Making Conservation Work

The subject of this book was conceived when India's ‘tiger crisis' was brewing in 2005. The country had just discovered that the tiger had become locally extinct from a premier Protected Area. The large public and media coverage led to formation of a Tiger Task Force, which pointed out that India's tiger conservation schemes had been lacking in collecting support from local communities. If a conservation scheme antagonizes local people, there is very little chance for success. With this background, we set out to test the utility of a new methodology. Conservation needed methods that could be employed on ground without having to wait for large scale policy change. And our method provides us that opportunity. Through this publication, we hope to bring the scientific community a little closer to answering pertinent questions about balancing stakeholder aspirations, natural justice, and prudence of environmental management. We hope that this work will contribute to societal discourse on incorporating local expectations in management of sensitive ecosystems, and would be useful to Protected Area managers, academicians and NGOs and all those working on natural resources management.