Meghalaya

Garo Hills

November 2004

We had sent an update during July 2004  mentioning the background of our intervention in the Garo Hills and manner in which it was shaping up during its early days. We had then set up office at  Baghmara and were interacting with various  organizations/individuals with a view to developing a robust understanding of the ground situation.


Capacity Building

The following months have been largely devoted to the capacity building of our team. The team attended an intensive six-day training session on 'Developing and Training People's Institutions' at MYRADA's training centre in Chitradurga district, Karnataka. Following this, the team proceeded to a weeklong session conducted by the Asian Elephant Research and Conservation Centre (AERCC). This module consisted of classroom sessions at I.I.Sc and field trips to Bandipur National Park and Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary. The interactions with the AERCC personnel greatly enriched the knowledge base of our
team and also enhanced our ability to "think from the elephant's
point of view".

In addition, we have continued to interact closely with the IFAD sponsored North East Community Resource Management Project (NERCRMP). The NERCRMP project in the West Garo Hills has evolved
a number of approaches for assisting upland communities to improve livelihood security. Samrakshan is trying to build upon the learning's emerging out of the NERCRMP's experience and utilise these for the benefit of wildlife in general and elephants in particular, apart from promoting more secure livelihoods for the people we work with in the South Garo Hills. The manager of the NECRMP's West Garo Hills project visited our target villages during October 2004, to assess and guide us on the local community institutions that we are in the process of fostering. Similarly, Dr. A. Christy Williams (Coordinator, WWF-AREAS) visited us during September 2004 and shared his views on our interventions; giving critical inputs specially on issues relating to monitoring elephants and in further sharpening our approach so as to be of greatest possible benefit for long term elephant conservation.

The Activities

In the initial months we have limited our activities to two Akhing's (tracts of community land); both adjoining the Baghmara Reserve Forest and comprising of four villages - Ampangre, Nakhalgre, Dabrek and Waso. We have followed a gradual process of "breaking in" by meeting village headmen, holding village level meetings, visiting each household in all the villages, interacting with people at public places like tea-stalls and bus shelters, and most importantly spending extended amounts of time in the villages including successive night halts. As a consequence, our team members are an integral part of the villages where we work, sharing with the people social occasions, such as Sunday Church sessions.

The process of fostering appropriate institutions/groups in the target villages has picked up pace during September - November, with Samrakshan team members facilitating a number of sessions to equip the community with skills for effective functioning of groups. So far in the four target villages, five groups have been initiated. These are at different stages of maturity and have been undertaking activities accordingly. While some have begun to maintain a record of the deliberations during weekly group meetings and an account of the savings that they carry out, others are still in the process of stabilising membership and getting into the habit of meeting regularly. During the first week of November some members from the women's groups visited Self Help Groups facilitated by the NERCRMP in the neighbouring district of West Garo Hills. This provided an excellent opportunity for the visitors to see well functioning groups and gain in confidence.

Apart from community-based activities, Samrakshan team members have also initiated an attempt to map Aking boundaries using GPS. Various habitat types occurring in the Akings are being classified and we also endeavour to estimate the presence/absence of elephants in various habitat types by monitoring select tracks in the Akings.

In collaboration with Centre for Environment Education's (CEE) North east regional office, we jointly released the Garo edition of CEE's publication "Endangered Elephants". The Deputy Commissioner of the South Garo Hills district released the book, and teachers from various schools in the district received copies. The book contains basic facts about elephants, their behaviour, biology and primary threats.
It is meant to orient children, particularly those living in areas where elephants occur, towards elephants and help build a constituency for the protection of these animals. A training programme for teachers in the use of this book is to be shortly organised.

Details about our work continue to be available on our web site www.samrakshan.org. We would welcome any questions or suggestions that you may have.

Yours truly,

Nimesh Ved
Project Coordinator Samrakshan  Trust
C/o Dorikson G Momin,
Rangdokram,  Po Baghmara
Dist South Garo Hills
Meghalaya 794102

Tel: 03639-222153
Email: nimesh@samrakshan.org, nimesh.ved@gmail.com
Web: www.samrakshan.org

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