Why blue sheep in Gangotri National Park are going blind

DEHRADUN: A BSF expedition preparing for a climb to the Everest and led by six-time summiteer Loveraj Singh Dharamshaktu, assistant commandant and India's record holder for most number of Everest climbs, has come back with startling findings in Gangotri National Park (GNP) that Uttarakhand's wildlife authorities wanted to keep under wraps for reasons best known to them. The soldiers found that the blue sheep, known locally as Bharal, in the list of endangered species, were losing their eyesight.

Photos of eye popping out and even hanging in the blue sheep of Gangotri National Park.

Dharamshaktu told TOI, “It was during our camping at Kedar Tal area of GNP to climb Jogan peak that we spotted several blue sheep with their eyes popping out or bleeding or eye socket empty because of which they were unable to see or walk properly. They had become lean and, being an animal lover I was worried, they could easily be killed by predators or die of hunger in such condition. We saw few infected sheep dead in the area. The infections have spread out from adults to babies.”

He said, he drew attention of the park's deputy director Shravan Kumar to a spot where a blind baby blue sheep had been stuck into a pit while his blind mother sitting outside was unable to help either. “Kumar told us that he would send someone to rescue the baby. Later, they told us they had sent the baby to Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI) at Bareilly where during treatment he died.”

Eye dangling below is something that must alarm one and all
Chief wildlife warden DVS Khati said that the scat sample of baby sheep was sent to IVRI but he did not remember details about the report. However, deputy director of GNP Shravan Kumar who shared the IVRI report said, “The report said that sheep died of lung disease. The scientists of IVRI said that eyes infection in the species might have happened due to some virus in brain.” He further added that blindness occurred only in one baby sheep which died.

But the accounts of Khati and Kumar were found false and exposed how the wildlife officials are brushing such a serious matter under the carpet. BSF team substantiated disease spotted in several adults, sub-adults and small babies of blue sheep species. And IVRI scientists said that it was not a scat sample or alive baby, but the sample of a dead blue sheep which was sent to IVRI for examination by Uttarakhand wildlife department.

TOI contacted IVRI scientists who prepared the report to probe the matter. AK Sharma, head of wildlife at IVRI, while saying that he never heard of blue sheep contracting blindness, that too through eye-popping and bleeding ways, said, “No blue sheep was brought before us from GNP, nor we were asked to carry any investigation in the blinding of blue sheep by Uttarakhand wildlife department. We were sent the sample of a dead blue sheep where we inferred at various problems in lung, liver, brain and spleen of the animal for causing the death. But these factors have nothing to do with any eye infection .”

Rajender Singh, head of Pathology department of IVRI, said that if the same deformity is found in more than one sheep, it means that it is infectious disease which could be spreading through oral/fecal or air borne mediums. He did not deny from possibility that it can spread in other wild animals and predator species such as snow leopard, critically endangered animal of Higher Himalayas, for which conservation efforts are going on at international level on the lines of tigers. Singh said that if an infected blue sheep is brought to them, they can examine and treat him and, in case he does not survive, they can still analyses the cause and effect.