Conservation effort across india
News about efforts to conserve flora and fauna is often met with cyni cism and despondence in the country. The reactions are not mis.placed considering the multiple threats our ecosystems face from anthropogenic activities: displacement caused by large infrastruc ture projects, effluents and plastic being dumped into our lakes and rivers or the roadkill that takes place every day. A United Nations report in May 2019 named that globally, human pressures may push million species to ex extinction in the next few years.
But even as many of us are destroying the earth we inhabit in different ways, there are a few good women and men trying to saveit, often battling exceptional odds. They could be ecologists who have spent their life studying conservation, concerned citizens who feel it's time to roll up their sleeves or a committed forest officer. Often, it is a combination of all three because conservation is a complex task, involving many stakeholders.
In this special feature, IN Magazine Highlights five such efforts that have met with unusual success.
In the deserts of Rajasthan, breeding programme is underway to save the great Indian Bustard, of which there are less than 150 birds left in India. Inthe east, Bugun tribals in an Arunachali hamlet have come together to set up a community reserve to save their flora and fauna, including a tiny endangered bird. To let indus dolphins and gharials thrive, an entire river has been tagged asan conservation reserve in Punjab while Odisha's Lake Ansupa has been res cued by forest officers and locks and made into a haven for birds.
These stories are nowhere close to an exhaustive list of the conservation efforts across the country. We have also stayed away from projects around saving the ti ger and the elephant, which often garner the most attention and funds. Instead, readers can consider these stories as an attempt to shine light on the importance of the lesser known conservation efforts, what these can achieve and the work that remains to be done.
Even as we laud these successes, those involved remind us that they need to be constantly vigilant. In Gurgaon, for example, a highway project threatens to dam age a "rewilded" forest full of native trees and plants. Thus, more than anything, these stories reaffirm that for conservation to succeed, there has to be policies
Source- Economics times newspaper
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