Vanodaya

'Chikkalur Jathre', an annual event, has seen many of the conflict of interest over the years. While the jathre itself is held outside the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary, majority of the people take the route via the sanctuary to reach the jathre. Animal sacrifice, polluting the river (Cauvery), felling trees for firewood, cooking inside the forest, smoking, alcohol consumption are the challenges faced by the forest officials apart from containing the man-made forest fires. Man Vs Wild face offs are imminent dangers too. For the past three years 'Vanodaya' volunteers have been collaborating with the forest officials in containing the situation and spreading awareness amongst the villagers for the need to protect green cover and encourage locals to take up the cudgels to protect the forest. Our sincere intentions and well documented approach over the years, has sowed enough confidence in the forest officials to welcome us with open arms. On 26th January 2016, we se...

The programme was the initiative of Karnataka Forest Department with the objective of sensitizing high school students on the importance of conserving forest and wildlife. A high school located on the periphery of forest is chosen and 2 days residential nature camp is conducted for the students in the forest area to create awareness of the environment and habitat of the wild. T he camp was restricted to one school on 25 and 26th February 2016 at “Mystery Trails”   nature camp in Gopinatham wildlife range. The forest department had requested ‘Vanodaya’ to conduct the programme in co-ordination with Cowdally Range forest officials. Students from K.Hosur School attending the programme Around 50 students and 6 teachers from Kuretti Hosur Government High School, Range Forest Officer Mr. Lokesh Murthy along with other forest department officials participated in the event. Mr. Jagadish Katkar from ‘Vanodaya’ co-ordniated and conducted the event. The activities conduct...

One of the ideas that had cropped up in our regular meetings was to kick off eco-clubs in schools located around the periphery of the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary. If we could impress on young minds, the importance of saving our forests and our environment, our future could be bright.As a first step in this direction, we chose start the eco-club at Alnatha Government High School. During the first visit to the school, we decided to take the children out on a birding trail around the periphery of the school which happens share its boundary with the Muneshwara reserve forest . We kicked off the activity with the customary introductions and divided the students, about forty in number, into five groups. Each group was asked to chose a bird name as the name of their group and had to let the rest of us know something about the bird.   The students were given a briefing about   basic birding etiquette, what to look out for during the walk and how to note down the observations incl...