How Wild is My Village?

“Boo-book, boo-book”, the rhythmic calls of the brown hawk-owl, often punctuate early morning walks I take with my partner and dogs, near our home close to Candolim, Goa. A white-bellied sea eagle often soars elegantly north to south above the beach towards the Fort Aguada forest between 6.10 and 6.30 am. On a few occasions, we have seen the puzzled look of an Indian thick-knee in a nearby field. Around 9 am, a pair of Vigors’s sunbirds visit the flowers in our garden. A lone langur may pass by our home later in the day, taking a brief rest on our Mankurad mango tree, disregarding the frenzied barking of our dogs. A young monitor lizard has made our garden its home over the last two months; luckily, it is not easy to spot and remains safe. 

Other organisms adorn our garden too. We have seen snakes such as the Russell’s viper, wolf snake, spectacled cobra, rat snake, and python in our home garden on different occasions. Unfortunately, a Russell’s viper once fatally bit our Chippiparai hound, and a python once swallowed a chicken from our coop. Frogs often sit on wet leaves in the garden and on water lettuce floating in small water pots, from where the carnivorous plant golden bladderwort flowers. Stingless bees sip on water through the algae growing in these pots. Snails and slugs slither around on the moist garden floor. A Roux’s garden lizard lives on the false Ashoka tree. In the monsoon, a rare ink cap mushroom and other mushrooms grow on dead wood, and several other such beautiful creatures make seasonal guest appearances.

The biodiversity at our home garden has benefited from the changes made over the last six years: mulching leaf litter, clearing weeds, allowing deadwood to decompose into the soil, composting our kitchen waste with black soldierfly larvae to nourish the soil, planting insect- and biodiversity-friendly plants, setting up small aquatic ecosystems in pots, among other such improvements.

In the neighbouring house where no humans have lived for over two years, a palm civet family has checked in near the roof. They often pass by our mango tree during their night forays. Once, what sounded like a loud human baby scream turned out to be a mother civet yelling at a python to protect her baby.

A large python once climbed an electrical tower outside our home and was getting electrocuted. We called the electricity department. They shut down the power and rescued, rehabilitated, and released the snake in the Aguada forest. In that forest, not very far away, we once saw two golden jackals, and in the nearby Nerul River we saw six smooth-coated otters swimming fearlessly close to free-ranging stray dogs. Our only sighting of a porcupine ever was from the roadside one kilometre away, when it had to be rescued by the Forest Department after it was possibly hit by a moving vehicle. One of the beach shack owners fervently protected an olive ridley turtle nest after a female laid its eggs next to his shack. Fifty days later, the hatchlings emerged and headed to the sea at midnight. We guided some of the hatchlings, waylaid by the nightlights, to sea.

The diversity in and around our home is high. This may be because of the overall rich biodiversity of Goa, where the Western Ghats biome interacts with the marine ecosystem biome through the riverine ecosystem along the 11 rivers that flow through the state. Forest cover is also high, with more than 60 per cent of Goa is under protected, private, and reserve forests. Another positive factor is people’s willingness to coexist with wildlife compared with other states. Food resources in urban areas of Goa are abundant, and so we have high populations of rats, squirrels, cats, and dogs (prey for urban predators). In addition, with lots of trees there is plenty of canopy cover and food for birds and arboreal mammals.

Nevertheless, diversity is likely persisting rather than thriving, as deforestation for linear infrastructure such as roads and railways, unregulated and irresponsible tourism, and unchecked urbanisation, among other factors, are rapidly rising in the state. Beach vegetation is being encroached further inland every year for illegal construction. Khazans, eco-sensitive agricultural-mangrove zones that were originally protected by the comunidades (jointly owned lands and resources), are being converted into settlement zones. Wildlife mortality from roadkill is increasing. Rivers are increasingly getting polluted and are being mined for sand. In Goa, garbage is largely mismanaged, with beautiful mangroves, paddy fields, forests, and laterite plateaus regularly dumped with plastic, glass, and metal waste.

 

Around our home, in April 2026, an earthmover was at work in the field adjoining the thick-knee’s field, a python was burnt to death last month, and two months back an earthmover was dredging river soil and dumping it on mangrove roots in the Nerul River where we had seen otters. Over the last two years, tourists and locals have deposited huge amounts of trash in the beach vegetation to the extent that it is impossible to even walk on the paths to the beach. I hope none of the olive ridley turtles that hatched on Candolim beach return, since the beach is getting further degraded and disturbed every year.

We must acknowledge and cherish the value of Goa’s diverse ecosystems and stop further habitat destruction. Goa’s rich biodiversity needs to be conserved. When a hawk-owl boobooks, a sea-eagle soars, a thick-knee stares, a sunbird sips nectar, a langur lazes on a tree, a monitor lizard basks in the garden, a snake slithers, an ink cap mushroom fruits, and a civet sneaks in for some bananas so close to home, I hope we realise how valuable these experiences are and how privileged we are to share space with such incredible organisms.