The project aims to protect some of the most vulnerable and degraded lands in the Lake Shalla watershed through area closure and land rehabilitation activities. The project plans to educate community leaders on the long-term importance of protecting biodiversity and practicing sustainable land use; provide technical trainings on animal husbandry and fattening, beekeeping, and farming practices that will lessen the impacts of overgrazing and over farming, while providing more dietary diversity; incorporate food security programs that will distribute seeds and seedlings?along with cultivation instruction?that can provide food, fuel, and fodder, as well as improve soil fertility, and offer increased resilience to drought; conduct various income-generating activities that will diversify the local economy and make residents less dependent on subsistence agriculture while providing additional food security; carry out area closures and land rehabilitation efforts that will help communities protect watersheds, control runoff, and provide a host of ecosystem services in the future; and strengthen and enhance community activism and program sustainability that makes conservation and environmental protection part of everyday life through a local by-law.