Working with Communities in Satpuda Landscape

BNHS has been conducting conservation awareness programmes for various stakeholders of the Satpuda landscape with focus on human-animal conflicts and forest-friendly practices.

For women’s self-help groups in the periphery of Navegaon-Nagzira Tiger Reserve, camps were held to talk about the benefits of the forest and government schemes addressing local livelihood and health needs.

Death of wild animals owing to electrocution is common in the Satpuda landscape. To create awareness about it, poster exhibitions were held in the fringe schools at Navegaon-Nagzira, Bor, Pench, Umred-Paoni-Karhandla and Tadoba-Andhari tiger reserves. Schools in the fringe village continued to be the focus of our conservation programmes.

Guide training programmes were organised at Shahnoor village, in collaboration with Maharashtra Eco-tourism Board and Melghat Tiger Conservation Foundation, to help local guides from various reserves update their knowledge and cater to the growing demands of tourism in an eco-friendly manner. Similar trainings were also held at Desert National Park, Rajasthan. The bamboo craft workshop at Palasgaon, a livelihood initiative by BNHS, has emerged to be a success, with more and more villagers including youth, taking it up as a livelihood alternative. What is now needed for the programme to thrive is better market linkages. The initiative has won the appreciation of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Government of India.

Biodiversity beyond Tiger

We have been conducting training sessions for the forest department personnel of Pench Tiger Reserve to familiarize them with different aspects of the region’s biodiversity. In accordance with People’s Biodiversity Register rules under Biodiversity Act 2002, ethnographic information was collected from 50 forest-dwelling respondents to map their biodiversity knowledge.

The data will be brought out as a publication for the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department.