Wildlife, wildlife biologists, foresters and crazy tourists

This story here is extremely sad! But it reminded me of our experience in 2003. I was visiting Valpari with Sanzari and my sister. We took a short break from watching lorises and to celebrate Sanzari's third birthday to visit our friends Divya Mudappa and Sridhar in Valparai. One morning a group of us wildlife biologists were going from Nature Conservation Foundation's Valparai Project to Chalukudi in Kerala for a drive through the Sholayar Reserve forest of the Western Ghats. A herd of elephants who were crossing the river right next to the road that cuts through the forest. While seeing the sight of elephants two men stopped their small Maruti  800 car. Got down and were enthrusiastically screaming to get attention of  the elephants to take pictures with their tiny film camera. When we told them not to make such loud noise and it is dangerous to bother the elephants as well as they can harm the humans. The humans in turn got angry and told us that it is the state of Kerala and not Tamil Nadu. Attitude of those people were that they were from Kerala and therefore it is almost like their right to do whatever they want. Who are we to say anything to them! This was Sanzari's first wild elephant sighting. She was really excited to see her first big group of elephants. She still remembers those elephants on the river, two men and all of us.  But she did not understand why those people were so stupid and were disturbing those wild animals! We could have been harmed perhaps if our group was smaller or may be not. I have taken such risks many times in KMTR as well as in the national parks in the USA. Never thought of life being at risk.... But then in my mind we were doing the right thing of stopping the people from disturbing the wild animals or wild habitats!