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

Demystifying Conservation Education A workshop at the  SCCS  on 28th September 2013 by Nimesh Ved   -  Pranav Trivedi Abstract “The obscure takes a while to see, the obvious, longer.”  ~ Anonymous Conservation Education ( CE) is the ‘obvious’ part of the larger process of nature conservation. No wonder, there’s much confusion, discussion and dilution about what it is, how to do it - assuming we already know ‘why do it’?!!  Hence, we would begin this workshop with sharing of the practitioners’ quandaries on CE. Next, through brain-storming to understand what you are keen to know, we’d like to visit as many areas/directions, which are entailed under CE… We’ll then share some approaches that have worked successfully and conclude by once again stating the obvious! “One pound of learning requires ten pounds of common sense to apply it.”  ~ Persian proverb Looking forward to interacting with many like-hearted people ...

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...

Sanctuary Asia (Vol XXXIII No. 3, June 2013) carries a report 'People for Parks' by Bittu Sahgal, Lakshmy Raman, Kritika Kapadia and Mallika Narvekar (Pages 61 - 65). Placed within the report, in form of a box item, is a brief note on the Nagaland experience.   The Dikhu Green Zone In Nagaland, Community Conserved Areas (CCA) are helping to reduce hunting, forest degradation and provide valuable ecological services. CCA are natural or modified ecosystems that harbour significant biodiversity and have immense ecological and cultural value and are voluntarily protected by indigenous and local communities through customary laws or other effective means. The Nagaland Village and Area Councils Act, 1978, empowers village councils, autonomous local bodies for village administration to function according to customary practices and usages.  Conservationists, Nimesh Ved and Swati Chaliha write: ‘The Dikhu river forms the boundary between Ungma and Longsa and a commu...

Mumi could not quite accept the fact, during initial days, that Agraa did not have a phone and wondered why I had to move to such a place. I then had to travel to Vijaypur on our Rajdoots about 18 kms and we talked about once in 10 days. Mukesh, the PCO owner, became a friend over the 2 years! My love for bike rides there I would dwell on some other time.  Move to Baghmara took place sometime during 2004 and it was funnier. I could not call the land lines in Gujarat for they were locked; mumi however could call me up. I did talk to the district BSNL head and got to know that along with locking Jammu and Kashmir the department had ended locking up calls to Gujarat as well! I recall the person at BSF run PCO telling me ' bhaisaab kahan transfer ho gaya aap ka '. Yes the Border Security Force also ran a PCO besides illegally logging the Baghmara Reserve Forest! Many a times when mumi called ( i.e. when the phone worked ) she could hear more of the rain on tin roof as o...

One late December evening we returned to our base at Saiha. The morning next as we shuffled between resting and getting the base in order we saw moths having taken over the place. One, two and the count went up till 18 different species or should I say differently appearing moths as I walked around the place. Fatigue of 14 hour sumo ride of the earlier day vanished and I was climbing tables and chairs to click their images.  Some on the ground and some up near the tube-light. It was as if we had let out the place to them for the three weeks that we were out.  It appears as mind boggling now as it was then!  My awareness on moths then was at best pathetic and I was keen to know of them! There hasn't been any significant change in my awareness levels since then either. Attempts to get help with identification proved difficult. Responses ranged from 'I know only butterflies and not moths' to 'email silences' and I gave up after a while. Getting in touch with Gee...

Initial interactions had team-members (conservation education team) share of their activities and me ask them questions. These would help me understand the program (including people associated) and would be pertinent given that   the team, language and landscape were fresh for me! (We had a discussion on my asking questions including my saying that I quite like doing so and have been told I overdo it at times; but that I will skip for now). Next I shared briefly my journey with conservation education.  I looked at partners and activities; how I had learnt from experiences and as a corollary affected revision. One of the activities, film-screening, we delved on at length. This consisted of our seeing the film Sekhar Dattatri’s “ Save our Sholas ”, team dividing into 2 groups and discussing how it could be ‘shown’ in the 2 different settings team works in and ended with me sharing of how we used to screen films. Team presentations were interesting and suggestions o...

Picked up ' Gulbadan' from a 'Book Sale' on account of love for history and interesting cover besides the tone of the author in the initial pages; she translates the name to 'rose-body'. Gulbadan was the youngest daughter of Babur, first Mughal emperor of India and lived almost through three reigns: her father Babur’s, her brother Humayun’s and her nephew Akbar’s, till two years of his death. This I find interesting on account of my interest in wildlife; recent reading of Valmik Thapar's Exotic Aliens : The Lion and The Cheetah in India  brought forth the clear distinction between 'maintained forests' and 'natural wilderness' during those times! As Akbar grew older and the Empire more settled, hunting took the place of battles; it, too, was cruel. Hundreds of soldiers would surround some chosen miles of jungle and gradually beat inwards, driving the animals until they were in a vast net. The Emperor went in first to take his...

As Pankaj (Sekhsaria) and I continued out telephonic chats over the book ( Protected Area (PA) Update – A Compilation ) we discussed how we would break the monotony and make the book interesting. The book, in the first section, moves from one state to another; each of the states was to have information collated from the PA Update. We felt the need to bring in an introduction of sorts to the state. List of PAs was needed but stand-alone it appeared somewhat dry and the pieces (which form the second section) were out of contention since a healthy number focused on the ‘region’ as opposed to a state in particular. A sketch map for each state was agreed upon and then we also decided to cull in ‘historical pieces’ for each state. Together these three (sketch map, list of PAs and the historical piece) would ‘begin’ each state in the book. While the word-limit that we agreed to made me feel, at times,  I was doing anything but justice to the piece I loved put in many an afternoon g...

Lion centric debates, in recent weeks, have been triggered by the Supreme Court verdict that could finally see lions in Kuno (Sheopur) and Valmik Thapar's "Exotic Aliens : The Lion and the Cheetah in India" which questions these two species as ever having been local. During a recent trip to Nagaland I came across both Lions and Tigers on the walls; while Tigers occur in the state the presence of Lions (on the walls) was surprising for sure! Share some images below ~ These are from the Tourist Lodge at Ungma (Mokokchung) These from a hotel in Mokokchung  And these from 2 separate villages in Zunheboto  (miss the names now and dont want to postpone the post) R A Lorrain's 1912 classic '5 Years in Unknown Jungles' mentions lions in south Mizoram; look forward to interesting readings and interactions on Nagaland!

Memories from the past  Share fun and energy of Bal Mela we organized during 2004 at. This was at Samrakshan's Agraa field base  in Sheopur, Madhya Pradesh.  Bal Mela : February 2004  Once the date for the Bal Mela was finalized, during the month of January things started falling into place and everyone in the team began chipping in with their efforts, individually as well as through weekly meetings. The way we perceived it, the Bal Mela this year was to be a litmus test for the dictum "how we do a task is more important that what result we bring out from it". To put this belief into practice, we tried to ensure that a large part of the arrangements for the event were taken care of by the teachers and the village level workers. The  role of the Samrakshan coordinators was  limited to tying the loose ends and overall coordination. It was really invigorating to see the village level workers and teachers allocate responsibilities among them...