Your Help is Needed!

This is a request from an Indian nature conservation NGO, Samrakshan Trust, that has been involved with the attempt to set up an alternate home for the Asiatic Lion in the Kuno wildlife sanctuary in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. After exhaustive research by the Wildlife Institute of India, Kuno was selected as the site for setting up a second free ranging population of Asiatic Lions in order to insure the only existing wild Asiatic Lion population in Gir against various extinction threats it faces.

Our work in Kuno has primarily dealt with securing the habitat by working with the people living in the fringes of this protected area. We have undertaken a wide variety of initiatives that assist the people in limiting their dependence upon the sanctuary and create conditions conducive for the long term survival of wildlife. For more details of our work please take a look at our web site www.samrakshan.org

In continuing our work to promote long term survival of the lion, we are now keen to initiate an ecological awareness programme such that long term issues dealing with the conservation of this area can be addressed. This programme will primarily target children in the villages on the periphery of Kuno sanctuary.

Rationale for the Project

The Wildlife Institute of India, in its report that identified Kuno as the second home for Asiatic lions, had underlined the need for an awareness campaign to prepare the people in the vicinity of the sanctuary to live with a mega carnivore like the lion, an animal that they have never encountered before.

24 villages have been relocated from the sanctuary and have been resettled in areas surrounding it. These villages (‘displaced villages’) continue to have a multi-faceted relationship with the sanctuary. Apart from the displaced villages, there are nearly 42 villages within a 10-km. radius of the sanctuary. These villages (‘peripheral villages’) too interact with the sanctuary, primarily in order to meet some of their livelihood needs. In this light, an intensive environment education programme is a crucial input that would go towards improved management of the sanctuary, and can also help the community to devise long-term livelihood patterns that are in consonance with the overall conservation of the surrounding forests.

Samrakshan is already involved with semi-formal education activities for children of the displaced villages, through a team of community-based education workers who are helping us to operate 10 schools in the relocation area. This project proposes to initiate an intensive environment education programme in all the displaced villages, using some of Samrakshan's existing infrastructure. The project will also target selected peripheral villages (in addition to the displaced ones) and initiate basic awareness activities with them.

Tasks:

1. To design an environment education package conducive to the villages located on the periphery of Kuno sanctuary.
2. To train local teachers, who are already working in schools run by Samrakshan, in the implementation of this package.
3. To prepare resource material that will facilitate the implementation of the package.
4. Implementation of the package in villages on the periphery of Kuno sanctuary, with particular emphasis on the displaced villages.

More information

We are looking for support to put this programme into place and any assistance that visitors to the ALIC can extend will help us in furthering the objective of securing the long term survival for the Asiatic lion.

If you have any queries about the proposed ecological awareness project or would like to find out how you can help please contact the Samrakshan Trust directly.