While traveling back from Dehradun to the Valmiki Tiger Reserve, Bihar in February 2021, I received a message from WTI headquarters. It was a call to the HQ regarding a new job.

It was a happy message indeed because, during that time, I was working in the VTR, strengthening the cooperation between Indo-Nepal in combating the illegal wildlife trade and a piece of news like this was something great.

After reaching the headquarters, I found out that the plan was to send me to Northeast India to do the elephant corridor restoration work. Right from that moment, I knew that I will be a newborn in Northeast India but that didn’t stop me from taking up the role because exploring and working in new places is an unending passion of mine.

On May 10, 2022, I set foot in Assam’s Dibrugarh Airport; as the monsoon rain was spreading the chill, Deepankar one of my colleagues welcomed me with a pleasant smile and a warm hug. He was there to assist me to the field station. The journey to the Gijjan field station was mesmerizing, as we traveled through the famed tea gardens of Assam Deepankar started enlightening me about the culture, food habits, and lifestyle of the people of Northeast India.

“Hm! interesting,” I said to myself. This part of the nation is having a completely different landscape, culture, and lifestyle compared to the place where I come from, Kashmir. Sometimes back I worked in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh for a while, and these places didn’t challenge me much. But the Northeast was not like that, it was all ready to lock horns with me.

Adjusting to the culture, food habits and living style of the Northeast was a bit challenging for me at first, but my passion for wildlife and conservation provided me with enough strength to pedal my way through.

Leopard rescue; Photo by Marifatul Haq

The second day kick-started in an existing way, our team was called on to the tea gardens to rescue a leopard. Our WCR team is technically sound and is good when it comes to responding to such rescue emergencies, and an hour later I witnessed a leopard rescue for real. The rescued leopard was taken to the WRC center and was given proper care. On the next day with the help of the forest department, we released the big cat back into the wild.

As the days passed, I started visiting various villages in Assam. There was a village where WTI installed solar fencing to prevent the elephants from entering the human-populated area and thus reducing the elephant-human conflict.  All the journeys from one village to the other were mainly through forest routes and during one such journey, I was lucky enough to get sight of an elephant in the wild. That was my first sight of a wild elephant truly wandering itself in the wilderness of nature.

Releasing the leopard back to wild; Photo by Marifatul Haq

WTI is currently working in five villages and our team is constantly monitoring each of these five villages. In these villages, we use a community conservation approach which is in a way a win-win situation for both wildlife and local indigenous communities.

During my time in Assam, I was able to mingle with a lot of villagers and also interact with a lot of schoolchildren as each of them was a new page in the chapter of my work life. When they talked a lot about many things, all I said was mainly about wildlife and conservation.

Later in June, I rolled up my sleeves for Arunachal Pradesh, another beautiful state in Northeast India. For the last three years, WTI was doing restoration works in the degraded habitats of the elephant corridors with the support of the local tribal communities.  It was then I realized that an Inner Line Permit (ILP), a legal travel document issued by the Government of India to permit inward travel of an Indian citizen into a protected area for a specific amount of time, was necessary to visit Arunachal Pradesh. I arrived at Pasighat, the administrative center for the East Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh, where I had my first meeting with the concerned DFO along with the WTI team. Everyone whom I talked to / met with was surprised to see a Kashmiri who is interested to work in Northeast India.

Our field camp was in Namsing village, one of the three project villages being restored by the WTI. During our journey from Pasighat to Namsing village, I saw the local tribal people practicing jhum farming. This was something that I learned in the book and now I am getting a chance to experience it in the field.

From the next day onwards I started visiting the previous 50 ha restoration sites in Palgam. The WTI team along with the local communities planted 44,000 saplings belonging to 31 tree species there. The plantation program was done comprising of traditional and ecological knowledge about plant species and their uses. Which is helping to make a sustainable long-term restoration plan without compromising the actual characteristics of the habitat.

Villagers Planting the sapplings; Photo by Marifatul Haq

However, mobilizing people to participate in biodiversity conservation for future generations is not always easy, especially when their livelihoods rely on the same natural resources as e.g., big fauna. That is why WTI teams have supported local communities of all three villages with livelihood assistance in the form of Piggery livestock and fishery to reduce their dependency on corridor forest. And gladly, the community support has been very positive, constant, and voluntary towards this approach.

In addition, this year we restored more than 100 ha of degraded habitats in three villages (Mer, Palgam, and Namsing) and planted 51,000 saplings belonging to 18 tree species in the three villages.  As the objective was to restore rather than plantation in the degraded elephant habitats we also planted 5000 individuals of Alpinia nigra species and 2000 types of native grasses as the understory plants cover.

The restoration work was completed and carried out by the local tribal communities, to achieve the desired project outcome. Involving the local community at every stage of the conservation project has turned out to be a very efficient, legitimate, and fair effort. As a result, the sustainability factor of holistic community mobilization to conserve natural resources is ensured, as is the long-term existence of community participation in the conservation project.

As days and months passed, now I thoroughly enjoy the food, culture, and local community festivals of all regions especially the Solung festival of the Adi community of Arunachal Pradesh which has a special place in my heart.

Written by: Marifat is a biologist with a broad interest in forest ecology, wildlife, invasion biology, and ethnobiology for unknown areas of the Indian Himalayan region.

Edited by: Sreenanth K, WTI Communications