Rajaji National Park is probably one of few areas, which are very important from conservation point of view, but at the same time it faces conflicts between the park management and the local communities. Wildlife Institute of India initiated its project "Building Partnerships for Biodiversity Conservation in Rajaji National Park" with Ford Foundation assistance. The objective of the project was to create a platform where different stakeholders can come together and collectively work for solving the problems of the park as well as the local communities. Through a massive capacity building process of the frontline staff and the local communities the situation of conflicts has been reversed at least in certain pockets. To reduce the dependency of the local communities on the biomass resources of the park, there is a need to identify alternative livelihoods. This work has been initiated in 8 villages covered by Ecodevelopment Committees. During this year, one such initiative was undertaken in the form of training of local youth as Eco-tourist Guides. The idea was to use these local trained youth for Eco-tourism in the Park so as to achieve the dual objective of providing livelihood to these people and strengthening the protection of the Park. A total of 25 local youth from different villages around Rajaji National Park, Binog Wildlife Sanctuary and Govind Pashu Vihar Wildlife Sanctuary and 5 staff were trained in different skills required for an Eco-tourist Guide. Smt. Bitapi C.Sinha coordinated the workshop.

This special module on wildlife was conducted as a part of Cadre Training Plan Course for the first time for 1984 Batch Officers of the Indian Customs & Central Excise Service at National Academy of Customs, Excise & Narcotics (NACEN), Faridabad. A total of 22 officers from different states attended this four day module, which was split into two sections – in-house lectures and panel discussions and field visit.

The National Workshop was jointly organized by the Project Tiger, Government of India and the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehra Dun. The workshop was well attended and represented by senior planners, administrators, decision makers, entrepreneurs, scientists,

managers, NGOs and elected representatives of people. Dr. P.K. Mathur, Workshop Coordinator, presented the summary of the previous workshop held at Ahmedabad 

and agenda for the National Workshop. Later, the workshop commenced with a panel discussion on "Protected Areas in Landscape – Challenges and Opportunities". Four distinguished panelists including Shri S.K. Pande, IFS, the then PCCF, Himachal Pradesh; Shri H.S. Panwar, former Director, WII; Shri A.K. Mukerji, Former IGF, GOI; and Prof. Shekher Singh, IIPA through this panel discussion facilitated in setting for the National Workshop.

The sloth bear project began in 1995 as a collaborative project between Wildlife Institute of India and US Fish and Wildlife Service achieved one of its objectives by conducting a three-day workshop in Panna Tiger Reserve. In total there were 28 participants from forest department and NGOs. The workshop focused on topics such as an introduction to bears in the world, methods to study sloth bear ecology and behaviour, methods to monitor sloth bear populations to resolve sloth bear-human conflict and bear conservation in India. As a development of the September 11th tragedy in USA, Dr. Clifford Rice, Washington State Fish and Game Department, Principal Investigator of the Project could not participate in the workshop. K.Yoganand, Senior Research Fellow, did a commendable job by making several presentations related to sloth bear ecology and behaviour. There were two field visits to discuss about the field study methods. Mrs. Bitapi Sinha rendered valuable support by helping with logistics and translating the talk in Hindi when Yoganand spoke to two gatherings of villagers on the periphery of the Reserve. The meeting with villagers in Hinauta was extremely well attended with nearly 300 participants. The talk and the question answer session went nearly for two hours. Field Director, Mr. Sanjay Mukharia of the Indian Forest Service gave valuable support to this workshop by his active participation and help with logistics. 

To take this programme further a meeting was conducted in Washington D.C. on 7th September when Prof. Johnsingh was invited by National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to attend. Several other wildlife biologists such as Dr. Mingma Sherpa, Dr. Eric Dinerstein, Dr. David Smith, Dr. Eric Vikramnayake, Dr. Anup Joshi, Mr. Bhim Gurung and Mr. Mahendra Shrestha who are all actively involved with the Terai Arc Conservation work in Nepal participated in the meeting. During the meeting it was suggested by the participants that Prof. Johnsingh should do an ecological evaluation of Indian Terai Arc Tiger Conservation Landscape so that the data available on the Indian side of the Landscape will be on par with that of Nepal. Prof. Johnsingh has applied for 10-months study leave to do this study from January 2002 to 31 October 2002.