# Ajayan | A noon in October exactly a decade ago. Wildlife biologist Paul Peter Predit had just ascended the towering Karimalagopuram peak in the Parambikulam forests, searching for signs of the elusive Nilgiri tahr as part of his research, accompanied by a forest tracker and three other researchers. He pressed forward through a narrow, winding animal trail veiled in shola mist when the forest watcher suddenly froze, sensing something.
A shadow stirred. From the green gloom, a colossal gaur emerged - muscle, menace and fury. The trail was too tight, the moment too tense. The bull gaur saw him, flared and was set to charge. Predit had no choice and, in a few seconds, decided to turn and flee. He tripped and fell. A blur of horns and hooves. Then it was a flight, his own, hurled like a ragdoll through the air. He struck a boulder. Pain exploded. The forest spun. Lying still, breath shattered, he opened his eyes. The gaur ventured down the slopes. He looked down to see something pink, raw, and wrong hanging from his abdomen.
He screamed. Then it was silence. Blood soaked the forest floor as the forest watcher stood frozen in horror. Moments later, three colleagues, trailing just behind, rushed in, breathless and eager to share news of the gaur they had seen charging past. What they found instead left them speechless: Predit, sprawled, torn open, a glistening pink mass dangling from his abdomen.
He thought it was his kidney. He tried to rise as something deeper stirred: a primal instinct to survive. One colleague ripped off his T-shirt. Another shared a towel. Predit, through sheer will, pushed the torn flesh back into his body, binding his wounds with cloth and grit. Then he felt it: a jagged rib, broken and pushing outward. Still, he did not falter. Bloodied, bent, but unbowed, he slowly began the agonising trek back with his colleagues at his side. Somehow, Predit climbed, step by bleeding step, driven by sheer will and the raw instinct to survive.
Meanwhile, the forest watcher had sprinted through the wilderness to a network point to seek help from the forest office. He panicked and reported what he had seen. Death, he was certain, was a matter of moments.
Forest staff, grim-faced, prepared for the worst. They took a steel stretcher, meant not for rescue, but for bodies. In a nearby tribal hamlet, the villagers gathered at their sacred altar, offered prayers and joined the search party, carrying gunny bags, expecting to retrieve a corpse.
"All the while, I thought of my wife, my two little children. I prayed, confessed, and pictured my late grandmother, who had died a few months ago, sure I’d be with her soon. But then, a flicker of hope. I felt my pulse steady. Heart - still beating. I drank water, then urinated. The kidney (I then thought one was damaged) works, I realised. Maybe I’m not dying yet," Predit told Metro Vaartha.
At the forest official’s insistence, Predit untied the makeshift bandage to reveal the wound and then bound it again. The tribespeople told him they had prayed to their deity; he would live. Two of them dumped the bags, removed their dhotis, tied them to sticks and fashioned a cradle. Carefully, they placed him inside. He lay on his right side as the left was pierced by a broken rib, and he stayed silent. Even a groan might slow them down.
By 8 pm, they reached the nearest road access point. An ambulance waited. A nurse gave him a painkiller; the driver raced to Pollachi, reaching in an hour. At the local hospital, his wound was cleaned, and first aid was given. Then, with his wife, who had by then rushed to his side, he was taken to the Kovai Medical Centre and Hospital. A wildlife biologist turned school teacher, born like him to Malayali roots in Coonoor, her voice steadied him.
After midnight, under the hum of cold lights, the surgeons began. Abdominal and thoracic injuries, three rib fractures, one rib torn free and removed. What had been disgorged was not a kidney, but his spleen.
A week later, Predit was back, limping, scarred, but unshaken, resuming his research on the Nilgiri Tahr.
Today, Predit serves as an expert on the Tamil Nadu Forest Department’s Project Nilgiri Tahr conservation committee. With Kerala now agreeing to join the comprehensive conservation effort, he stands ready, scarred but resolute, to do even more for the mountain’s elusive sentinel.
Born to Malayali parents and raised in Ooty’s Fern Hill - home to Guru Nitya Chaitanya Yati - forests were in his blood. Though his father wished him to be a doctor, he pursued botany for graduation. Unsure of the path ahead, he drifted through odd jobs until a new master’s course in wildlife drew him back to his college. Unsure of what the course was all about, he joined, unaware it would change his life.
Field trips became lifeblood - birds, wildlife, forests - a continuation of childhood wonder. His master’s project on grasslands brought him to WWF, and though he dreamed of tigers, fate led him in 2008 to the Nilgiri Tahr, mountain sentinels of the southern Western Ghats, now fading under the weight of habitat loss, grazing, poaching and fragmented lands slowly getting invaded with exotic species.
His first glimpse of a Nilgiri tahr was in Eravikulam National Park; a small herd, with a majestic saddleback male standing apart. That moment marked the true beginning of his journey.
By 2015, after years of fieldwork and combing through every existing record, He published a technical report estimating the population at 3,122. Scattered groups were believed to exist in remote, unsurveyed terrains, hidden behind rain, mist and sheer inaccessibility.
Yet, the study uncovered 17 previously unknown pockets, home to 131 tahrs. It mapped critical conservation zones, flagged key threats - habitat loss, poaching, invasive species - and offered strategies to protect these mountain dwellers clinging to the last wild ridges of the Western Ghats.
But the journey didn’t end there. A new WII study shifted focus to genetics, crucial for understanding population structure and preserving diversity. From tracking tahr in highland grasslands, Predit now followed their story through bloodlines and DNA, travelling as far as Thiruvananthapuram, carrying the mountain’s secrets into the lab.
The 2018 report revealed a striking truth: two distinct Nilgiri Tahr populations - north and south of the Palakkad Gap. Genetic analysis showed only shallow divergence, hinting at a time when continuous habitat once bridged the divide. Shifting paleoclimates and the Palakkad Gap carved a genetic split, shaping the tahr's evolutionary path.
Forensic science has added a powerful tool - geo-assigning tahrs to their origin, north or south of the Palakkad Gap. Today, even a single hair from a poached tahr can reveal where it once roamed, giving voice to the silent and holding poachers accountable, Predit notes.
Building on WWF’s studies, the Tamil Nadu Forest Department has launched a sweeping Nilgiri Tahr conservation mission across Tamil Nadu. With Kerala now ready to join and Predit at the helm as expert, hope rises for the conservation of this threatened mountain sentinel on the ridges.
