This time it is not merely crying wolf! The Indian Gray Wolf, inhabiting scrub lands and the ravines along the banks of the Central Indian rivers, needs protection. The immediate threat to the Indian wolf ( Canis lupus pallipes ), found along the banks of the Yamuna, Chambal, Banas and Mahi rivers, is the destruction of its habitat due to sand mining, cultivation and levelling of the ravines. When it comes to wolves and the ravines, there is a paradoxical situation in the country as the animal—a Schedule 1 species —continues to be despised and called names for its attributed greed and cruelty, while the ravines, categorised as wasteland if not badlands, are being levelled under a national plan for reclamation. The wolves, which co-inhabit with the Indian jackal, the small Indian fox and the Desert fox along with the pastoral communities in the area, are bound to lose out to the new surroundings even when they are otherwise known to be good survivors. A new study of wolves and their terrain under the Wolf Expedition, carried out by the conservation NGO Tiger Watch from September to December 2011 in Sawai Madhopur district on the periphery of the Ranthambhore National Park, has emphasised the need to protect the ravines along with the pastoral communities of Gujjars and Meenas after categorising them as Protected Community Land (PCL). The status of the Indian Grey Wolf is not very clear yet though surveys conducted in the early 1990s place their population between 2,000-3,000. One study in 1992 estimated their population in Rajasthan at 250 to 370. It is being pointed out that the Indian Grey Wolf, considered to be belonging to an ancient clade which has not mixed with the shallow wolf-dog clade, is ancient and different from other wolves and needs strong steps for its conservation. The Wolf Expedition, led by Dharmendra Khandal, conservation biologist with the Tiger Watch, has also suggested identifying locations with good presence of wolves and other canid species as Important Ravine Areas (IRA). A team of 10 volunteers which included Trishant Simlai of the Durrel Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent; Ashish Nerlekar and others from Fergusson College, Pune; and St.Xavier's College, Bombay; Bombay Veterinary College and the University of Mumbai carried out the survey. The survey was held in a stretch of 73 sq km identified along the Banas river region as an important wolf conservation area. “All the signs indicated that wolf presence was away from the National Park and near the human habitations. It is obvious that with presence of natural prey low in the ravines the wolves depend on livestock,” said Dr. Khandal talking to The Hindu on the preliminary findings. “We also noticed that even when the wolves fed on the sheep and goat, there was no big animosity on the part of the villagers towards these animals. They surely co-exist,” he said. There is an estimated 3.67 million hectares of area (1.12 per cent of the total landmass) under ravines in India. The normal policy has been to brand ravines as unproductive and a hindrance to development of urban and rural communities and agriculture. “Ravine reclamation is rated as a matter of high national priority in India. Our argument is that ravine formation through soil erosion, although affects fertility of the land, it is an important ecological attribute in itself. A number of species inhabit these areas and sadly, no global consideration has been given into the conservation of ravines,” laments Dr.Khandal.