Keeling Curve

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Impact on Underrepresented Groups:

Wildlife in India face increasingly fragmented shrinking habitats and high human-wildlife conflict. Millions of people reside either close to or inside wildlife parks and face significant loss of livelihoods and risk to their lives and properties resulting in conflict. Financial assistance through ex-gratia compensation by the government seldom covers the actual losses. Over time, persistent conflict can push families further into poverty traps and increase people's frustrations due to the lack of adequate coping mechanisms. These negative interactions can result in hostility toward wildlife and government staff, and may lead to retaliatory killings of wildlife through poisoning, electrocution etc. With <5% land protected for wildlife and increasing conflict between people and wildlife ~ 100,000 reported incidents/year, there is an urgent need to implement effective and scalable conservation programs. Communities surrounding wildlife parks are primarily small-scale farmers, who are largely dependent on monocultural crops to support their livelihoods (annual incomes <$1200). They include women and many under-represented and disenfranchised caste groups.  We found that these poor and extremely vulnerable farmers need significant support initially. Our support during entire planting process including digging pits, providing labor for the planting, installing plant protection guards, monitoring and replacing saplings when they die.

Website:

http://www.cwsindia.org

Mission Statement:

The Centre for Wildlife Studies (CWS) is an internationally recognized centre-of-excellence in the areas of wildlife research, conservation, policy, and education. Our mission is to safeguard and conserve India’s rich and diverse wildlife heritage through cutting-edge research, effective conservation strategies, and community engagement.