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A project at Mysore's Temple Sanctuary preserves forests and makes forest dwellers prosperous.
Quality honey, pickles, jams and ayurvedic medicines are being freely marketed by Soliga tribals near the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Sanctuary, Mysore district, Karnataka. The Soligas are encouraged to use the forest resources (non-timber forest products). Yet this is not leading to rapid loss and degradation of the forests, because of an approach which aims to make the Soligas economically self-sufficient even while conserving the forests. The Soligas, a tribal community numbering about 4,500-5,000, live in 25 podus (settlements) scattered on the periphery of the BR Temple Sanctuary. Another 11,000 Soligas live around the sanctuary. The Soligas were originally shifting cultivators and hunters. Traditionally! , they also collected NTFPs (non-timber forest products) to meet subsistence needs and later gathered such produce for forest contractors. With the area being declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1974, hunting and shifting cultivation were banned. The Soligas were given small pieces of land where they could practice settled agriculture. However, the extraction of NTFPs under the aegis of a co-operative called LAMPS (Large-scale Adivasi Multi-Purpose co-operative Societies) continued and led to rapid degradation and depletion of the forests. A three-year project was conceived in 1994 by the Tata Energy Research Institute and the Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra to conserve the sanctuary. The Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bangalore, also joined the project as a partner. The project has three components -- enterprise, biological and socio-economic. The enterprise component creates NTFP-based ente! rprises wherein the Soligas can collect, process and sell some NTFPs on a sustainable basis. The biological component has set up a monitoring plan that keeps track of the temporal patterns of production and extraction, and the impact of extraction on the regeneration of extracted species. The socio-economic component ensures community participation in the project and economic sustainability. It also monitors the impact of the enterprise on the income of the Soligas. The project's Honey Processing Unit (HPU) can process about 30 tonnes of honey every year. The Food Processing Unit (FPU) makes pickles, jams etc. The Herbal Medicine Processing Unit (HMPU) processes ayurvedic drugs. These enterprises have contributed to improved skills and better incomes among Soligas. These have also created direct and indirect employment. The annual income from the HPU and FPU is Rs 100,000 and another Rs 30,000 is earned by the HMPU. The project has demonstrated that people's dependence on forests can actually conserve and regenerate forests rather than cause their degradation. The aim at BRTS is to increase the direct economic stake of the communities in the forests so that they become active and willing partners in forest conservation; and the Soligas have realised the need to conserve forests so as to ensure livelihoods for themselves and future generations. Contact: Tata Energy Research Institute
Darbari Seth Block
Habitat Place, Lodhi Road
New Delhi - 110 003, India
Tel: 91-11-488 2100/488 2111
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