The proposal intends to cover the unique 20-30 ancient indigenous Sacred Forest, and hundreds of Community/ Village Forest and the large tracts of Private Forest existing under each chief /Ruler. Majority of these forests esp, the sacred forests are believed to be over 500 years old and can be described as natural treasure house of biodiversity.The purpose of the project are:
To encourage the community inhabiting and surrounding the different categories of Forest to decrease the no. of cattle grazing and replace them with more productive stall fed livestock
To ensure a sustainable adequate supply of firewood for fuel and small wood for rural domestic households and agricultural requirements.
A large number of NFTPs are found in the proposed Project Areas. In order to ensure a sustainable supply of these products and to generally protect them from fire, grazing and over exploitation, it is proposed to grow these plants on a commercial scale to meet the demand and popularize their use.
Apart from NFTPs, the Project Area is a habitat of many medicinal plants. As in the case of NFTPs, medicinal plants will also be cultivated on a sustainable scale top meet commercial demand.
To generate employment opportunity to the local communities through Income Generating Activities (IGA's) such as horticulture, floriculture, livestock rearing , bee-keeping etc, in order to wean them away from ecologically undesirable destructive practices as well as to improve their living standard.
To create a Permanent Nursery for growing and planting stock in the above different category of Forest's Extension Area's and wildlife corridor's wherever practicable. For this purpose, the species selected will be obtained from the Sacred Grove which will act as Gene Pool.
Seeds of such species would be collected only from trees of good form and health,and specially ring mark as plus trees. The phonology of the selected species especially the seeding time would be carefully determined and noted.
To encourage the community members to adopt wind/solar fuel saving devices for their cooking purposes.