LIGHT, LIGHT EVERYWHERE!

The disappearing darkness, and the invasive increase in artificial lights is detrimental to the survival of the inhabitants in the wild! What do we do?

- DR ASAD RAHMANI

Nearly 15 years ago, I read an article about the stark difference of human activities in London between day and night before the invention of street lighting. This was particularly contrasting in the dark gloomy winter nights. Perhaps people were living as Nature tell them to do. Even our Vedas teaches us to eat dinner early and go to sleep as night comes. The street lights changed everything. Lamps and lanterns were hung from houses even in the 15th century in London but they were haphazardly placed and expensive and not lighted enough to allow timid Londoners to venture out. Gas lights, started in London in 1807, changed the nightlife. It took 70 years before electric lights were installed in London in 1878. In India, Bangaluru was the first city to have street lights in 1905.

Now it is impossible to think of life without light. For billions of years, the Earth lived with a natural day and night rhythm. Species are involved to follow this rhythm. For some nocturnal species, their ‘day’ begins at or after dusk. Almost 70 percent of mammal species are nocturnal, i.e., active during the night, and pass the day either sleeping or inactive. While only 3.5 percent of terrestrial birds are truly nocturnal (though a much larger percentage of birds such as waterbirds forage and migrate during night).  Since the discovery of electricity, the nightscape has changed – nights are not as dark as they used to be. This 200 odd year period is so minuscule in the evolutionary time scale that most species are not able to adapt, literally to the ‘lighted world’. Death of darkness is seen in many parts of the world.