Innovative method

Guwahati, Aug. 4: Schoolchildren and teachers in the Northeast will now be in the forefront for the conservation of hoolock gibbon — an endangered primate.

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service, under its Great Ape Conservation Fund, has awarded a two-year project — Hoolock Gibbon Conservation Awareness and Education Program — to the Centre for Environment Education in a bid to spread awareness and education leading to protection of the gibbon and its habitat.

A senior official of the northeastern regional office of centre said though there was basic respect for wildlife and pride in natural heritage amongst the local populace in the Northeast, they need to be motivated, strengthened.

“A positive attitude and values are shaped early in life. There is need to reach out to schoolchildren and through them the communities at large. There is need to sensitise teachers and students to life processes around them, and through them reach out to fringe communities in the region,” the official said.

The Northeast is known to have the highest diversity of primate species in the country, boasting of nine such species. Gibbon, known by its various local names in the region, is one of them.

The official said the programme will involve development of gibbon educational packages in the context of the Northeast to support classroom teaching and orientation workshops will be held for NGOs to help them carry out implementation of school programmes.

A teachers’ handbook in Garo language, gibbon “act now” posters and a quarterly gibbon newsletter will be brought out under the project. The long-term survival of the hoolock gibbon in the wild is in serious jeopardy and it faces serious threats because of habitat fragmentation and hunting for its meat.

Many are kept as pets and their parts used as traditional medicine and in religious ceremonies.

CEE was established in 1984 as a Centre of Excellence in environment education and is supported by the ministry of environment and forests.

The official said Great Ape Campaigns (GAC) will be organised in selected gibbon-inhabited areas with support from the forest department to lay an emphasis on community participation and local protected area management.

The Centre for Environment Education will undertake Site Specific Conservation Education Programme in selected gibbon inhabited areas of Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura, involving 20-25 selected schools and a local NGO partner forming a cluster.