Case Study of People's Participation in Conservation of Forests

The Bishnois and Amrita Devi

People's involvement in forest protection in India has deep historical roots. In 1731, the king of Jodhpur in Rajasthan sent his minister and workers to fell trees near a village inhabited by the Bishnoi community, whose way of life is built around peaceful coexistence with nature, to obtain timber for a new palace. The Bishnois resisted the felling, and one woman, Amrita Devi, showed extraordinary courage by physically hugging a tree and daring the king's men to cut her down before they cut the tree — to her, the tree's life mattered more than her own. Tragically, the king's men did not relent, and Amrita Devi was killed along with the tree; her three daughters and hundreds of other Bishnois who followed her example lost their lives in the same cause. It remains one of the most striking recorded instances of people sacrificing their lives specifically for an environmental cause, and the Government of India later instituted the Amrita Devi Bishnoi Wildlife Protection Award in recognition of extraordinary community courage in protecting wildlife.

The Chipko Movement

Nearly two and a half centuries later, in 1974, women in the Garhwal Himalayas revived this same spirit of protective resistance in what became known as the Chipko Movement ("to cling" or "to hug"): local women physically hugged trees to stop contractors' axes from felling them, drawing worldwide acclaim for a form of nonviolent, grassroots environmental protest that has since become an internationally recognised symbol of community-led conservation.

Joint Forest Management …