A group of community women affected by human-elephant conflict (HEC) in Assam’s Udalguri district have been provided hands-on training on nursery management to hone their skills in nurturing community-operated nursery.

Premier biodiversity conservation organisation Aaranyak conducted the training with support from UNDP-GEF Small Grant Programme and Ministry of Environment Forest & Climate Change (MoEFCC), Govt. of India and implemented by TERI.

A women-led community nursery has been developed under Aaranyak’s ongoing project “Community based integrated approach to facilitate Human Elephant Coexistence and Biodiversity Conservation” in Udalguri district.

One of the purposes of this programme is to sustain the community and make them self-reliant besides contributing towards land restoration, sustainability and human elephant coexistence.

Production and maintenance of the plants are one of the major goals of the nursery. The nursery will mainly harbour mother plants of Assam Lemon which will be used as bio-fence for mitigation of human elephant conflict. Black Pepper will be used in the home gardens with betel nut along with various other vegetable and fruit plants by the community.

The training was provided by Dr Naba Kumar Goswami, Senior Fellow and Regional Coordinator of TERI and Prafulla Boro, Field Assistant of TERI. Debabrata Barua from TERI also graced the programme.

Dr Goswami elaborated on different aspects of nursery management starting from preparation of nursery bed, media preparation, types of propagation methods and various types of diseases and pest attack in nursery plants and their solution. Prafulla Boro demonstrated techniques such as grafting, cutting and air layering in plants like Assam Lemon and Black Pepper. Boro also translated the educational materials of Dr Goswami’s presentation in Bodo language for better understanding of the community.

The community members replicated the techniques in presence of the trainers. Various issues faced by the community related to nursery plant management were addressed by trainer Dr Goswami.

The programme was coordinated by Jayanta Kumar Pathak, Senior Manager in Aaranyak’s Environment Education and Capacity Building Division and Rabiya Daimari, Field coordinator in Aaranyak’s Elephant Research and Conservation Division. Other team members helped in smooth running and successful completion of the programme.

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