COCOON Conservancy


Community Owned Community Operated Nature (COCOON Conservancy) Conservancies are critical rewilding initiatives undertaken outside India’s Protective Area Network. The project is based on an innate belief that communities living closest to our most biodiverse wonderlands deserve to be the primary beneficiaries and custodians of our vanishing biodiversity.

The effect of this initiative is to expand the size and improve the quality of habitat available to wildlife by encouraging local communities to convert their own marginal and failed farms back to its natural wild state. The land-holding will continue to be in the hands of the community but would serve as biodiverse nature refuges capable of offering communities assured livelihoods and economic security in an era of climate change.

COCOON Conservancies serve to act as effective buffers to absorb the biodiversity that spills over from protected core areas, thus reducing human-animal conflict. By locating such conservancies in corridors, the objectives of widening and refreshing the gene pool is also met.

Photo: Ripan Biswas

THE GOTHANGAON COCOON Conservancy


Recognising that poor land and water management practices have resulted in a slew of failed and marginal farmlands, and shrinking forests, the Sanctuary Nature Foundation pioneered the rewilding of aggregated farmlands just south of Nagpur, on the periphery of the Umred-Karhandla-Paoni Wildlife Sanctuary in Maharashtra.

This has been designed as a social upliftment programme in one of the world’s most farmer-stressed geographies in a village called Gothangaon. Here in tiger country, with the help of Roheet Karoo, Honorary Wildlife Warden and Praveen Pardeshi and M.S. Reddy, IFS, Government of Maharashtra we guaranteed farmers a better life and livelihoods whose collateral benefit involved enhanced biodiversity, reduced human-animal conflict and improved health and education for their children.

It has been five years now since nature has conspired to restore biodiversity to a 105-acre parcel of farmland, which continues to be owned by the farmers and has already begun to support a bewildering diversity of plant and animal life forms, including tigers. Sanctuary has now exited the Gothangaon site, to kick-start Cocoon Conservancies across India. The revenue model for villagers involves professionally run home stays, owned by the farmers and run by some of the best hospitality professionals in the world. The Gothangaon COCOON Conservancy has already achieved biological, social and financial proof of concept and is poised to act as a model project that is ready to be replicated and scaled up in varying ecosystems across India.

Amrut Naik Tiger Umred

Amrut Naik

Amrut-Naik Umred

Amrut Naik

DSC

Dr. Parvish Pandya

Mainak Ray

Mainak Ray

Mayank Mishra Umred

Mayank Mishra

Mayank Mishra

Mayank Mishra

Mayank Mishra Umred

Mayank Mishra

Neeta Milind Taskar

Neeta Milind Taskar

New Map of Umred Krhandla

Sanctuary Photolibrary

Nikhil Tambekar Tiger and cattle Tadoba

Nikhil Tambekar

The Gothangao Community

Mayur Waghamare

Tiger Pola Ceremony

Mayur Waghamare

Tiger Pola Ceremony

Mayur Waghamare

Umred Karhandla Wildlife Sanctuary Entrance

Mayank Mishra

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Resources


pdf
Nature Needs Half at Work
An elaborate insight into the workings of COCOON Conservancies, written by Dr. Parvish Pandya, Sanctuary’s Director of Science and Conservation, for the August 2019 issue of the International Journal of Wilderness (IJW). Please visit www.ijw.org for access to the full journal.
pdf
Umred-Karhandla, a Report
The name Roheet Karoo is synonymous with the Umred-Karhandla forest. Working closely with local communities and forest officials, he helped nurture biodiversity back to a landscape that is critical to the survival of dispersing tigers from the Tadoba and Nagzira-Navegaon.