People's Participation in Conservation of Forests

People's participation is described as vital to forest conservation, especially the participation of those living in or close to the forest itself; this pattern of local, community-driven forest stewardship is referred to as community forestry, a practice that varies widely across different legal, political, and cultural settings and covers a wide range of specific experiences and practices rather than any single fixed model.

Three real historical case studies illustrate this. The Bishnois, long known as dedicated conservators of their forest, became an inspiration for many later people's participatory movements for environmental protection in India; their tradition traces back to Amrita Devi, a brave woman from Khejarli village in Jodhpur district, Rajasthan, who in 1730 sacrificed her life to protect Bishnoi Dharma when Maharaja Abhay Singh of Marwar ordered his men to log the village's green Khejri (Prosopis cineraria) trees to burn lime for his new palace; Amrita Devi and more than 363 fellow Bishnois were killed after hugging the trees to stop them being cut, an event commemorated to this day as 'Black Tuesday' in Khejarli, and honoured through the state-level 'Amrita Devi Bishnoi Smriti Award', instituted jointly by the Governments of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh for outstanding contributions to wildlife protection and conservation.

The Chipko movement, which resisted forest destruction across India in the 1970s under the leadership of Sunderlal Bahuguna, is the second case: participants physically hugged trees to prevent them being felled by contractors, giving the movement its name (chipko meaning 'to stick' or 'to hug' in Hindi) and cementing it as one of India's most iconic environmental protest movements. …