“The back of an elephant is the best way to get close to tigers, rhinoceros, and other animals.” © Joan Myers

 

The images in Joan Myers’s new book, The Jungle at the Door, were inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s jungle stories, which the photographer read as a child. However, the magnificent animals featured in the book are threatened with extinction, hunted by poachers eager for their skins, teeth and claws. And their habitat is shrinking in the face of increasing development. Myers says, “Seeing a tiger in the wild is a rare and special gift.  I fear that, with their numbers steadily decreasing, it is unlikely that my grandchildren will have the opportunity I had to see a tiger in Kipling’s forest. And as we lose these wild animals and wild places, we lose a primitive and mysterious wildness that has long been part of our human psyche.”

“A baby elephant in Kaziranga National Park. Baby elephants are cared for by a tightly knit matriarchal group; it is rare to see a calf without an adult female close by.” © Joan Myers

 

 ”The statue of a reclining Vishnu on a seven-hooded snake was a sculpted in the tenth century CE out of a massive outcrop of sandstone in the center of Bandhavgarh National Park.” © Joan Myers

 

 ”A lesser adjutant stork in Kanha National Park.” © Joan Myers

 

“The poaching of rhinoceros is big business despite the efforts of hundreds of armed guards in Kaziranga National Forest. A single-horn rhino can bring more than $30,000 (U.S.) on the black market in Asia for its purported medicinal powers.” © Joan Myers

 

“Down by the Brahmaputra River in Ganesh Pahar.” © Joan Myers

 

“The Brahmaputra River floods during the summer monsoon, creating great, silt-covered floodplains, meadows, and shallow lakes–a variety of luxuriant habitats for birds, reptiles, and mammals.” © Joan Myers

 

“Indian tent turtles sunning themselves along the Brahmaputra River.” © Joan Myers

 

“The Brahmaputra River.” © Joan Myers

 

“A Bengal tiger in Bandhavgarh National Park, southeast of Delhi, which was once the hunting preserve of the Maharaja of Rewa.” © Joan Myers

Tags: Animal photos, India, Joan Myers

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2013 at 12:00 pm ET by Amber Terranova and is filed under Animals, Books, Documentary, Science/Nature.