Nicobar, What’s To Go

First published in Sanctuary Asia, Vol. 43 No. 4, April 2023

By Meena Subramaniam

Obliteration, omnicide. Two words that encapsulate my thoughts on the recent Government of India’s decision to callously earmark Great Nicobar for a transhipment port to further industrial business interests over the sheer magnitude of its unique biodiversity. A sizeable 13,000 acres of virgin rainforest, one of the most unique on the planet is to be clear felled to make way for it. Along with this rainforest, the port will entirely destroy the biodiversity and unique and diverse ecosystems, rip the Nicobari Indigenous community from their roots and render them homeless and culture less.

The archipelago constitutes unique species and sub species of birds, mammals, plants and invertebrates. Ancient trees clothed with creepers and lianas cover the rainforest.

Photo Courtesy: Meena Subramaniam.

There is marine life, which includes endangered turtles that use the island’s beaches for nesting. There is a fragile mangrove ecosystem that keeps sea water at bay and protects these forests and interiors.

A few species slated for man-made extinction are included in Sanctuary’s April 2023 issue cover illustration:

The Nicobar treeshrew, a unique mammal which looks like a cross between a rat and a squirrel. The Nicobar long-tailed macaque, a frugivore that also subsists on crabs, frogs and small insects and has a diverse habitat ranging from mangroves to evergreen forests. Avian life includes the rare Nicobar Megapode, the Nicobar Scops Owl and the Nicobar Pigeon. Floral diversity encompasses the Phalaenopsis tetrapsis, with its randomly blotchy flowers, the endemic and showy Etlingera fenzlii, a torch ginger whose parts are exclusively used by the Shompen tribe as a bee repellent when collecting rock bee honey and the Nicobar tree fern, Cyathea nicobarica, endemic to the Nicobars.


Meena Subramaniam is a nature and conservation artist who lives near the Periyar Tiger Reserve. Her work has been featured in several magazines, including Sanctuary Asia, The Indian Quarterly, The Dark Mountain and the Marg issue, Ars Botanica. She is also the recipient of the 2018 T. N. Khoshoo Memorial Award for pioneering work in ecological art, in 2018. She has recently made a small contribution of illustrations for the tome, Trees of Arunachal Pradesh, NCF. Her preferred medium is acrylic on canvas and occasionally watercolours.
For more: meenart@artwanted.com; www.meenart.in or Email: kodaifern1@gmail.com

join the conversation