Blackbuck: Joining Hands for a cause

A Two days workshop was conducted at Tumkur on the 28^th January 2011 where experts in the field of Environment Education and activists who had worked upon Black Buck conservation took part. Among the people who attended the Workshop were mainly NGOs from Tumkur and Mysore.

The work shop was attended by T. V.N Murthy, Honorary Secretary and Founder member of one of the oldest Nature groups in Tumkur, D V Gundappa a teacher of National repute who has extensively worked to promote biodiversity studies in schools, D R Prasanna Kumar, a long standing Environment Educator who has worked with CEE and author of several education material and Mohan Rangan who teaches in TVS Academy School. All these persons were representing a three decade old organization called Wildlife Aware Nature club (WANC). They started it in their school days and kept on their interest in the field, nurturing hundreds of youngsters into good habits and responsible citizenry.

The members of WANC have the credit of bringing the grazing lands of Mydanahalli village into public attention. They had identified those common lands to be a home for Blackbucks as early as 1994. We had very closely observed their persistent approaches with the Karnataka Forest Department to recognize the destination.

There were also representations from other groups from the district. Shrikanth of Mytreya Trust based in Tumkur who started to take up conservation issues since the past three years. Their focus is upon saving the grasslands around Tumkur. Satish Kadashetty halli fights a battle of a sentential through Makkala Mane, was also present at the workshop. Satish worked from a small village near Kadaba and has set up an activity centre for children with a library of over a thousand books. He focuses Children’s theatre and conducts several workshops and productions every year. He also happened to be an elected representative of the Kadaba Grama panchayath of Tumkur district.

The plethora of experts appeared too big for a small job. But the discussions opened up a Pandora’s box of Conservation issues. Some of the younger members of our team got a first hand experience with their senior counterparts. Many participants in the workshop had withstood the testing times in their fields for over two decades and there was no dearth of ideas. The job of the coordinators Kumar and Mahesh was to keep the ideas within the limits of the budget.

On the first day a thorough brain storming was done upon the content of the Resource materials. The only guidelines were to reach out to the children of the local community and the available budget. A multitude of options were put forward about the package that was supposed to be designed for the capacity building of school teachers and carry back material for children. Finally it was decided to come out with a 60 pages resource book for the teachers and volunteers who would involve in conducting the workshop and a kit on black buck that was meant for the students. All the materials were to be in simple Kannada and as picturesque as possible. The Hand book was to be sort of a ready reference about the issues concerned with Blackbuck-its biology, ecology and conservation issues.

A brain storming session with seniors in the field.

In order to make the package comprehensive, various people were assigned to contribute articles on relevant subjects. Mr. Prasanna suggested a concept map upon which sharing of the responsibility was chalked out. While Mr. Gundappa was to write about the Human-Blackbuck conflict, Mr. Manu took up the issues of the habitat and co inhabitants. While Mr. Prasanna took up the responsibility of designing activities for the children, we the authors had to write about the life cycle of the black buck. Dr. H. N. Kumara who has done pioneering work on the estimation of Large Mammals of Karnataka agreed to prepare a chapter on the distribution of Blackbucks.

Ideas poured in- from making a key chain as a carry back memento to a wall calendar or a poster, and a pocket note book. The meeting ended with time frames for each of the participants to prepare a chapter for the proposed Resource book on Black buck in the local language.

With regards to the Students education material, it was decided that the authors would compile notes from the materials collected and prepare the Booklet. Their sole responsibility would be to accumulate data and present it in a child friendly manner. Mr. Vinayaka was referred to be invited as an artist to illustrate the publications. As part of the carry home material for children a set of six labels with pictures of co-habitants of Blackbuck and a sticker with a picture of a typical blackbuck. An appealing slogan had to be copy written for the sticker. A colorful poster of the grassland ecosystem represented by the animals found in Karnataka was to be designed and creatively produced. On the other side of the poster, it was decided more pictures and information were to be produced.

On the second day of the workshop members visited Jayamangali Blackbuck reserve and had a first hand experience about the grassland ecosystem. The team photographed the local natural history and spoke to the local community to find out what they felt about blackbuck and their conservation.