Restoration of Degraded Habitats

The chapter illustrates habitat restoration through a real Indian case study: the Forestry Research Education and Extension Project (FREEP), a World Bank initiative operating in India, which employs a strategy called 'eco-development' that deliberately enlists local communities in preserving biodiversity, by developing alternative resources and income sources for the people who depend on a protected natural habitat — typically forest — for their livelihood, rather than simply excluding them from it. FREEP runs a pilot eco-development programme in the Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR) in Tamil Nadu, a reserve holding a uniquely varied range of flora, from thorn and dry teak forest through to tropical evergreen forest, and supporting a rich variety of birds and mammals including tigers, leopards and elephants; as the last tiger refuge remaining in Tamil Nadu, KMTR is one of the 50 sites covered under the Government of India's Project Tiger and receives international assistance to enhance tiger habitat there. Over 100 villages now participate in the KMTR project: communities and individual farmers have planted fuelwood and fodder plantations, some villagers have installed cow-dung-based biogas plants for home fuel needs, and households increasingly use fuel-saving pressure cookers and smokeless wood-burning stoves (chulas); loans are also made available for a wide range of alternative income-generating activities, including dairy and poultry farming, tailoring, …