 The buffer zones, created around the protected areas, acts not only as the insulator and keep away the anthropogenic pressures of local communities from the core zone or ‘critical habitat’ but also provide the habitat to the spill over tigers and other wildlife species from core zones.
The wild animals disperse from their core breeding areas to buffer areas or to further in corridor areas to establish their territory or to move to other protected areas. Therefore buffer zones play important role in long-term conservation of animals. The information on dispersal routes, status of wildlife and their habitat in buffer zone is crucial to tailor the management strategies for buffer areas. Therefore a 2-year study in buffer zone of the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve was initiated by The Corbett Foundation to study the dispersal routes of tigers and other wildlife species. Click here for the full report. The findings of the study indicated that tigers and leopards not only using the buffer zone for dispersal but also establishing their territories in buffer zone. The study recorded 29 mammalian species out of 35 listed species in Bandhavgarh. Asiatic wildcat (Felis silvestris ornata) and smooth-coated otter (Lutrogale perspicillata) were recorded for the first time in Bandhavgarh during this study. The Corbett Foundation (TCF) has been working in Bandhavgarh-Sanjay Dubri Corridor (BSDC), an important forested landscape that connects Bandhavgarh and Sanjay tiger reserves in Madhya Pradesh. Despite being an important connecting corridor of these tiger reserves, awareness about tiger and overall biodiversity conservation in quite low among the villages of BSDC. Community dependence on the forest in BSDC for cattle grazing, firewood collection and collection of minor forest products is very high. There have also been cases of tiger deaths from BSDC in the past raising suspicions about poaching. All this has a direct link to a lack of awareness about the need to conserve the forests and wildlife among the local communities.
Unless the level awareness is raised, it is difficult to expect success in conservation and protection of flora-fauna. Therefore, TCF felt a pressing need to spread environmental awareness among the student community to make them realize the seriousness of the issues at hand. To bridge this gap, TCF has published a 116-page pictorial booklet titled Hamare Van, Hamare Gaon providing an overall insight about the local biodiversity of BSDC, its ecological values and the need for its conservation. The language of this first-of-its-kind publication purposefully has been kept as hindi so that the contents of the publication and the important conservation message therein reaches to as many schools in BSDC and in Bandhavgarh and Sanjay-Dubri tiger reserves. Over 27-28th April 2019, Amrita had a pop-up of her new venture, Black Orchid, at Artists & Fleas (A&F) in Williamsburg and got the chance to see if Brooklyn loved making clothes from scraps as much as her. What ensued was a two day long conversation of what it means to be part of slow fashion and where it could take us. Sarika brought with her the final piece of this conversation, about how what we buy affects both people and nature in far off places, by sharing her work and selling tribal jewelry. Creating things is fun and we seldom value the process enough in our daily lives. What better way to discuss our work, being mindful consumers and sustainability of our resources than to directly meet people at markets. Amrita and Sarika got a chance to do exactly that at the melting-pot that is A&F on Saturday with the Smorgasburg in full flow. Tourists from many different countries who came through the pop-ups got a glimpse of the work we do in our lab, conservation in central India, and #whatascientistlookslike when they are also a maker / crafter / doing outreach! Apart from tourists, they had interest from other makers (on their own journey in being conscious consumers), friends and family.  The Wildlife Conservation Trust (WCT) recently launched a website and released a report titled "A Policy Framework for Connectivity Conservation and Smart Green Linear Infrastructure in the Central Indian and Eastern Ghats Tiger Landscape." According to Milind Pariwakam, a wildlife biologist at WCT, while several reports, studies, and guidelines aim to address the issue of mitigating the negative impacts of such linear infrastructure on natural landscapes and conserving the connectivity that they offer to small populations of endangered species of wildlife, there is a lack of timely information on whether a particular project is likely to affect corridor/s.  Corridors and proposed linear infrastructure in Central Indian and Eastern Ghats tiger landscape. Map source: https://connectivityconservationindia.org/ci-eg-report/ Pariwakam further states that this report primarily seeks to address this specific lacuna by leveraging on earlier work by other entities and presents a way forward for better planning of linear infrastructure without compromising on the connectivity needs of wildlife. The same framework with improvements can be adopted by the statutory agencies for the other three important tiger landscapes in India, namely, the Western Ghats, Shivalik-Gangetic Landscape and the North East Indian Landscape by incorporating information on the corridors and proposed projects in the respective landscapes. Work is in progress on the other three reports.
Pinki Mondal Senior Research Associate, Columbia University, New York, USA Post updated on 4/25/2018 Are you interested in science, art, and sloth bear? Then you must check out this wonderful pictorial handbook published by The Corbett Foundation, and authored by NCCI members Aniruddha Dhamorikar, Kedar Gore, and Harendra Singh Bargali. The handbook is one of the outcomes from a project titled "Dynamics of Human–Sloth Bear Conflict in the Kanha-Pench Corridor, Madhya Pradesh, India" funded by the DeFries-Bajpai Foundation.  This handbook utilizes beautiful easy-to-understand illustrations to explain DOs and DON'Ts in case of an encounter with Sloth Bears (Melursus ursinus), locally called bhaloo or reech. Sloth Bear is legally protected under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 along with the tiger and the leopard. However, they are threatened because of merciless killing and habitat destruction. The content of this handbook is based on the findings from a study on human-sloth bear conflicts in Balaghat, Seoni, and Mandla districts of Madhya Pradesh.
 Official release of the handbook at Bandhavgarh National Park. Photo courtesy: Kedar Gore, The Corbett Foundation. This handbook has been endorsed by Madhya Pradesh Forest Department, and is being made freely available among the local communities. A Hindi version of this handbook was also prepared for a wider outreach in the Kanha-Pench Corridor as well as other conflict-affected areas of Central India. It was officially released on April 23, 2018 at Bandhavgarh National Park (Madhya Pradesh) celebrating 50 years of the park.
Original Paper: Dhamorikar, A. H., Mehta, P., Bargali, H., Gore, K. (2017). Characteristics of human - sloth bear (Melursus ursinus) encounters and the resulting human casualties in the Kanha-Pench corridor, Madhya Pradesh, India. PLoS ONE 12(4): e0176612. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0176612 |
About
Project Spotlight highlights our members' work in Central India. Categories
All
Archives
October 2022
|
| Network for Conserving Central India | Project Spotlight |
RSS Feed
