We Are Not the Only Stakeholders

What a Crocodile on CCTV and a Python in the Banana Trees Are Teaching Us About the Living Landscape of the Royal Establishments of Hanumanteshwar

By HH Prince DeAndre, Duke of Hanumanteshwar

I am writing this from Washington, DC, thousands of miles from the Royal Establishments of Hanumanteshwar, but sometimes distance has a way of making you see home differently.

A few days ago, my husband, H.R.H. Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil of Rajpipla, sent me a WhatsApp message from India. Attached were videos and photographs from the security cameras we have installed around Hanumanteshwar.

At first, the footage showed something completely ordinary: the grounds and our white car moving through the property. Manvendra was driving, going about his day as he has done countless times before.

Then there was the crocodile.

It was walking through the same landscape, remarkably close to the vehicle, following a journey entirely its own.

A few days later, another set of images arrived. This time it was a large python living among the banana trees on the property, its patterned body almost disappearing into the vegetation.

Those two encounters immediately brought me back to something I had written months earlier.

In The Land Was Listening Long Before We Arrived, I reflected on what years at Hanumanteshwar had taught me about development, wildlife, ownership, and stewardship. I wrote about learning to look beyond what we wanted the property to become and first understand what was already living there.

Read the first reflection:
https://h1927llc.com/blogs/culture-environment-hanumanteshwar-stewardship/the-land-was-listening-long-before-we-arrived

At the time, I was writing from years of personal observation. We had watched langurs move through the trees. We knew crocodiles were part of the Narmada landscape. We had encountered wild boar, monitor lizards, snakes, and the unmistakable presence of leopards moving through the grounds. We had learned that fencing drawn by humans did not necessarily mean much to an animal following a route it had probably used long before the fence existed.

What I was trying to understand then was the difference between owning responsibility for land and believing that everything on that land exists for us.

Now, looking at these new images from Washington, that idea feels even more real.

When a Security Camera Records Something More

We installed cameras at Hanumanteshwar for security.

That is their purpose. We want to know what is happening around the property, protect the people and spaces entrusted to us, and have a record when something unusual occurs.

What I had not really considered was that those same cameras could also begin documenting another life of Hanumanteshwar.

Watching the crocodile footage, I kept returning to how ordinary the moment seemed for everyone involved.

My husband was driving through the grounds because he had somewhere to go.

The crocodile was crossing the grounds because it had somewhere to go too.

For a few moments, those two routes came remarkably close to one another.

Neither was performing for the camera. Neither encounter had been arranged. It was simply life unfolding on the property.

Without the footage, we might never have known just how close their paths had come.

That interests me because it means the cameras are giving us something beyond security. They are beginning to create a visual record of how wildlife moves through Hanumanteshwar when human beings are not necessarily paying attention.

A sighting becomes more than a story someone remembers.

There is a time.

There is a place.

There is an image.

And when those records accumulate, we may eventually begin seeing patterns.

Then Came the Python

A few days after the crocodile footage, the photographs of the python arrived.

This encounter made me think about the property in a different way because of where the animal had chosen to live.

The python was among the banana trees.

We cultivate the banana-growing area as part of the working life of Hanumanteshwar. From our human perspective, it is agriculture. We see plants being maintained, fruit being produced, land being put to use, and the ordinary responsibilities that come with cultivating it.

The python has no understanding of any of that.

For the snake, those same banana trees may offer shade, concealment, protection, access to prey, and a place where even a very large animal can almost disappear.

Looking at the photographs, that became impossible to miss.

You can stare directly into the vegetation and still need a moment to recognize how much of the python is there.

That changed the way I looked at that part of the estate.

We had understood the banana trees through agriculture. The python had found habitat.

Neither understanding of that landscape was wrong.

We were simply sharing it without fully realizing that we were.

The Estate Is More Alive Than We Sometimes See

That is what these two encounters have brought into focus for me.

Hanumanteshwar is not simply a royal establishment where wildlife occasionally wanders through.

It is a living property within a much larger ecological system connected to the Narmada and the surrounding landscape.

That distinction matters.

Wildlife is not an attraction added to the estate. It is not something staged for visitors. It is not there because we created a conservation display.

It is simply there.

The langurs moving through the trees are living their lives.

The wild boar moving across the property are living theirs.

The crocodiles connected to the river are following their own patterns.

The python among the banana trees has found what it needs in a cultivated space.

The leopards that have crossed the grounds do not recognize the difference between what we call developed land and what we call wild.

Even the species we rarely notice, the birds, insects, rodents, reptiles, and smaller animals moving beneath the larger story, are part of what keeps the landscape functioning.

When we use the word biodiversity, it can sound like the language of a report or environmental conference.

At Hanumanteshwar, biodiversity has a body.

Sometimes it is walking beside a road.

Sometimes it is moving through trees.

Sometimes it is resting where we least expect it.

Sometimes it is almost invisible among the bananas.

Our Maps Are Not the Only Maps

One of the ideas I explored in my earlier article was that humans are very good at creating boundaries.

We decide where one property ends and another begins.

We decide what will be residential, agricultural, recreational, or eventually developed.

We install fences, create roads, establish paths, place lighting, and build structures according to the way human beings understand and organize land.

Wildlife follows another map entirely.

Animals follow water, food, shelter, temperature, breeding cycles, prey, and instinct. They move according to routes that may have existed long before anyone drew a modern property line.

The crocodile on CCTV made that visible.

We see a road and a car.

The crocodile sees ground it can cross.

We see cultivated banana trees.

The python finds shelter.

We see fencing.

A leopard finds a way around it.

We see an unused patch of land.

Another animal may already be using it every night.

The more we observe, the more another map of Hanumanteshwar begins to appear.

It is not drawn with property lines.

It is drawn through movement.

What Evidence Changes

There is another reason the new photographs and CCTV footage matter to me.

They turn observation into documentation.

For years, much of what we knew about wildlife at Hanumanteshwar came through lived experience. Someone saw an animal. Tracks appeared. A leopard was known to have moved through an area. Crocodiles were observed along the river. Wild boar appeared. Snakes were encountered.

Those experiences matter.

But documentation gives us another level of understanding.

If we preserve these images, record where animals appear, notice the times they are moving, and compare future sightings with what we already have, we can begin building an environmental record of the Royal Establishments themselves.

That record could eventually influence very practical decisions.

Where should lighting be increased?

Where might less lighting make sense?

Where are animals repeatedly crossing?

Are some areas being used as resting places?

Which cultivated areas are also functioning as habitat?

Where are human activity and wildlife movement most likely to overlap?

Those questions are not about turning Hanumanteshwar into a wildlife sanctuary or pretending human development should stop.

They are about making better decisions because we understand the property more completely.

Development Still Matters

Hanumanteshwar is a living establishment, and living places change.

People live here.

People work here.

Community programs happen here.

Agriculture happens here.

Buildings and infrastructure require maintenance.

Security matters.

Safety matters.

The future matters.

Nothing about appreciating wildlife changes those responsibilities.

What it changes is the way we approach them.

Before clearing an area, we can ask what currently uses it.

Before altering a boundary, we can consider whether wildlife regularly moves through it.

Before assuming that an animal has entered our space, we can consider whether we have built something across a space it was already using.

That does not mean human needs become secondary.

It means we stop pretending they are the only needs present.

Rethinking the Word Stakeholder

That brings me back to a word we use constantly in business, governance, nonprofits, and development.

Stakeholder.

Usually, we mean people.

Family members are stakeholders.

Staff members are stakeholders.

Community members are stakeholders.

Partners, guests, volunteers, donors, neighbors, and organizations may all have interests affected by the decisions being made.

But living with Hanumanteshwar has made me expand that definition.

If a stakeholder is something affected by our decisions, then wildlife has a stake in what happens here too.

That does not mean a crocodile has a seat at a planning meeting.

It means that when we alter the land, something beyond us may experience the consequences.

Remove vegetation and another species may lose cover.

Change lighting and nighttime patterns may shift.

Block an established route and an animal may find another one, possibly bringing it closer to human activity.

Change the agricultural environment and the animals attracted to that environment may change as well.

Alter access to water and the effects may reach species we never considered.

Wildlife cannot explain any of that to us in words.

Its evidence comes differently.

Tracks.

Nests.

Repeated sightings.

Resting places.

Predation.

Movement.

A python appearing among banana trees.

A crocodile crossing near the car.

The responsibility falls on us to notice.

Coexistence Is Not Carelessness

None of this means wildlife should be romanticized.

A crocodile deserves distance and respect.

A large python is still a powerful wild animal.

A leopard is a predator.

Venomous snakes require serious caution.

Wild boar can be dangerous.

Protecting staff, residents, visitors, and domestic animals remains an essential part of responsible stewardship.

Coexistence does not mean walking toward a wild animal because seeing one feels exciting.

It does not mean feeding wildlife or encouraging animals to remain close to human activity.

It does not mean refusing professional intervention when an animal creates a genuine danger.

Good stewardship requires common sense.

Sometimes the responsible decision will be to leave an animal alone.

Sometimes it will mean changing human behavior.

Sometimes it may require contacting qualified wildlife professionals.

And sometimes it may mean changing something about the property itself so the same conflict does not continue happening.

The goal is not to eliminate every encounter.

The goal is to understand enough about the landscape that neither people nor wildlife are placed unnecessarily at risk.

From Washington, I Saw Hanumanteshwar Differently

There is something interesting about receiving these images while sitting in Washington, DC.

If I had been at Hanumanteshwar, I might have seen the crocodile footage, looked at the python photographs, talked about them with people there, and moved on with the day.

Distance made me sit with them longer.

Here I was in Washington looking at my phone, watching a crocodile moving across the grounds of our establishment in India. Then came photographs of a python almost disappearing into the banana trees.

Suddenly, all the individual wildlife encounters I had been thinking about over the years came together.

The langurs.

The wild boar.

The crocodiles.

The monitor lizards.

The snakes.

The leopards.

And now these new images.

I realized I was not looking at a collection of interesting wildlife stories.

I was looking at evidence of a living property.

That is a very different thing.

Listening Was Only the Beginning

When I wrote The Land Was Listening Long Before We Arrived, I ended with the thought that perhaps stewardship begins when we decide to listen back.

I still believe that.

What these recent encounters have taught me is that listening is only the beginning.

Once the land shows us what is there, we have a responsibility to decide what we are going to do with that knowledge.

The crocodile on CCTV and the python in the banana trees did not create the ecological life of Hanumanteshwar.

They revealed it.

They made visible something that had been happening whether our cameras were recording it or not.

The Royal Establishments of Hanumanteshwar carry family history, cultural meaning, community purpose, agriculture, development, and plans for the future.

They also carry life that does not belong to us.

That may be one of the most important things this land continues to teach me.

We may be responsible for Hanumanteshwar.

We may care for it, cultivate parts of it, protect it, build within it, and help shape what it becomes for the next generation.

But responsibility does not mean exclusivity.

We are stakeholders in this landscape.

We are simply not the only ones.