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

This post shares a piece from Education For Change (Vol 9 No 1). During my association with Samrakshan (NGO working on Conservation) I was engaged with an interesting program on CE. As a part of the program I got to communicate on nature with students and their teachers as also other segments of the society – youth associations, forest department personnel and religious bodies.  In course of the journey, one that enriched me beyond my own expectations, on issues concerning nature and communications, I realized that we would need to not teach but create platforms to discuss and deliberate on conservation. This was all the more pertinent in landscapes like Baghmara (Meghalaya) and Saiha (Mizoram) where Samrakshan then had field bases. Here, there were forests around towns and villages but on account of changing lifestyles, within space of a single generation, the connect with and concern for wildlife had eroded beyond imagination. This to an extent that while an old person in...

Share a report on my Talk at BSAP s monthly indoor meet on 14 th August 2013.  This features in the September 2013 (Volume 10 Number 9) issue of Pitta (Newsletter of the BSAP). The newsletter is edited by Shanti Mani and Umesh Mani while Anjali Pande has written the text. While the images in Pitta are by Sharada Annamaraju I have  placed my slides within the text below. Many thanks to each of them as also Aasheesh and Shafaat Saab for presenting the opportunity. Title: “Birds: some tales from Mizoram and around” – 14th August 2013     On 14th August the guest speaker of our indoor meeting was Mr. Nimesh Ved, who is interested in conservation education (CE) and proved to be a good resource person for an audience waiting to hear the story behind the sad state of Amur falcons in Nagaland . With his vast experience of working with local people Nimesh could explain the socio-cultural intricacies involved in conservation conflicts such as in the case of la...

This piece finds place in September issue of SAEVUS . Local names of species in different languages and dialects gives us a glimpse of the knowledge and beliefs of the people who share the landscape with them. And in some cases, it reveals stories about species that these landscapes have unfortunately lost! At Mokokchung in Nagaland, 2 villages, which not only lie adjacent to each other but also belong to the same tribe (Ao) used identical names for some species and different ones for others. The Asiatic Black Bear, for example, was sheom at Ungma and shirem at Longsa. I was surprised when the Lesser Bandicoot-rat had a local name - por while the Himalayan rat was called chuha. I was told that Asian Elephants -  shoti  went locally extinct about five centuries ago. During a recent trip to Zunheboto the Semas in Awatsakilimi shared of their village having got its name from the Brown Hornbill while a local stream was named after the Barred Cuckoo Dove ( ...

This piece finds place in TERRASCAPE , September 2013 issue. Which are the interesting places to visit in north-east India? What is the best time to visit them? Does wildlife occur in forests there? Are people there friendly? These were amongst the questions I have faced more than once. My first response has, on most occasions, been that there is nothing like north-east India. In other words it is incorrect to paint the entire region with the same brush; more so, when it has been long acknowledged to culturally and linguistically among the richest and most diverse regions in Asia.  I feel lucky to have enjoyed life at two amazing places in the region over a period of eight years. This is more on account of its amazing people than its abundant natural resource wealth. These two places, Baghmara (Meghalaya) and Saiha (Mizoram), I share with the readers ahead. Baghmara gets its name from a leader having slain a tiger ( bagh ) long time ago, while Saiha in Mizo language means...

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 ...