Manas National Park, November 19, 2015: With the intent to reduce the fuel wood consumption and dependency of locals on forests, IFAW-WTI, with support of Bodoland Territorial Council and Assam Forest Department, conducted skill development training for the local youth residing in the fringes of Manas National Park.

During the four-day training 21 youth were given hands on exercises on making low cost improved cook stoves with the aim to reduce fire wood consumption. The technical expertise was provided by Assam Energy Development Agency (AEDA) and three of their experts were present to guide the trainees.

Youth from the fringe villages of three districts — Kokrajhar, Chirang and Baksa of BTC Assam – participated in the training and will install the improved cook stoves in their respective areas with support from IFAW-WTI. Ratneswar Basumatary, Santosh Narzary and Rupnath Muchahary were given a cash prize by IFAW-WTI at the end of the training for their sincerity and keen interest displayed during the programme.

Sanatan Deka, Field Officer & Project Lead, IFAW-WTI, said, “Fuel wood is largely used as an energy source for cooking both in urban and rural areas in our country. Only 11.14% (Census, 2011) households in rural areas have access to LPG connections. The figure is much lower among the villages in the Greater Manas landscape. People largely depend upon forest for collection of fuel wood both for domestic consumption and commercial outlets. Therefore, we decided to provide an alternative to the villagers so that their dependency on forest fire wood could be minimised and subsequently the habitat can be saved with such interventions.”

IFAW-WTI has been working in the landscape on community conservation programme for the last decade to restore the lost glory of Manas. Under Greater Manas Conservation Project (GMCP), IFAW-WTI has already installed improved cook stoves in 1500 households covering 60 villages in vicinity to the forest boundary in the last the three years.

Improved cook stoves are highly effective in reducing the fuel wood consumption and improving the general health and hygiene of the locals. However, due to lack of information and villager’s reluctance to go for a new system required lot of convincing on part of the IFAW-WTI team.

The traditional use of fuel wood for cook stoves, which are mostly extracted from the nearby forest, has led to loss of habitat loss and contributed to air pollution that is detrimental to the health of locals. Apart from households, fuel wood is also used for cooking in commercial establishments like hotels, restaurants and schools. In order to address this problem of widespread use of fuel wood, IFAW-WTI is planning to extend the outreach of such training exercises to other areas.