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Male Madeshwara Hills (MM Hills) Reserve Forest

The Male Madeshwara Hills (MM Hills) Reserve Forest is located at the eastern border of the state of Karnataka with Tamil Nadu. MM Hills have an area of 173,920 acres comprising mostly of dry deciduous forest. Human settlements account for about 24,142 acres. Soligas and Lingayats who inhabit this area are hunters and gatherers of yesteryears now confined to settlements and lands allotted by the government. Given the continued dependence on NTFPs to boost income from agriculture, communities in MM Hills provide a rich tapestry of interactions with the forest and offer a unique platform to address the issues of sustainable extraction of NTFPs while also enhancing the livelihoods of the people.
ATREE’s activities in the MM Hills have encompassed trainings in agro-forestry techniques for biomass dependence and regeneration of native species, exploring and then actively encouraging active use of Lantana as a substitute for fast disappearing bamboo, and developing women’s Self Help Groups for natural resource based micro-enterprise.

Livelihoods and Conservation by Substitution: Lantana shows the way

Indiscriminate industrial extraction has severely depleted the natural stock of bamboo. It imperils the livelihoods of marginal communities who are dependent on bamboo for their subsistence. There is therefore an urgent need to find alternative raw material for Bamboo in order to enhance livelihoods.

One such raw material is the invasive weed, Lantana camara which was introduced into India as an ornamental plant in the 19th century. In the process Lantana has unsettled innumerable native plants from their habitats. The presence of Lantana threatens local biological diversity. Several forest fringe community people in South India as well as in the foothills of Himalayas have found that lantana could be used in the place of bamboo. They are therefore using lantana for weaving baskets and fabricating furniture.

Soligas are the indigenous tribes of Male Mahadeswara Reserve Forest (MM hills), which is predominately dry deciduous forest. A major portion of their income was derived from bamboo basket weaving, which is now highly threatened due to the exhaustion of bamboo resources.

Ashoka Trust of Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) conducted four lantana basket weaving training program for Soliga artisans in Chittoor (Andhra Pradesh), Natham (Tamil Nadu) and MM hills (Karnataka). ATREE also facilitated the training of Soliga artisans in Lantana furniture making techniques at HESCO (Himalayan Environmental Studies and Conservation Organization). Seven trainees participated in this ten-day training program. Following this, ATREE established four lantana craft centres in four villages in MM hills. Thirty-two Soliga artisans have undergone training in these centres.

In order to augment sales and create genuine value of the products, ATREE has conducted market surveys in urban and rural areas. Twenty one products have been designed based on the need of rural and urban markets. ATREE is concentrating on quality improvement through implementing production standards., In addition artisans are obtaining inputs from various designers and cane furniture manufacturers.

Keeping with the adage that teaching a man to fish will ensure that he doesn’t starve, ATREE is establishing three kinds of self reliance groups. The raw material collection group consists of ten fuel wood collectors who will provide lantana sticks. The production group will consist of 25 artisans who will make the products and the third group, the marketing unit will consist of ten members who will oversee the marketing of Lantana products in both rural and urban areas. In order to providing a platform for Lantana artisans across the country to share their experiences, ATREE organized a Lantana confluence. Artisans from four states of India met and agreed to establish a network amongst themselves to better coordinate efforts to improve quality and popularise Lantana products in the country. The use of Lantana is not only improving the livelihood of the forest fringe communities but also conserving native biological diversity.

Self-help groups and micro enterprise activities

ATREE adopted a reliable self-help group model from Kalasam, which is a successful SHGs model in five district of Tamil Nadu. It was formed and federated by the Covenant Center for Development (CCD), Madurai.

ATREE has helped to form 30 women’s (homogeneous) self-help groups (SHGs) in MM hills with the help of CCD. It consists of 360 members from 17 villages. These SHGs are called Jyothi (Light), Each Jyothi consists of 10 to 15 members. They have monthly meeting and all the group leaders attend cluster meetings once a month. The These SHGS were established with an eye on assisting the establishment of establish community-owned natural-resource based and conservation oriented microenterprise.

In this evolving process all the SHGSs will be federated soon. The federation will be called Divyajyothi (Divine light). It will be an apex body and the board of federation members will be selected from the groups. Groups need to pay membership fee to the federation and it will converted as corpus for the federation in order to provide financial support to the groups in turn.

There is ongoing awareness building about existing natural resources and the possibility of building these into microenterprise activities. Group leaders are undergoing training on sustainable NTFPs harvesting methods, and entrepreneurship skills and business skills. At national level women SHGs are making tremendous impact in women empowerment and ATREE believes that this Jyothi will light in the poor forest community people’s life and more than that it may light and show new way in conservation oriented sustainable way of NTFPs harvesting and marketing.

Agro forestry

Agro-forestry is being tried as a solution to loss of forest cover due to fuelwood and fodde r needs. Regeneration patterns were also being affected.

Seedlings of native species such as amla, teak, bamboo, tamarind, rosewood, and antoowala were distributed amongst five villages. Trainings were conducted on planting and caring for these seedlings on farm bunds. Construction techniques for lantana fencing were demonstrated. In the summer of 2003 due to a drought situation it was essential to water and mulch the seedlings on a regular basis, and these and simple irrigation techniques were also demonstrated. Fencing with lantana instead of bamboo was encouraged and this has now been taken up in a big way. Also compost pits and bins were established in four villages and this compost using household biological waste is now used to fertilise the fields where productivity was declining.