Today, tea can be found in the remotest Indian village, and the Indians drink more tea than the rest of the world combined. Even as they gave us tea, the British were destroying something else. They ruthlessly exploited the land for profit, while ruining and decimating the wildlife it sheltered. The destruction of Indian forests and wildlife occurred at a galloping pace under colonialism. The forests were destroyed for three main reasons: to convert the land into commercial plantations, especially to grow tea; to make railway sleepers; and to export timber to England for the construction of English houses and furniture.
The British cut down the forests of the Nilgiris and Assam to grow tea, and ravaged the forests of Coorg to grow coffee. Tea was not the only villain in the ecological devastation of the Nilgiris; the British also brought several exotic species like eucalyptus, pine and wattle to produce viscose, which was sent to the UK to be made into fabric. Unfortunately, these plants thirstily drink up the groundwater. Thus, the British converted the once lush tropical rain forests into a water-shortage area.
The same phenomenon occurred when they forced Indian farmers to grow poppy in order to extract opium, which involved cutting down vast areas of forests in some parts of north India, like Assam. This practice of slashing trees to protect the poppy indirectly wiped out some of India's most magnificent predators. They wanted more land to be used for commercial crops, which would bring them revenue, so they put a bounty on the head of each predator, successfully eliminating them from vast parts of India. The tiger and leopard survived, albeit in reduced numbers, because they hid in the jungles, but the lion needed vast open spaces and could not survive -- except in Gujarat, where an Indian prince, the Nawab of Junagarh, maintained a private lion sanctuary where hunting was permitted for his invitees only.
