from the southern Western Ghats and only as far north as Goa. I have a special appreciation for this beautiful snake, with its iridescent colours. A burrowing species, it is seen only during the monsoon and has not been reported from elsewhere in Maharashtra. This region also supports a good population of the Malabar pit viper Trimeresurus malabaricus. A forest dwelling species, it is also commonly seen on road cuttings, amidst exposed roots and near human habitations.

Our discoveries continued and Amboli obviously had many other species of natural history interest. One day, Vithoba spotted a small, beautiful gecko on a decaying tree. We photographed and released it. On our next visit, Sameer spotted another medium-sized gecko, this one dull-coloured, inside an abandoned house in the same area. This too was photographed and released. Both individuals varied considerably in terms of their colouration, though the markings were the same. We initially took these to be additional undescribed species, but they were both finally identified as Prashad's geckos Hemidactylus prashadi. The juveniles that Vithoba had seen are brightly coloured, but grow paler with age, becoming like the mature specimen seen by Sameer. This species was earlier reported from some forests of the Western Ghats region of Karnataka and Goa, making this yet another new report for Maharashtra. Interestingly, in Amboli, Prashad's geckos sometimes frequent houses, raising the question of whether they have adapted their forest lifestyle to one that takes advantage of human presence.

The dwarf gecko Cnemaspis kandiana / indraneildasi is also common in Amboli, even near habitation. An interesting gecko with a circular pupil, its presence in Maharashtra had only been reported from the Mahabaleshwar area, where, unlike Amboli,  it is uncommon. 

 

Amboli's uniqueness lies in the fact that though it is a part of the northern Western Ghats, it also has several components of the southern Western Ghats. It could in fact be a ‘corridor' between the two sections of the Western Ghats.  Recognising this, the BNHS' Collection Department launched the ongoing ‘Preliminary Survey of Herpetofauna in the northern Western Ghats'. As of today, we have reached a total of 23 amphibian species and 25 reptile species from the area, from undisturbed forest patches as well as degraded forest, grassland areas, streams and paddy fields.

Maharashtra's Western Ghats are densely populated and under heavy industrial pressure. Knowing this, it would be naïve to expect that Amboli would be safe today. Apart from the semi-protected Forest Park and the less accessible forests in the valley, much of the habitat is degraded. A famous hill station, there is a constant influx of tourists into Amboli throughout the year, and tourist numbers have been increasing. Developmental activities are taking a toll on the remaining forest. The occurrence of species such as Humayun's wrinkled frog, Malabar pit viper and Prashad's gecko even in and around degraded forest patches shows that most of the area was healthy forest not too long ago.

The species I have talked about in this short piece are just the tip of the iceberg. We have covered only a small portion of this area and much remains to be explored. I am sure that there are more species yet to be reported from this region, provided of course that the habitat is protected. If the degradation continues, we will not even know what wonders we are losing.

Text and photographs by Varad B. Giri, Sanctuary Asia, Vol XXIV No. 2, April 2004