Adventures of a wildlife biologist

Once a month I would go up past the tea estate and follow lion-tailed macaques for three days. This would also be from dawn to dusk. Since these animals had a huge home range, of about 600 hectares for a group, they were not easy to find. A team of trackers was employed to locate them. Every month they would start looking for the study group. Sometimes they would find it within a day. Sometimes it would take up to three weeks. After finding the group, a message would be sent to me, and I would then drive up.

I would stay at the electricity board guest house at Upper Kodayar. This was a new hydroelectric project that had just been completed, and the construction had left the area and its surrounding forest looking as if bombs had been dropped there. Since my predecessors had opposed new dams coming up in the area—and three more had been planned—I was an object of suspicion to the engineers who often stayed there. They were friendly enough. But why would anybody want to stop progress for the sake of a monkey? I was asked constantly by both the local engineers as well as the police (usually after attempts to get me drunk were made), whether I was an American spy.