Biosphere Reserves and Sacred Groves

Biosphere reserves are a distinct and, in an important respect, more sophisticated model of in-situ conservation than a straightforward National Park or Wildlife Sanctuary, because they are deliberately designed to balance strict wildlife conservation against the practical, ongoing needs of the human communities living in and around the protected landscape, rather than simply excluding human activity from a fixed boundary. A biosphere reserve achieves this balance through a structured system of three concentric zones. The core zone, at the centre of the reserve, is given the strictest legal protection of the three, and, much like a National Park, permits no human activity at all beyond carefully approved scientific research, so that a genuinely undisturbed sample of the natural ecosystem is preserved intact. Surrounding the core is the buffer zone, in which a more limited and carefully regulated range of activities is permitted -- research stations, environmental education programmes, controlled eco-tourism, and traditional resource use by local communities that has been assessed as ecologically sustainable. The outermost transition zone, sometimes called the zone of cooperation, is where human settlements, agriculture and other everyday economic activity continue much as before, but ideally managed in cooperation with the reserve's conservation goals, so that development in this outer zone does not undermine the protection achieved in the two inner zones. The Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve, which lies partly within West Bengal, is a real Indian example of a reserve organised on exactly this three-zone pattern, its core zone protecting critical mangrove tiger habitat while its buffer and transition zones accommodate the fishing and forest-produce livelihoods of the many communities living along the delta's edge. …