Mumbai : In their bid to promote forest conservation, residents of a village in Maharashtra’s Nagpur district have voluntarily relinquished their agricultural land to developed it as ‘forest cover’ under a unique concept called community-owned nature conservancies.
As many as 38 families of Gothangaon, a village near Umred Karhandla Tiger Reserve some 70 km from Nagpur, have decided to lease 105 acres of their land for the purpose, said Jaydeep Das, livelihood expert at Pench Tiger Reserve Conservation Foundation.
“The new forest covers is called community-owned nature conservancy and a few companies are approaching us for this,” he said, adding it is a unique first in the country.
“Maharashtra has 20.4% of forest land out of which 3.2% is protected. As per the law, forest cover should be 33% and 5% should be protected. There is a shortfall of forest covers in the state,” he said.
The need of the hour is to increase forest covers but it is becoming difficult due to rapid urbanisation, Das said. “A tiger needs to move from one forest to the other. But forest linkages/corridors are becoming rare. Umred is the corridor for Tadoba, Nagjira and Bor forest reserves. Umred Karhandla was recently declared as satellite core for Bor tiger reserve. Increase in habitat cannot happen without involvement of locals,” he said.
The locals who will give up agriculture and lease their land for the purpose will be stakeholders in its development. The land will be leased to developers to set up tourist lodges and hospitality resorts and the locals will be part owners or get jobs in the projects including as eco-guides.
In the initial three to five years of the development of their land as forest cover locals will be compensated with help of Corporate Social responsibility (CSR), Das said. “This will also bring inflow of foreign exchange as tourists prefer such destinations,” he said.
Five of the six tiger reserves in Maharashtra are in Vidarbha region which can get benefits from tourism and good inflow of foreign exchange with it, he said.
