Forest and Wildlife Resources
Communities and conservation
Describe how communities protect forests and wildlife.
People who protect their own forests. Forests are home to many traditional communities, and some of them are working to save these places, because their own future livelihood depends on it.
- Near the Sariska Tiger Reserve (Rajasthan), villagers fought mining by using the Wildlife Protection Act.
- In the Alwar district, people of five villages declared 1,200 hectares of forest the Bhairodev Dakav 'Sonchuri'. They made their own rules: no hunting, and no outsiders taking over. They did not wait for the government.
Chipko and seed savers.
- The Chipko movement in the Himalayas stopped trees being cut in several areas. It also showed that when a community plants local (native) trees, it can work very well.
- Two groups, Navdanya and the Beej Bachao Andolan in Tehri, showed that farmers can grow many different crops without synthetic chemicals, and still earn enough.
Joint Forest Management (JFM): give and take. It started in 1988, when Odisha passed the first resolution. Village groups protect damaged (degraded) forest land run by the forest department. In return they get non-timber forest produce and a share of the timber when protection succeeds. Protecting the forest pays them, so they have a reason to keep doing it.
Sacred groves. Nature worship is an old tribal belief that everything in nature must be protected. Because of it, some patches of forest, called sacred groves, have been left untouched, and nobody is allowed to disturb them. India has many cultures, each with its own ways of caring for nature:
- the Mundas and Santhals of Chota Nagpur worship mahua and kadamba trees;
- tribal people of Odisha and Bihar worship tamarind and mango trees at weddings;
- around Bishnoi villages in Rajasthan, blackbuck, nilgai and peacocks live freely and nobody harms them.
The lesson. Wherever forests are saved, local people are involved. But they are still not at the centre of decision-making, and there is a long way to go. The book's advice: choose development that is good for people, good for the environment and pays its way.
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