Monday, January 7, 2019

The Central Indian Landscape Symposium (CILS), January 2019













The Central Indian Landscape Symposium (CILS) which was jointly organised by Satpuda Foundation, Network for Conserving Central India (NCCI) and Maharashtra Wildlife Department on the theme "Changing Landscapes in Central India",concluded yesterday in Melghat. The three day event was organised from 3-6 January 2019 at Muthwa community centre of Nature Conservation Society, Amravati at Kotha near Harisal in Melghat.
A symposium marked record presence of 80 delegates from organisations working in different parts of India. The delegates represented organisations like Maharashtra Forest Department, Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM) Bhopal, State Forest Research Institute (SFRI) Jabalpur, National Centre for Biological sciences (NCBS), Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research, WWF-India, Wildlife Trust of India, ATREE, Corbett Foundation, Last Wilderness Foundation, Satpuda Foundation, Reliance Foundation, RBS Foundation, Ashoka University, SGB Amravati University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, University of Kalyana, University of Dilaware, Columbia University USA, Birla Institute of Technology Ranchi, Gujarat Ecological Society, Nature Conservation Society Amravati, Rojgar Dhaba, Mahan Trust and Srushti Paryawaran Mandal.
The delegates also visited the sites in Melghat after village resettlement. Apart from the session on Forests and water, the sessions on History and Future of Melghat, One Health, Changing livelihoods in the landscape, Human-Wildlife Conflict and Infrastructure in central India were conducted during the symposium. These intertwined themes were presented with interactive ‘actionable science’ sessions to draw the engagement with real-world tangible outcomes.
Several delegates had presented posters. Kishor Rithe chaired a first session and delivered a talk on four decades of Melghat Tiger Reserve. Dr.Gary Tabor, Founder and Executive Director of Centre for Large Landscape Conservation delivered a plenary keynote on "Connecting People, Place and Ecological Processes through Large scale conservation".
Dr.Prachi Thatte,Archana Sharma,Dr.Ashish Satav,Kushagra Gupta,Dr.Abi Tamim Vanak,Amrita Nilakantan, Venkat Ramanujam,Vidya Venkatesh,Vinod Pandey, Anirudh Dhamorikar, Mahi Puri, Dr.Milind Watve, Dr.Bilal Habib, Ninad Mungi, Dr.Trishna Dutta and Udayan Patil presented on the above topics. Sejal Vora of WWF and Mr.Srinivasa Reddy Field Director of Melghat Tiger Reserve delivered their talks in concluding session.

The session “Wildlife and infrastructure expansion" explored where and how the landscape can accommodate India’s need for infrastructure without harming the crucial wildlife habitat and corridors?” A big team from Melghat Tiger Reserve, Satpuda Foundation and Nature Conservation Society Amravati took painstaking efforts to host the event in Melghat.














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