This Animal Rights Crusader Has Rescued 17,000 Snakes
Meet Biplab Mahapatra, a self-driven wildlife conservationist and activist, who till date has rescued nearly 17,000 snakes, 20 Cats, 15 Monkeys, 200 Birds, 500 wild Cattle and 2200 different kind of reptiles such as Monitor Lizard, Turtle, Chameleon with his team, which also has earned him a Limca Book of Records in 2016.
Presently Biplab is the unit head of People for Animals or PFA in Angul, Orissa, the organisation is headed by Maneka Gandhi. Under his leadership, People for Animals, Angul has launched a campaign named “Save Snakes” to reduce negative perception about snakes by implementing strategies which will lead to peaceful coexistence. The campaign is going to cover 200 schools.
Biplab says: “Save Snakes is dedicated exclusively to snake conservation. Our mission is to protect threatened snake populations around the world though habitat preservation, education and community outreach to create a harmonious relationship between humans and snakes. We educate communities about how to live in harmony with snakes, why snakes are important for ecosystems and how to treat snakebite”.
Biplab’s childhood was spent in village with unconditional tolerance towards animals and wildlife, as the village was located amidst huge bio diversity. Though after his education Biplab started his career as a journalist, working with an English weekly, but with the turn of destiny he become fully involved with his passion to save wildlife and gradually his work got acknowledged in wider sphere. He won Biju Patnaik Wildlife Conservation Awardfor his contribution in the field of wildlife conservation. In 2018, he won the Prakruti Bandhu Award.
Biplab is associated with Wildlife Crime Control Bureau of Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India. He is also a honorary animal welfare officer with Animal Welfare Board of India, Ballabhgarh in Haryana, which work as the statutory advisory body advising the Government of India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
For years, Biplab and his enthusiastic team of volunteers, who add up to around fifty in number now, have been rescuing snakes from all over the country, especially in Odisha.
“As word spread about us, we used to get calls for snake bite related cases. From my experience, I could identify the nature of snake bite from looking at the wound texture and could assist doctors by telling them whether it was a venomous or non-venomous snake. We helped save many lives in the process,” said Biplab in an interview with the Logical Indian.
Even after numerous rescue operations, sometimes even risking his life, he found that a lot of people are still succumbing to snake bites even with advanced antidotes available. While the official WHO records mention the number of such deaths to be around 50,000 annually, unreported cases in rural interiors take the number beyond 1.25 lakhs. The experience made Biplab realise that people’s perception of snakes is based mostly on myths and misconception, which is why conflict is imminent whenever a human encounters a snake. “I found that people still nurture age-old superstition, and hence they rush the patient to faith healers or temple instead of the hospital,” he informs. This paved the way for the Save Snakes campaign.
In the future Biplab and his team wants to start an animal rescue centre for both domestic and wild animals with a mobile ambulance service for all animals. They also focuses on achieving zero snake bite death.
Ketto & Animal Welfare
Since its inception, Ketto has been a strong proponent of animal welfare in this country. Click on the links below to view crowdfunding projects Ketto has been involved with for saving and helping animals. If you feel inspired, you can perhaps start your own animal rescue project with Ketto as well.
Ketto Blog remains committed to inspiring and compelling social change to India’s most pressing problems through the power of great stories and engaging our audiences to take meaningful action.
