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RANWA
(Research and Action in Natural Wealth Administration) C-26/1,
Ketan Heights, near Karve Statue, Kothrud, Pune, 411 029. Webgroup :
ranwa@yahoogroups.com Pune
Contacts : Kapil
Sahasrabuddhe(699 6445), Ankur Patwardhan (437 0 636), Sanjeev Nalawade (545 30 46), Bhushan Sathe (546 42 18), Ajay Dixit (542 44 26/ 544
17 98) Activity Report
(1993-2001) with focus on 2000-1 INTRODUCTION RANWA
(Research and Action in Natural Wealth Administration) is a small
NGO (Non governmental i.e. voluntary organisation, VA) Registered as a
Public Charitable Trust at Pune. Its objectives include environmental research,
education and activism. RANWA consists primarily of youngsters, including those
now learning at other states or abroad. RANWA membership is open to anyone
frequently participating or leading its programmes. Members communicate through
phone, email, webgroup, newspaper announcements and nature trails. RANWA office
maintains a small nature library. Funds, about Rs. 50,000/- per annum, are
raised mainly from research grants. RANWA activities include: Education:
Nature trails for general public and school children alike for introduce them to
nature, especially plants, birds and butterflies. Research:
Documentation of plants, animals and human influence in Maharashtra, especially
western region, particularly Pune district. Action:
Plantation of local plant species, supporting environmental agitation, awareness
campaigns.
Trustees :
Programme
Committee : Chairman
: Prof. Sanjeev Nalawade, Geography Dept.,
Ferguson College
Research : Mr. Ankur Patwardhan, Doctoral Fellow, Pune
University. Members :
Cities
host majority of literate naturalists, who spend resources to search remote
forests, ignoring wildlife in the backyards! However, without preparing legally
respectable publications or mass movement, they only lament against destruction
of urban biota by unscrupulous urban development. To gradually change this trend
and build public opinion, RANWA conducts weekend nature trails termed ` Nisarga
parichya’ i.e. `Know the Nature’. Dr. Ajay Dixit, and experts including
botanist Dr. S. D. Mahajan or wildlifer Prof. Sanjeev Nalawade lead the show
once or twice a month. Trek
& study nature along reforesting hillocks for personal & urban health
--> Earlier, RANWA conducted
several nature education camps at remote places like Bhimashankar, Dandeli,
Annamalai in the Western Ghats. Participants were introduced to plants, animals
like birds, mammals, snakes and lizards, butterflies etc. Participantion to such
camps and trails is open to all, benefiting diverse people with varied age
class, sex and educational/ professional background. However, to generate local
action, focus on local education has been increased recently.
Yogesh
Gokhale and colleagues found out that the forest biomass has doubled during last
six decades and no species have been lost at Mahabaleshwar and Bhimashankar
forests near Pune. This became evident from the records of the forest
department, which included 5 yearly girth measurements of all the trees in
preservation plots about an acre in size. The forest growth was prompted by
abandonment of shifting cultivation and departmental felling, forces that
restricted these forests earlier. However, in forests subjected to firewood
extraction for tourists suffer from regeneration failure, unlike those harvested
for the use of only the local people. This
understanding generated under the Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
biodiversity monitoring project (WGBN- Western Ghats Biodiversity Network, Url:
http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/cesmg/pew/wgbn.html)
has been well received in popular media and even Forest Department. The plots
will be revisited during 2001 for millennial monitoring. ATLAS OF MAHARASHTRA
BIODIVERSITY
Utkarsh
Ghate, Shonil Bhagwat, Vivek Gour Broome and Yogesh Gokhale recorded distribution of nearly
600 woody plants in the state, particularly Vidarbha and Western Ghats, based on
study visits and literature survey under the Biodiversity Hotspots Conservation
Programme (BHCP) of World-wide Fund for Nature-India (WWF-I) and flexible grant
from the Max Muller Bhavan. This helped in suggesting to the Forest Department
areas for conserving more or unique diversity within limited efforts. This
includes Bhamragad- the south-eastern corner of Vidarbha, recently declared a
wildlife sanctuary. Ongoing work includes upload this information on web
including in the form of an atlas and bibliography, besides similar information
generated by Sanjeev Nalawade about vertebrate fauna of Maharashtra, with
initial assistance from Econet. India has a long tradition
of conserving forests by dedicating to deities. Utkarsh Ghate studied such
sacred groves in Western Maharashtra for Forest Department. Through the
Biodiversity Conservation Prioritisation Project (BCPP) of WWF-I Yogesh Gokhale
studied those allover the country where they continue despite manifold pressures
today. Yogesh is involved in
translating his experiences into a live demonstration project under a Central
Government scheme. Recently, Shonil Bhagwat studied plant and animal diversity
of sacred groves in the Kodagu district in southern Western Ghats. Protected
from centuries, Sacred groves often host the oldest, largest, rarest trees from
an area as well as many birds, mammals rare outside. Fig trees, considered
sacred, critically support animals, by yielding fleshy fruits all the year.
Commonest fig trees like Banyan, Peepal etc., are worshipped and protected by
people. Utkarsh Ghate has studied distribution of these keystone species in the
Western Ghats with suggestions for their conservation. Shonil Bhagwat had also
studied biosphere reserves under the BCPP for evaluating and suggesting
conservation efforts friendly to people and development. Ongoing work includes
exposition of the value these traditional conservation methods by Utkarsh Ghate
to managers of formal protected area (PA) system that has largely triggered
resource conflicts between villagers, government and industries. These lessons
greatly enriched the BCPP (Url : www.umweltprogramme.de/millennium/papers/paper8/index.html).
PEOPLE’S BIODIVERSITY
REGISTER To further the human-nature
relationship, Yogesh Gokhale and colleagues have pioneered recording of folk
knowledge and practices of conservation of biodiversity, beginning with Supegaon
in Phansad wildlife sanctuary, Raigad district. Such people’s biodiversity
registers have now become popular allover the country, as tool to stake
people’s claim of prior knowledge for sharing benefits from its commercial exploitation such as through
Intellectual proprty rights (IPRs) amidst globalisation. Further, such benefit
sharing arrangement has now been also included in the Biodiversity Bill due for
enactment soon. Besides
long term monetary benefits, such participatory nature documentation and
planning can also help in decentralised resource management through the
Panchayat Raj institutions. Utkarsh Ghate is currently advising the National
Innovations Foundation (NIF) and its associates at the Indian Institute of
Management (IIM), Ahmedabad (Url: http://nifindia.org).
Utkarsh Ghate and Yogesh Gokhale have
published nationally and internationally on this issue, from the IISc platform. Earlier Ketan Latkar, Milind
kothawade opposed reckless cutting of forest undergrowth in the Western Ghats,
to prevent soil erosion. RANWA volunteers, notably Milind Kothawade, Utkarsh
Ghate, Yogesh Gokhale, Shonil Bhagwat, Vivek Gour Broome,
participated in struggle against unsustainable developmement projects
such as the dams on river Narmada. RANWA helped in organising cycle rallies to
spread anti-pollution message. Shantanu Dixit, Shashank Karekar, Milind
kothawade, Bhushan Sathe earlier contributed greatly to collection and planting
of trees and Bamboos along city gardens, hillocks and even in Mulshi taluk to
help NGOs Vanrai and Jeevan. This included homestead nursury raising of seeds
collected from roadside trees. Seeds
were then also sold to BAIF (Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation) to help RANWA
corpus. Currently, Ajay Dixit has
been popularising planting of local trees, including seed distribution and
nursery, contrasting exotic trees promoted by government, despite their low
value to local animals. Raghunandan Welankar and Vivek Gour Broome cultivate
traditional rice varieties on their farms. GROWTH- VERTICAL AND
HORIZONTAL!
Some volunteers of RANWA
have now reached other states, countries but continue to pursue the cause.
Shonil Bhagwat is doing his doctoral studies on Sacred Groves of Koadagu, from
Oxford Forestry Institute, United Kingdom. Yogesh Gokhale is doing his doctoral
work on sacred groves from Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), Mumbai, in
collaboration with Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore.
Utkarsh Ghate joined Indian
Institute of Sciences (IISc), Bangalore for promoting such activities. As a
doctoral student of BNHS, Mumbai, he is studying the Western Ghats forest trees
besides recently joining Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health
Traditions (FRLHT), Bangalore where Vijay Barve is involved in database
management. Utkarsh Ghate will help in FRLHT’s expansion in northern India.
Raghunandan Velankar helps Medicinal Plants Conservation Center (MPCC) of the state government alongwith FRLHT, in studying
distribution of medicinal plants. To encourage fresh
students to observe and record nature, RANWA has initiated small scholarships.
Besides documentation of plants and animals around Pune, this has also generated
a database of district level distribution of some 250 fish species. Starting from its
background of studying the traditional wisdom for the benefit of modern systems;
RANWA has now stretched to other extreme, to cope up with latest issues such as
urbanisation. RANWA has compiled a directory of plants and animals found in and
around Pune city, first such detailed endeavor in India and perhaps globally.
Information from the Pune urban area encompassing 1600 sq. km includes trees,
frogs, fishes, butterflies, snakes, birds, mammals and even usually ignored
creatures like ants and mushrooms! The focus is not just on listing of organisms
but on their response to human impacts and suggestions for their conservation
zones and measures given future habitat deterioration.
This theme is being
appreciated countrywide and globally, with high chances of its replication. The
theme is being actively promoted through National Biodiversity Strategy and
Action Plan (NBSAP), where RANWA is coodinating the northern Western Ghats
component. As a follow up of this
extensive effort, RANWA is now focussing on intensive, small scale studies at
National Defence Academy (NDA) hill forests, Pune University Campus, Pashan lake
around Pune city, lead by Ankur Patwardhan and Kapil Sahastrabuddhe. The idea
here is to highlight the ecological values of institutional campus such as
University or Defense establishments for a broader appeal for their
conservation. RANWA is also now buttressing the biological assessment of urban
ecosystem with physico-chemical parameters. Spatially, RANWA is proposing to
extend this ecosystem assessment to Pun-Mumbai belt, amongst the most urbanised
zone in the country and even globe. RANWA expects to pool myriad naturalists and
publicise their perceptions of ecological change and management recommendations,
with focus on Pune and Khandala. ADVISORS, SPONSORS
Institutions
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Garden
Splendour - experts familiarizing citizens about garden bounty.
These stalwarts guide over two dozen enthusiastic participants to common and
interesting plants and animals from in and around Pune. This includes hills like
Law College, Parvati and botanical gardens like Fergusson Collge, Pune
University etc. Several students especially from Garware and Modern colleges,
besides Pune university participate enthusiastically and even guide others about
ants, fishes, snails and mushrooms. 
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Huge buttresses supporting mighty forest tree
Milke
Chalo : Together we Grow....
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Studying aquatic life under IISc ecological monitoring project.
RANWA
Group with mathematical ecologist Dr. N.V. Joshi at Centre for Ecological
Sciences, Bangalore.
Over two dozen city
based experts, mainly college students and teachers enriched this effort.
