Driving course for youth near Tadoba-Andhari TR

These young men live in the villages Moharli and Dewada, in the Tadoba-Andhari tiger habitat. They are part of a group of 20 that recently participated in a driving course we had organized for youth of the area. The course was conducted in collaboration with NABARD and was one of the ongoing activities of Satpuda Foundation's Employment Cell. By teaching forest villagers different skills we empower them to earn better incomes and phase out their traditional forest-destructive occupations.

The driving course was completed in May and on the 31st Bipasha and I happened to be in Tadoba, so we requested SF's Conservation Officer Bandu Kumare to arrange for us to meet some of the participants. I took this picture in the SF office near the Moharli gate of the tiger reserve. These young men are: Vikas Gedam, Dashrath Choukhe, Sainath Garmare, Baburao Moharle, Diwakar Kulmethe, Sachin Sirani, Sachin Marwati, Bandu Kulmethe and Mahindra Kannake. Their ages range between 20 and 28 years.

Most of the men are currently working as field labourers, which would earn them a pittance. Some are in the business of supplying bamboo for a paper mill in the area. Cutting bamboo in the peripheral forests of the reserve has proved to be an extremely damaging and dangerous activity. These forests are used by all the same wild species that live inside the protected area (see the next post about our waterhole visit). Bamboo cutting and general dependence on forest resources not only severely degrades the wildlife habitat, it also sends a large number of humans right into a forest that is occupied by tigers, with predictable results. Small wonder that the Tadoba/Chandrapur region has become the worst tiger-human conflict area in India in the last few years, with a large number of people losing their lives and tigers then being poached in retaliation.

Driving is a useful skill to learn and one that could earn these men good livelihoods. It would be ideal if the park management would ban tourists from bringing their own vehicles into the reserve. Local villagers like these could then earn a good income by driving tourist jeeps and gypsies and that would also serve to regulate tourist movements and behaviour. Most important of all, jobs like these would ensure that locals benefit directly from tiger conservation.