Monoscapes - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 41

Enlightened professionals realize that imposed modes of conservation
simply do not work. They are expensive - much of the budget for strictly
protected areas has to be spent on aircraft, radios, weapons, vehicles,
salaries of armed guards, night goggles and other 'anti-poaching' equip-
ment. 32 They are also often ecologically counter-productive. In the
Keoladeo Ghana National Park in Rajasthan, the Bharatpur wetlands
support many birds, including wintering geese, ducks and the endangered
Siberian crane. A ban on buffalo grazing, established in 1982 for the cause
of crane conservation, provoked violent conflict between local people and
the police, resulting in several deaths. The ban was reinforced, but
paspalum grass began to grow unchecked, choking the water bodies and
making the habitat unsuitable for water birds. Money had then to be spent
on bulldozers to remove the grass; but this was never as efficient as buffalo
grazing. There has been some recent progress - though only, as Madhav
Gadgil put it, to the point that 'villagers are now allowed to harvest the grass by
hand' . 33
Such local concerns led to the establishment, during the 1970s, of the
Chipko movement, now one of the most famous of environmental move-
ments. It began when local people in the Himalayas were refused permission
to fell their own trees in the Alakananda valley. The government then
allocated the same forest to a distant sports-goods firm for their sole use.
Chipko means 'to hug' in Hindi, and villagers did exactly this to trees that
they wished to protect. The idea was compelling and simple, and it spread
quickly through Uttar Pradesh, and eventually to southern India, where
it came to be known as the Appiko movement ('to hug' in Kannada).
Importantly, these were both environmental and social movements. They
made the point that people cared, and they would do something about
it. It was from this movement that the idea of joint forest management
emerged, which received official government support during the early
1990s. Evidence had shown that if people are given responsibility for their
natural resources, they can be effective at both increasing productivity and
ensuring that the benefits are shared. Handing over such rights does not
mean the tragic destruction of forest resources.
Saving Nature in Protected Areas
and National Parks
The idea of the wildernesses is compelling, and it forms a central part
of the writings of John Muir, known by many as the father of conserv-
ation. Claimed by both Scotland, where he was born, and by the US, where