SUSTAINABILITY OF THE FARMING PRACTICES, AND MAN-ANIMAL CONFLICT, IN KANI TRIBES OF MUNDANTHURAI PLATEAU

 I spent a good amount of a week weaving in and out  of Kani Settlements in Mundathurai Tiger Reserve  in Tamil Nadu as part of field work and project  execution of the 15 day course on Conservation  Science conducted by Atree. A project submission  together with a Full blown report and Power Point  presentation was mandatory to successfully complete the course. Me and Pradeep Kuttava teamed  together to make a mini project of finding if  Kani Tribe practiced sustainable way of living in the  Mundanthurai plateau. We picked up this project  since both of us lacked the scientific knowledge  to do more prospective projects that directly  dealt with environment and species. You can find  the report and PPT at these locations.



PPT:
https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B1EVHBDhLF7fMzdjNmIyM2UtNzBiMS00ZDQxLTkzNGEtYTg2NWIxNzNkMDFl&hl=en

Report:
https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1ddt6qqW2Ccrzmqz4lkqZbmODLWZPI1E68UAMlKkEOEY&hl=en



A short write up on the above project:

Sustainability of the Farming Practices, and Man-Animal Conflict, in Kani Tribes of Mundanthurai Plateau

The Kani tribals in the KMTR region, have been settled agriculturists, for quite some time. Apart from sustenance through the sale of crops they derive their income from sale of Forest produce and from other sources such as working as guides, and temporary FD jobs. Some of the tribals have been mainstreamed.

The objective of the study was to get an report on the natural farming methods practiced by the Kani tribals, like Multi-mixed cropping, organic cultivation, Shifting cultivation, their different sources of income, their increased dependence on the external world, because of changing food habits, like rice consumption, medicine, and qualitative questions like, the tolerance to crop loss due to wild animal, and their spiritual, emotional and cultural connection to the forest, village maintenance, and house construction etc.. A sustainability index was then calculated based on the data obtained from the study, with a summation for positive indices like traditional crops, and negation for cash crops etc..

The data was collected was based on a questionnaire survey.  20 Individuals, from 4 different Kani settlements, with varying degrees of income, age, and occupation were informally interviewed, over a period of 4 days.

The preliminary results of the study indicated that the majority of the community, led a sustainable life style, with values tending from -1.6 to 7.4, with a mode of 2 to 3.  The trend was, however, on the negative side, with people moving towards an exploitative life style, with diminishing traditional food habits and medicine. If the traditional methods of agriculture, with less dependence on cash crops maintained with a minimal external income from other sources, a more sustainable development model, can be formulated for the people in the reserve.