BHUBANESWAR: Amid growing incidents of man-animal conflict, the Keonjhar Forest Division has rolled out a drive ‘Mo Jungle Mo Parivesh’ to sensitise the young generation on forest and wildlife and allow them to contribute towards the conservation of native flora and fauna in the district.
Under the drive, the territorial division, which covers 10 blocks of the district, has started imparting lessons to students in schools and colleges on forest and wildlife and has started making them understand the local issues and challenges they have in the conservation of forest and wildlife, especially elephants.
The mineral-rich district, one of the wealthiest in the country, has been reporting a number of wildlife deaths owing to increasing man-wildlife conflict.Forest officials too acknowledge that there are a number of challenges in forest and wildlife management in the district with the prominent being agriculture and mining related conflicts.
“We want to create a pro-nature and pro-wildlife mindset among the students as they are the ones on whom the conservation of forest and wildlife of the region will depend after a decade or so. “The purpose is to occupy the brain of the new and young generation with the forest and environment related knowledge and make them sensitive to nature and wild animals,” said Keonjhar DFO Dhamdhere Dhanraj Hanumant.
Besides, the DFO pointed out that most of the people these days, especially the children and young mass don’t have adequate knowledge about the forest and wildlife in their surrounding.“The number of people who want to do something to protect the forest and wildlife is also very limited. This makes lessons on forest and wildlife conservation in educational institutes an integral part of teaching,” he said.
Hanumant said a dozen of schools have already been covered under the drive so far. However, they are planning to launch the drive formally soon for large scale implementation of the initiative.“We have a total 2,200 schools in the Keonjhar jurisdiction. Accordingly, have decided to ask the rangers, foresters and forest guards in all 105 beats to identify schools in their jurisdiction and fix a schedule for the conduct of sessions on forest and wildlife on their campuses,” the DFO said.