towards project snow leopard - Nature Conservation Foundation

Towards Project Snow Leopard • 91
and in some cases may not be desirable too. This then limits any move to increase PA
coverage through the existing PA categories of National Park and Wildlife Sanctuary. The
absence of a Community Reserve category appears to be an important limitation for any
restructuring of PAs or bringing more areas under the PA coverage.
3. A Management Strategy Under Project Snow Leopard
3.1. Participatory Conservation approach: Given the widespread occurrence of wildlife on
common land, and the continued traditional land-use within protected areas, it is imperative
that wildlife conservation efforts be made participatory both within and outside protected
areas. Such a participatory approach will be facilitated by the relatively intact and functional
traditional administrative bodies such as the village councils in most of the high altitude
landscape. The success of recent experiments in participatory conservation underscores the
desirability and feasibility of participatory wildlife management in the Indian high altitudes.
Additionally, members of the local communities can also be trained and involved
in systematic data collection on local biodiversity.
3.2. Landscape-level approach to conservation: Given the widespread occurrence of wildlife across
the landscape, conservation cannot be PA centric. While the PAs need to be rationalized to
be more meaningful, conservation efforts need to look beyond the PAs. As highlighted in
2.3 above, it is important that the state also considers the PA categories such as Community
Reserve that will enable areas to be brought under the purview of conservation, but without
excluding people.
3.3. Proper zonation of the larger landscape based on wildlife value/ status of populations and
habitats: All PAs should be demarcated into zones such as core, buffer, eco-tourism zone.
It is a long accepted management principle, but needs to be applied in these areas.
3.4. Responsible and careful management: Management needs to incorporate:
3.4.1. Use of traditional local knowledge, wisdom, and manpower: There is a wealth
of knowledge among the local medical practitioners and hunters about local
biodiversity. It is important that these are documented and information from here
flows into management. Further, we need to learn from successful traditional resource
management techniques in the Hindu-kush Himalayas such as water harvesting,
cyclic use of pastures that could help strengthen wildlife management.
3.4.2. Site-specific management approaches: There are considerable differences in management
issues between sites, including wildlife values and manner of local use, threats,
conflicts etc. Management therefore needs to be site-specific.
3.4.3. Integrated approach: Effective conservation requires integrated efforts between
different Government departments, local bodies and NGOs.
3.4.4. Restoration of degraded areas: Some areas have got degraded due to excessive grazing and