How to harness a community-based approach to conservation

Community-based conservation is in my DNA. Born into a lower-middle-class family in Mithileshwar Mauwahi village, Nepal, both my parents worked in the fields to produce vegetables to sell at the weekly bazaar. My affinity for the relationship between humans and nature was sparked early on as my duty was to take the vegetables to market after school.

While life took me down many paths, my passion for wildlife and habitat conservation never faded as I played active roles in various NGOs throughout New Delhi. After working in India for 12 years, I was excited to return to Nepal, specifically the Dhanushadham Forest.

What I found was shocking: due to unmanaged grazing, illicit felling, intentional fire and unmanaged sand mining, the forest was almost gone. I was devastated. But this was the pull I needed to leave my job in India and return to Nepal, dedicating myself to protecting wildlife, restoring diminished forests, and educating children of communities dependent on natural resources.

With support from experienced people within my community, I created Mithila Wildlife Trust (MWT) in 2013. One of our first initiatives was a snake rescue, which was new for Nepal, as our area is heavily impacted by snake bite incidents. As this initiative was established by and for the local people, it helped us gain valuable community support.

Community support is now the bedrock of our larger efforts and mission to uplift and empower local people and restore nature in the region by implementing a community-based approach to conservation.

We believe that conservation will be more sustainable if communities hold the responsibility for both wildlife and habitat conservation, which is why the local community takes charge of our work.

We ensure restoration is cost-effective, with all wages paid directly to community members, and all our staff are recruited from within the community, ensuring their involvement at every stage. This community-driven approach is what makes our project truly community-led. And the results speak for themselves.

After conducting more than 100 community interaction programmes, we had the Dhanushadham Forest declared as an open grazing-free and illegal felling-free forest at zero budget. No tree has been cut down and no wildlife has been poached in the last nine years. With the help of the local community, we restored 65 hectares of land in the Dhanushadham Forest by planting native tree species.

Further, as part of the forest restoration, all community members started planting saplings in the barren areas, planting approximately 135,000 saplings in 68-hectare diminished forest land.

The success of this community-led restoration motivated us to replicate the efforts with other public land and diminished forest areas. We restored the 51-hectare river bed as a connecting forest patch in Shiwalik Chure range, maintaining above 90% survival rate in the gravel and sandy soil with no moisture at all.

All project beneficiaries are also local, bringing positive impact to both nature and the community. We've provided over 14,800 working days' worth of direct wages, with post-project benefits flowing back into the community - these benefits include the collection of fodder, firewood, and fruits, ensuring long-term sustainability.

Along with the community we believe strongly in the power of partnerships, which is why we have forged impactful partnerships with other organizations, notably Restor, one of the largest communities of nature restoration projects.

I am proud of this community who, thanks to their work, has made Nepal’s community forest management a global model for forest restoration efforts elsewhere.

I invite you to take it upon yourself to serve as a community leader in your area, fostering those around you to take part in local conservation efforts, as it is you, who, through coexistence, can positively repair the connection between humans and nature – allowing people, wildlife and plants to live in harmony.

This case study — by Dev Narayan Mandal, as told to Hema Bhatt, Regional Engagement Lead South Asia at Restor — is part of a spotlight series highlighting the importance of nature on communities and human wellbeing. Each piece in this series showcases a different community and the nature it depends on, along with the stewards working to protect and restore our natural environments. These pieces are authored by project leaders and local leaders with Restor, an online platform that provides connectivity and transparency to thousands of conservation and restoration projects globally. Restor partners with the world’s most impactful organizations to build a restoration movement, including 1t.org, which is part of the World Economic Forum’s efforts to accelerate nature-based solutions and was set up to support the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.