A Nature Education Program in Pakke, Arunachal Pradesh – Bringing Children Closer to Their Forests

A forest bustling with more than 4,000 species of wild plants and animals, and possibilities of finding many more undiscovered species in its interiors is surely worth admiring and cherishing! At least that is what one would imagine. But, if you are a Nyishi child residing around this place, this might be something you have grown up around and not realized the wonders and value of this amazingly rich treasure trove called the Pakke Tiger Reserve (PTR). Nestled in the easternmost state of India – Arunachal Pradesh, this living rainforest harbors many rare species of flora and fauna. This region is also home to the Nyishi tribe who inhabit several small towns, villages and settlements in the adjoining forests.

I came to this fascinating forest in 2016 to join the Eastern Himalaya Program of Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF). NCF has been actively engaging with local communities in this landscape for more than two decades, besides being involved in long-term research and conservation projects. As soon as I arrived here, the forest engulfed me, and what was to be a year-long stint of observing individual fruiting trees and documenting the interactions of various fruit-eating species quickly transformed into a long term engagement. After this project, I became interested in engaging with nature education. In the past, our team had conducted nature education activities with students from local schools on various occasions. However, these had been sporadic and not planned systematically. One thing that stood out during our conversations with these students was that even though they lived near the protected area, most of them had never been to the tiger reserve. Thankfully, most of these students were eager and curious to visit and explore these forests.

The local children live in houses surrounded by forests and learn some of the ways of the forest, wild animals and plants from their elders. This knowledge is now typically more utility-based, unlike the older generation in the community who were also physically, emotionally, culturally and to an extent, spiritually connected to these forests. From our engagement with these children over the years, we realized that while they were more connected with nature and the animals found in their areas compared to their peers in urban India, there seemed to be a negative attitude towards some species. These species were often those that were hunted by the elders in the community or involved in frequent conflict with humans. Many children also frequently carried catapults to hunt birds.

We wanted to build a long-term, systematic engagement with children for nature. Thus, we began a formal Nature Education Program in 2017, that emphasizes long term engagement with not just the school children but also their teachers to facilitate a deeper emotional connection towards these forests and its creatures. It began with establishing nature clubs in schools and designating interested teachers as coordinators to ensure a long term framework for what was to follow.

The springboard component of the program are nature education camps. Students from classes 5-9 from seven local schools (both government and private) attend one-day and three-day nature camps inside the Tiger Reserve annually. Students attending the one-day camp in year one, would attend a three-day camp the following year. We conduct year-round activities in the park, villages and school campuses to ensure continued engagement. We also started by offering two orientation and training workshops for the teachers and field staff including Nyishi tribe members who work with us as hornbill nest protectors, and the frontline staff of the PTR, Arunachal Pradesh Forest Department.

These camps are based on three modules. Each module has a different set of connected activities that can be categorized broadly into cognitive (observational knowledge-based), ethical (value-based) and emotional. The cognitive module drives home the learning about important ecological processes such as energy flow and food chains, cycling of materials such as air, water and soil and adaptation and change. This is done through specially developed activities and games.

They also get to know about the different organisms in the forest, through close observations and by learning about their roles at the community-level, e.g., food producers, pollinators, decomposers, seed dispersers and soil builders. The other sets of activities are designed to create an emotional connection and to develop positive feelings for all life forms including their own.

For example, the tree hugging sessions often bring out a range of emotions amongst the students and teachers. We do this during every camp, but each time I hug a tree I feel a strong sense of belonging. I have seen many people (students and adults) get teary-eyed after this session and they also share their experiences with us. The primary aim of this education program is to evoke a sense of connectedness towards nature and not to just give them information/facts on various processes and species. It is based on the pedagogy of experiential education.

In the five years that I have been part of the program, we have seen considerable changes in children’s attitudes from the first day of the camp to the third day. Besides the formal collection of pre and post feedback questionnaires, we also gather feedback through sharing sessions after each activity in the form of drawings, notes, poems and verbal experience sharing.

Working with these students and their teachers has given me a lot of hope for the future. If we can build a community of such aware and interested teachers with a shared vision towards nature education, we can build a community of environmentally conscious young adults and students.

Wildlife conservation and hornbill conservation have become buzzwords in the villages around PTR. The continuous presence of several NGOs and the forest department, regular interactions with the communities and schools have ensured awareness about conservation in the region. But, awareness may not always translate into action.

Besides, a whole range of threats continue outside PTR due to large-scale tree felling, stone crushing, and conversion of forest land to cash crops. Even though the program does not believe in transferring the burden of action to these young students, we aim to nurture positive connections with the natural world developed through these camps so that whatever they do in life later, comes from a place of concern, love and respect for nature. We are moving forward with the hope that more teachers and students excitedly meet the forest and its denizens and begin a journey of reconnecting with nature.

Note: The Nature Education Program modules were conceived by Dr. Pranav Trivedi, a nature educator with many years of experience in the field. He also conducted these modules for the initial years of the program.