Hard Work and Conservation Victory for Nature’s Beckon

Photos courtesy Nature’s Beckon
August 2004

Members of the Community Conservation Network for primates

Planning for nature conservation

Nature’s Beckon emphasizes educating and mobilizing citizens at the local level to promote wildlife conservation in Assam, northeastern India. With financial assistance from IPPL, the group has recently offered a variety of community outreach activities. From January to June this year, Nature’s Beckon organized:

• Five motivational training programs for villagers living near important wildlife habitat (480 villagers participated),
• Two youth leadership training camps held in National Parks,
• Many popular talks, slide shows, and other pro-wildlife events at local schools (about 6,000 students attended), and
• Two student demonstrations, one at the Assam state zoo and one on World Environment Day (June 5), which temporarily blocked National Highway 37.

The result? The Assam government, in a press conference held on 23 July 2004, has officially declared 111 sq km (43 sq miles) of the Brahmaputra valley rainforest as the "Dihing Patkai Wildlife Sanctuary." In the future, Nature’s Beckon would like to see as much as 500 sq km of this critical habitat protected, as this biodiverse area is home to as many as seven species of primates, including India’s only ape, the hoolock gibbon.

Field training program

Pro-wildlife village exhibit

Gibbon protection campaign by students wearing their Nature’s Beckon hoolock caps