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Organisation working to reduce human-wildlife conflict wins UN award
Updated On: 15 October, 2023 08:31 AM IST | Mumbai | Jane Borges
A not-for-profit’s ingenious water-heating contraption introduced in the homes in Brahmapuri near Tadoba has won a UN award for efforts to mitigate human-tiger conflict
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Yamina Chandrashekhar Chilbule, 33, using a water heater, locally known as the bumbb, in Mangrul village in the Bramhapuri, Chandrapur district. The fuel chamber can be refuelled using crop residue, household dry waste, and cow dung cakes. Locals prefer using turati ‘toor daal’ stems. Pics/Dr Anish Andheria, WCT
For 12 years now, the Mumbai-headquartered not-for-profit Wildlife Conservation Trust (WCT) has been working in the landscape to the east of the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve, in the forest division of Brahmapuri in the Chandrapur district. “Spread across 1,100 sq km, this area is contiguous with the buffer zone of Tadoba, and also Kanhargaon [the last tiger-worthy forest in Maharashtra] to the south, before the forest opens into Telangana,” Dr Anish Andheria, president and CEO, WCT, shares over a phone call.
With the mitigation of human-wildlife conflict at the heart of their work, the WCT has, with the help of the state forest department, been undertaking a rigorous camera trapping exercise in the region since 2011. “When we first started camera trapping in the Brahmapuri division, as well as all the other adjoining tiger-bearing forest blocks of the Chandrapur district [including the Ghodazari and Kanhargaon wildlife sanctuaries], we recorded about 18 tigers,” says Andheria. “But, because of the effective management practices of the forest department and overall emphasis on improving the water sources over the last decade, the population began to increase. Obviously, if an area gets saturated with tigers, they start spilling over. That is how many tigers entered Brahmapuri [from Tadoba].” In the last few years, the numbers have been hovering around 55.
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