yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

Share a piece by that finds a place in The Hindu - Sunday Magazine, 1st June 2014. Thanks are due to The Hindu, Samrakshan Trust, Krithika, Ramki and Dharmendra.  How green is your travel? Nimesh Ved and Yaranajit Deka At a recent meeting in Kohima, Nagaland, a senior wildlife biologist asked about the viability of eco-tourism as an income source at multiple locations in places like Nagaland and Meghalaya? The demand is, as of now, low due to remote locations and the way these states are projected in the media. There were other questions too: How many tourists can be expected in these not easily accessible areas? Can wildlife-based tourism take off in places where dense vegetation does not help mammal sightings? At that point, we were discussing Community Conserved Areas ( CCA ) in Nagaland and exploring potential sources of income for the people who are the custodians of the amazingly rich biodiversity in these areas. A few weeks later, we found ourselves rev...

This piece finds place in THE HINDU, SUNDAY MAGAZINE, 18th August, 2013. There’s more to Conservation Education than just conducting workshops, awareness programmes and seminars, says Nimesh Ved We had just shown an image of a locally occurring primate, shared its English name and, as planned, asked students what its local name was? The reaction was a confused silence, as most of the students didn’t understand the term “local name”. We then discovered that students in Donbosco School at Saiha hailed from Mara, Mizo and Lai tribes ( each of which could have a separate word for the primate ). Two teachers were present, one was from Assam and the other from Kerela. There were few students from other states too. So there was not one but many different names used for that one primate. In a society as diverse as ours we need to be more local and that is what Conservation Education (CE) is all about. CE program at Saiha in Mizoram had us undertake a range of activities th...