The Conservation Village Awards 2010 presentations were held at Keystone in June 2010. People from Kotagiri, Coonoor, Sigur, Pillur, Hasanur, Punanjanur and Nilambur participated for the Hubba .
The panel of judges was- Rev.Mulley from C o o n o o r , Mr . Ma n o h a r a n f r om Gudalur(Accord), Ms. Snehlata Nath, Director, Keystone Foundation for the Hubba Conservation Award.
Nilambur of Malappuram, Kerala was represented by villages like Nedungayam, Kumbalapara and Appankappu. Kotagiri of Nilgiri, Tamil Nadu was represented by villages like Garikaiyur, Neramukkai, Bikkapathy mund and Vellaricombai. Sigur of Nilgiri, Tamil Nadu villages like Anaikatty, Chokkanalli, Kurumbarpallam . Hasanur of Erode, Tamil Nadu was represented by, villages like Bejalatty and Ramranai. Coonoor of Nilgiri, Tamil Nadu was represented by Sengalpudur and Pudukaadu.
Representatives of all villages gave a detailed account of their village, number of families, government schemes, self help group working mechanism, traditional agriculture, traditional leaderships, education, health systems, conserving forests, transferring traditional knowledge to the younger generation and NGO’s activities in their village. The session went on for the entire day including discussion about what they are going to do if they get the award.
The Conservation Village Award 2010 was won by Chokkanalli village, Sigur Area and jury’s special award was given to the Kumbalapara village in Nilambur Area.
Chokanalli village
Chokanalli village is situated in Kadanadu Panchayath, Sigur plateau Nilgiri district, Tamil Nadu and India. This village is surrounded by forests of the dry deciduous and scrub types. The Sigur River runs close by. There are above 40 household belonging to the Irula tribe living in this village. The people are involved in cattle grazing, agriculture and NTFP collection. They are also involved in many conservation related work like, planting forest trees around their village and temple with saplings raised in the forest nursery by Keystone Foundation, documenting the wildlife and birds, and conserving medicinal plants. The youth have been involved in monitoring their forests and they did this by walking a fixed route twice a month and monitoring the climate condition, flowering, fruiting, disturbances (fire and invasive plants) and wildlife movement.
In the presentation to the awardcommittee, Chokanalli village elder Veeraiah, explained the efforts of the village in forest conservation. He mentioned the planting and community monitoring efforts. He also explained how the people were dependant on the forest.
5 other youth from the village came forward to explain the effort they were all making in preserving their knowledge about the forests. The youth spoke about the monthly visits to the forest that were organized by Veeraiah for the children in which he explains about the medicinal plants and other aspects of the forest. The village has two Mariyamman temples and during the month of March festivals are held there. After the festival, a lot of plastic waste and other garbage is left behind. The youth organize the children of the village and they clean up the festival grounds. Veeraiah also told the committee about the book that he has produced on the uncultivated edible plants of the Sigur plateau called “Irula soppu dagu” and he also mentioned the pictorial guide to the forest plants of the Sigur region. They explained about how they are planning to utilize the award money.
In 2002, an electric motor was given to the village for irrigation by the Forest Department. However, most of the farmers in the village being small scale farmers, they have been unable to pay the electricity bills leading to their power supply being disconnected. The village hoped to use part of the award money towards settling these bills an renew subsistence farming which in turn would lead to reduced pressure on the forest.
Similarly, in 2008, the Forest department had installed a solar powered electric fence around the village to prevent crop raiding within the village, by wildlife. Due to poor maintainence, the fence did not work for more than a year. As a second proposal, the village wanted to spend some money to repair the solar fence. A third proposal for the utilization of award money was to repair a kerosene powered motor given to the village by Quiet Corner, an NGO based in Mavanalla, to promote agriculture, in 2002.
Once the solar fence is functional, the two motors would easily provide enough water from the Sigur River for all agriculture practices in the village. project. If they could settle this pending bill from the award money, they will be able to do subsistence farming in the village and would lead to reduce the pressure on the forest.
Kumbalapara Village
Kumbalapara village in Pothukal Grama Panchayath of Malappuram district, Kerala is surrounded by semi- evergreen forest. There are 13 households belonging to the Kaatunaicka tribe living in this village. All the villagers are members of Vaniyampuzha Adivasi Vana Samarakshana Samiti(AVSS) associated with the Nilambur North Forest Division.
Through the AVSS, the village is involved in forest protection activities like preventing forest fire, raising medicinal plant nurseries and assisted natural regeneration of plants in forest etc. Most of the people are involved in NTFP collection and few of them have daily wage work in a nearby rubber Estate. Villagers do not have patta for their land holding and agriculture is on a nominal scale. The village depends on the adjoining forest for fuelwood to cook and also for the nighttime watch and ward against elephants.
Kumpalapra villagers, in their application mentioned, “We live an eco-friendly life. We are living in a place which is 3 kilometres inside the forest from the forest boundary. There are thirteen Kaatunaicka families in this village. All of them are forest gatherers with- no ration card, no electricity, no public water supply (of course, there is a beautiful stream running near the village), not even a single well, even though we have concrete houses we are not staying in it, no livestock (couple of dogs), no gas connection. We have a peripatetic school and a teacher who is staying in the village”. They said- “we will not so any sort of planting Inside our forest with the award money because if protect our forest from fire plants will come up. We collect lots of fire wood (daily around15 kilograms) to burn at night, to see elephants walking in between houses. We would like to reduce the collection of firewood from the forest by setting up a solar lighting system”. The jury’s special award was given to the Kumbalapara village on their presentation.
The award was used to install solar lighting for each of the 13 households. The lighting kit was bought from Barefoot Power, India. The lights are adequate to provide light to each of the households. This also contributes towards the reduction in use of firewood to keep wild animals away from their houses.
