From the 1960s through the 1980s, the Bodo movement shook Assam.
It went down in Northeast India’s history as one of the most significant autonomy struggles, with its effects spilling onto Assam’s wildlife, particularly the Manas Tiger Reserve, an important transboundary conservation landscape that is home to several protected areas in northeastern India and southern Bhutan.
The insurgency turned the park into a conflict zone.
In the absence of forest guards, poachers had a field day; forests were cleared for settlements, thus wiping away the home of the wild. Tigers, rhinos, elephants, and deer started to decline; the greater one-horned rhinoceros and male tuskers among elephant populations were pushed to the brink of local extinction as poaching threatened their numbers.
But today, if you train your gaze on Manas National Park, there’s a starkly different story that’s unfolding. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site — the park’s 1985 status was restored in 2011, and it is also a tiger reserve, an elephant reserve, and a biodiversity hotspot.
While it was a Herculean effort by the local government, the Forest Department, and NGOs, we turn our gaze to the efforts of Dr Bibhuti Prasad Lahkar, whose conservation efforts were recognised with the prestigious IUCN Heritage Hero Award in 2016.
In the heart of the Bodo movement: Bibhuti Lahkar’s journey
In 1992, the scale of damage to Manas Wildlife Sanctuary (a World Heritage Site) was so devastating that UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site “in danger”. And much of the blame lay with the insurgency unfolding as the Bodo people, the largest plains tribe in Assam, protested their marginalisation following India’s independence in 1947.
The movement was led by the All Bodo Students Union (ABSU) and various other Bodo organisations. Their demands were clear — a system that preserved their cultural identity and gave them political representation.
The conservation model followed was to integrate the locals into the activities on ground.
After almost three decades of insurgency, in 2003, peace made its way into the region with the Bodo Accord, a memorandum of settlement between the Indian government, the Assam government, and the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT). It ended years of armed struggle, creating an autonomous, self-governing Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC). But even as the way for peace was paved, there was a lot of work to be done to restore the glory of Manas National Park.
The Indian and Assam governments initiated a $2.35 million rehabilitation plan in 1997, which involved engaging with local communities.
The tribal communities around Manas National Park are trained to mitigate human animal conflict and protect biodiversity.
As Field Director of Manas Tiger Reserve, C Ramesh told Mongabay India, “Following this (the peace accord), the park authorities reinstated strict protection protocols such as deployment of additional forest guards, increased patrolling in vulnerable areas, and enhanced anti-poaching operations to prevent illegal hunting and trade. Efforts were also made to restore degraded grasslands, forests, and wetlands to provide adequate food and shelter for wildlife.”
Finally, in 2011, the sanctuary was removed from the ‘in danger’ list.
Learning to protect wildlife in the middle of unrest
Bibhuti (51) recalls this as one of the most significant events of his life. “I spent the late ’90s and early 2000s playing the role of a connecting link between the Forest Department and village people. My work involved research in Manas National Park,” he shares, adding that he had a front row view of the insurgency that was unfolding in the park and outside its perimeters. “Hospitals and schools were being destroyed; there was shooting everywhere. I could hear bullet sounds frequently even while working in the park.”
He adds, “The last wild rhino was killed in 2002; people were cutting down the forests, and poachers were entering the park at will.”
Following the peace accord, Guwahati-based ‘Aaranyak’, an NGO that’s working to conserve biodiversity in Northeast India, started conducting education programmes to encourage local communities to protect the species endemic to Manas National Park — a unique grassland that sees pygmy hogs, Bengal floricans, and golden langurs coexist.
Bibhuti Lahkar is currently Programme Secretary and Deputy Executive Director at Aaranyak.
Having spent over three decades working with Aaranyak — Bibhuti is currently Programme Secretary and Deputy Executive Director — Bibhuti views it as having shaped a major part of his life as a conservationist, a tryst which started with a visit to a library in Guwahati during the years he was pursuing his bachelor’s degree in zoology.
“There were so many books on wildlife, and I used to spend hours reading them. Then, in 1993, I visited Manas National Park for the first time and participated in the National Tiger Census,” he shares. The census was juxtaposed against the Bodo insurgency; tiger numbers across the country were found to have dipped from 4,334 in 1989 to 3,750 in 1993.
Bibhuti spent the next several years investing his time and attention into wildlife conservation, going on to volunteer for the protection of pygmy hogs in Assam (the endangered pygmy hog is endemic to Assam and was ‘rediscovered’ in 1971 after being thought to have gone extinct). Along with this, in the early 2000s, Bibhuti’s work in Manas was focused on training forest guides and conducting research on the wildlife of Manas.
How Manas slowly found its way back
Bir Bahadur Lama (more popularly known as Tutu Lama) is grateful to have been mentored by Bibhuti. In fact, he shares that starting the Manas Ever Welfare Society, an initiative to collaborate with the Forest Department to amplify conservation efforts, wouldn’t have been possible without Bibhuti’s guidance.
“Ever since the year 2000, when he [Bibhuti] came to Manas for some research, we’ve known him, and he’s guided us with conservation. He persisted even during the disturbance caused by the Bodo movement. So many insurgents surrendered and turned into volunteers with the forest department, and Bibhuti sir trained them in conservation activities,” Bir shares.
Bibhuti Lahkar worked in collaboration with the Forest Department to amplify conservation efforts.
Hiranya Sarma, who was the field director of Manas National Park from 2015 to 2018, also commends the efforts of Bibhuti, who worked with the team to restore conservation efforts in Manas. “During the three-year term that I was there, we saw the tiger population increase; poaching was almost nil — one rhino poaching happened in 2016, and then, till 2020, there were no instances of rhinos being poached,” he says, adding that involving the fringe villagers was a successful strategy. This also created opportunities for eco-tourism.
Bir explains, “Previously, there was no tourism in Manas, but eventually things have improved. We encourage the locals to turn their homes into homestays, and train forest guides and naturalists.”
Expanding the fight to protect wildlife
Meanwhile, Bir’s mentor Bibhuti also broadened the scope of his work.
Explaining that he took a keen interest in studying the sanctuary’s grasslands for his doctoral thesis, he says it introduced him to the subject of elephants. “I started helping villagers who were affected by human-elephant conflict, helped them apply for compensation, and was passionate about the majestic elephant herds in the grassland of Manas.”
Bibhuti Lahkar routinely engages with local communities to spread awareness around conservation.
He continues, “My team and I started working on elephant conservation in 2004 in the Manas landscape to understand the habitat use of elephants, sensitise local communities on human elephant conflict mitigation, provide livelihood support to affected villages, restore degraded habitats, and also worked to create barriers and early warning systems to warn villagers of the movement of elephants. We also recently started radio collaring the elephants to reduce conflict between elephants and the locals.”
Apart from the Manas landscape, Bibhuti’s and his team’s work extends across Goalpara-Garo Hills and eastern Assam, where they direct their efforts towards elephant conservation with support from various conservation partners and donors.
One of the tactics they came up with to keep elephant-human conflict at bay was the bio-fence. Bibhuti explains, “By creating bio fences with Assam lemon, the locals get a source of livelihood as well. One such example of a 20 km bio fence is in eastern Assam.”
While much has been done to restore Manas’ biodiversity, Bibhuti says there are miles to go. Rebuilding a forest isn’t a moment of success, but a long, ongoing commitment.
All pictures courtesy Bibhuti Lahkar
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