Community Paddy Plantation Program
Community Paddy Plantation Program
This is a collaborative program with local communities to initiate paddy plantation for elephants on community land – thereby creating a ‘Food buffer Zone’ to keep elephant herds strategically contained in a demarcated area for a short period and away from primary crop fields during the harvesting season. This program is currently ongoing and is operational in a remote village area called – Ronghong Village, situated in Assam’s Nagaon district. Sixty-five acres of community land is selected annually to plant paddy crops for migrating elephants to forage, thus preventing them from straying towards community fields in search of food. This has been one of our most successful projects and has helped inform our study on elephant behaviours.
Paddy plantation in Ronghong village and Golaghat, Assam
Farming communities in Ronghong village located on the foothills of Karbi Anglong experience high levels of crop raids and property damage by elephants annually- thereby causing frequent conflicts between local farmers and wild elephants in search of food. Both locals from the area and elephants have suffered fatal injuries and in some cases – death, due to rising tensions between the two. As a part of our initiative to mitigate human-elephant conflict, we started a paddy plantation on 68 acres of community-owned land for elephants in Ronghong Village in 2018. After twenty sessions of stakeholder meeting and focus group discussions, Hati Bondhu was able to convince farmers from Ronghong village to work towards the cause of elephant welfare and gained their support for the paddy plantation program.The project outcome revealed that the intervention was effective as herds of approximately 350 elephants feasted on the paddy plantations and remained confined in the plantation site for three days during the – typically tense harvesting season. This outcome enabled farmers from Ronghong village, and neighbouring villages to harvest their paddy crops without any external disturbances. Our field study and observations revealed that 10,000 acres of community agricultural fields benefitted from this intervention. Due to our program success, we have continued our program operations in Ronghong village and are expanding our paddy plantation activities in the fringe areas of Karbi Anglong, with help from our local partners. Currently, our paddy plantation program is also operational in Golaghat which is in urgent need of human-elephant conflict management. we are expanding our mitigation operations in the area and have identified strategic locations to initiate mass plantation of Napier grass (Pennisetum purpureum) – thereby creating natural buffers for elephants that stray towards local villages in search for food.
Currently, our paddy plantation program is also operational in Thuramukh area located in Golaghat district, which is in urgent need of human-elephant conflict management. We are expanding our mitigation operations in the area and have identified strategic locations to initiate mass plantation of Napier grass (Pennisetum purpureum) – thereby creating natural buffers for elephants that stray towards local villages in search for food. The project is being implemented in collaboration with, and support from, Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL).
