The Approach

The principal threat to elephants in the Balpakram Baghmara Community Conservation Landscape - BBCCL arises from conversion of land use to such forms that are not compatible with the survival of elephants. This includes monoculture cash crops such as cashew, areca nut, rubber, coffee and tea; horticulture crops such as pineapple, citrus and temperate fruits and spices such as ginger, and cardamom.  Such conversion permanently banishes forests and drastically reduces habitat available to elephants to meet their ecological requirements.

Large scale conversion of land to commercial crops has had negative consequences for farmers as well. While food security has been the most obvious sufferer, owing to inadequate capacity among farmers, scarce marketing opportunities and a host of other factors, most commercial crop plantations have exhibited declining yields. Such agricultural transformation has thus left farmers extremely vulnerable.

Hence, land use change, on the one hand has had obvious negative consequences for wildlife, particularly elephants, on the other hand expected benefits to farmers have not materialized. On the contrary, food security has been adversely affected and in places elephant - human conflict has been exacerbated. In a sense therefore people and wildlife face a “lose-lose” situation.

The focus of Samrakshan Trust's initiative is to effect a “win-win” situation where farmers benefit from better agricultural yields without having to drastically alter land use. Learning from various experiences in north east India that have had similar objectives under comparable circumstances, we are attempting to assist farmers to intensively cultivate small plots of land with a judicious combination of food and commercial crops. The emphasis is on ensuring livelihood security and generating moderate surpluses for farmers. Such a model, as has been demonstrated at other sites in north east India, will ensure that at least a part of the Aking is left in a state that can be used by elephants and other wildlife.

In pursuance of this methodology, Samrakshan team members are involved with the fostering and capacity building of a variety of local people's groups in the target Akings. Once these groups are sufficiently mature, they are assisted to undertake a variety of activities for consolidating and intensifying agriculture for improving the yield from land.

Group Activity by Self Help Group members at Alokpang Aking

Pic: Samrakshan Trust.

Apart from such elephant friendly livelihood enhancing activities, Samrakshan's strategy in the BBCCL also incorporates two additional dimensions to the intervention. These have organically evolved during the course of the intervention.

1. Engendering Conservation Consciousness. Through this activity the local community would be encouraged to desist from activities that degrade elephant habitat and cause general harm to wildlife. Further, such inputs also provide a degree of indemnity against possible reprisals against elephants when they enter crop fields. Such awareness building also helps generate the vital link between the community development component of Samrakshan's work and conservation, particularly preventing elephant habitats from being degraded. Eventually we hope to generate a cadre of local land stewards who value the wildlife occurring in their lands and are committed to its protection.
   
2. Community Based Monitoring of elephants. This activity has been initiated to overcome the significant hindrance of absence of reliable information on the distribution and movement of elephants in the Akings. The lack of such information prevents the optimization of the conservation benefits from social outreach activities since the targeting of these interventions becomes somewhat inaccurate. Specifically, the lack of accurate information about elephants inhibits our ability to identify spaces that are critical for elephants and as a corollary, hinders us from strategically targeting our activities to secure such spaces on priority. Further, such information, if available, can be shared with various developmental agencies and line departments to enable them to undertake development activities like schools, roads and other future development interventions in the Akings in a manner that they do not come into conflict with the elephants.

A poster pertaining to elephant monitoring (in Garo)

Pic: Samrakshan Trust.

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