The endangered monitor lizard, one of Goa's most hunted reptiles, and the ghumot, a local drum that faces extinction, may have found an unlikely saviour: the female goat.

Under pressure from wildlife conservationists, percussionists in the state are grudgingly switching to using the skin of the female goat instead of the tough hide of a monitor lizard, called a garr, which traditionally formed the head, or surface, of the drum.

The goat thus eases pressure on the monitor lizard and offers an alternative to ghumot players. The female goat is preferred to the male one because its skin is more flexible and closer in texture to the garr hide.

"[Using] traditional musical instruments during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival is common, and ghumots are one of the main [ones],"  the forest department said last month as preparations for the festival got underway. "The practice is not only detrimental to wildlife biodiversity in the state, but also constitutes a grave offence under the relevant act."

The garr is a highly endangered species, as defined by the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972, and is in the same category as the Royal Bengal tiger. Under this law, hunting or killing an animal in this category can attract imprisonment of up to six years or a fine of upto Rs 25,000 or both.

Although the forest department does not have data, wildlife experts say that hunting, construction and other forms of human intrusion have brought the species to the brink of extinction.

In a traditional ghumot, the skin of this lizard is stretched taut across the opening of a clay pot to create the drum's playing surface or head. The ghumot is usually played during an aarti, a special prayer when a hymn is sung.

In the budget session of the state assembly held in April, legislators also spoke about the need for ghumot players to look for an alternative to the garr skin.

"We should officially recognise the ghumot as the traditional state instrument and then find ways to salvage it or we will lose it forever," said Rohan Khuante, a legislator representing Porvorim constituency, a suburb of Panjim.

Rite of passage

Until the late 1980s, along Goa’s rural, hilly terrain, hunting garrs with the help of trained mongrels was a rite of passage for youngsters, even though it was illegal.

Armed with pickaxes and spades, and accompanied by a dog pack, teams of youngsters, led by a experienced poacher, would scour hill slopes for trails left behind by monitor lizards in the form of claw marks or droppings. The dogs also picked up the scent outside small holes in the ground where the lizards rest.

"The dogs barked aggressively when they tracked down a burrow with a lizard in it," said Diego Costa a former garr hunter from Anjuna, a coastal village 20 km north of Panjim.

Once the dogs did their job, the hunters with pick-axes and spades took over, digging the den, after carefully plugging exit routes. They then slaughtered the scared and trapped reptile and carefully skinned it. Its fresh blood, believed to cure asthama, was sold locally; its meat distributed among the hunting team; and the tenacious skin, once treated and cured, sold to ghumot makers for Rs 1,000 to Rs 5,000.

Unique sound

The ghumot, said Vishnu Wagh, one of Goa's most versatile artistes ─ a poet, singer, writer ─ is the state's answer to the more celebrated tabla. The pores and tiny scales on the garr skin  give the ghumot its unique sound, but a synthetic material could conceivably also produce the same sound, he said.

Given the paucity of garr skins and absence of a synthetic substitute as of now, ghumot specialists are increasingly making do with goat skins. Vinayak Akhadkar, 62, is one of Goa’s leading ghumot performers and is also part of a troupe that plays at several competitions and Ganesh Chaturthi aartis. For him, finding an alternative to the garr skin is a matter of survival.

"There is no point in lamenting the fact that garr skins have become rare," he said. "We have switched to goat skins."

Marius Fernandes, who is part of a research project trying to create a synthetic alternative to the garr skin, claims similar problems have plagued other instruments that use parts of endangered animals. He believes using the goat skin should be only a temporary solution because synthetic alternatives have a better chance of approximating the sound.

"This is a problem not only of Goa, but all around the world," he said. "In most cases, they have already shifted to synthetic alternatives. The female goat skin is acceptable but does not produce the same sound."