Oracle Supports Restoration Efforts With a 75 Lakh Grant

This grant will be used to support restoration work in the lantana-infested forests of the Nilgiris, and Raichur’s degraded agricultural lands.

CSEI researchers on fieldwork in Karnataka’s Raichur district. The second leg of restoration work funded by Oracle will identify at least 50 hectares of degraded agricultural land in the Devadurga taluka of Raichur before carrying out baseline studies. Photo by Manjunatha G.

Oracle has awarded CSEI-ATREE a 75 lakh grant for the restoration of degraded forests and agricultural lands to achieve ecological security and rural livelihood enhancement.

The first leg of this project will establish plot-scale experiments for eight hectares of degraded forests by removing invasive species and monitoring biodiversity and ecosystem health to inform conservation planning. These experiments will be carried out in the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu by our implementation partner, The Real Elephant Collective (TREC), a socio-environmental non-profit organisation involved in nature conservation in the region.

The pilot plot for lantana removal and restoration has been identified in the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. Permissions have been sought from the forest department.

Read | The Future of Our Forests Workshop

The second leg of the restoration work will identify at least 50 hectares of degraded agricultural land in the Devadurga taluka of Karnataka’s Raichur district for implementing restoration work in partnership with the NGO Prarambha.

On the identified lands, our partners will assess baselines on three variables to establish a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) protocol — soil biodiversity, hydrology and socio-economic parameters. This protocol will be adapted from the ‘Conceptual and Methodological Toolkit for Researchers, Managers and Practitioners’ developed by ATREE for terrestrial restoration sites in peninsular India and implemented in the Bagepalli taluka of Chikkaballapur. This three-month grant from Oracle will also support an aspirations study to determine end-user demand for economic opportunity in the local communities to be conducted by SIRDS (Sarvodaya Integrated Rural Development Society).

Read | The ‘Ground Truth’: Understanding Land Degradation in Raichur

The grant from Oracle will support the following at both restoration sites:

1. Set-up Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) protocol for biodiversity tracking and restoration.
2. Create a baseline, and land-use and land-cover map to monitor restoration and biodiversity prepping for removal and restoration

For restoration of degraded agricultural land in Raichur, we will:

1. Conduct soil testing for soil depth, soil organic carbon (SOC), bulk density, cation exchange capacity, soil PH, and available soil water capacity for pilot sites.
2. Co-design and conduct an aspirations cum demand-based assessment for assessing end-user needs.

For restoration of lantana-infested forests in the Nilgiris, we will:

1. Conduct plot level experiments for restoration of Lantana invaded sites (8 Ha)
2. Establish removal and restoration agreement with the vendor and necessary permissions with the forest department.

Read | Stakeholder Mapping: A Key Step for Restoration of Degraded Lands

Edited by Anjana Balakrishnan

Stay tuned to the blog to know more about this project in the coming weeks. If you would like to collaborate with us on this project, write to sandeep.hanchanale@atree.org or csei.collab@atree.org.

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