COEXISTENCE IS POSSIBLE
  • Home
  • About
    • Mission
    • Our story
    • Our team
  • Our Work
    • India
    • Tiger trafficking
    • Education programs
    • Experience Wild India
  • Updates
  • Contact Us
  • Donate

Updates

Get our newsletter via email

Sarika's first, first-author peer-review paper published

3/22/2021

 
Picture
Investing in and understanding communities that live in and around central India's forests are important for creating a future where people and wildlife can coexist. As apart of Sarika's PhD work, she published her first, first-author peer review paper entitled Firewood, forests, and fringe populations: Exploring the inequitable socioeconomic dimensions of Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) adoption in India in the journal of Energy Research and Social Science. 

Firewood is the primary cooking fuel for many households in central India. This can be problematic because of the household air pollution caused by burning firewood indoors and burdens women and children in particular, who are in charge of cooking and collecting firewood. Finally, firewood collection can be a dangerous task when entering forests with wild animals such as tigers or leopards, and impacts forest health. The government has provided LPG to poor households since 2016, through a program called Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yoyjana, which is meant to address some of the health impacts of using firewood for cooking.

Sarika, along with her co-authors, used social survey data collected in 2018 from 4,994 households living within 500 villages living in forested regions of central India, along with a satellite-derived measure of forest availability to investigate cooking fuel use. They documented LPG adoption, the timing of this adoption, pre or post-2016, and patterns of firewood collection. The probability of cooking with LPG was lowest for marginalized social groups. Households recently adopting LPG, likely through the government scheme, were poorer, more socially marginalized, less educated, and have more forest available nearby than their early adopter counterparts. While 90% of LPG-using households continue to use firewood, households that have owned LPG for more years report spending less time collecting firewood, indicating a waning reliance on firewood over time. Policies targeting communities with marginalized social groups living near forest can further accelerate LPG adoption and displace firewood use. Despite overall growth in LPG use, disparities in access to clean cooking fuels remain between socioeconomic groups in India. 

Please email [email protected] to access a PDF version of the paper.

COVID-19 community support

6/23/2020

 
On-the-ground support for central Indian communities

Communities living around Tiger Reserves who depend on tourism revenue for income face numerous challenges during our global pandemic because of the inability to travel and the absence of tourism. We provided basic needs to communities living around Panna, Bandhavgarh, and Kanha Tiger Reserves through financial support to the Last Wilderness Foundation, one of our Indian-based non-profit partners. 

Research
​

For the last 5 years, Wild Tiger has been working in central India, which in addition to being a global priority tiger conservation landscape, is home to a high population of indigenous and traditionally marginalized people. These communities largely live at the edge of forests, and depend on these forests for their livelihoods and subsistence. Households also engage in seasonal migrant labor and amidst the COVID-19 lockdown, these migrants are traveling home from urban centers where the virus is present. Sarika is a co-author on a paper accepted in the journal Current Science titled Post-lockdown Spread of COVID-19 from Cities to Vulnerable Forest-Fringe Villages in Central India, which identifies potential methods to ease the spread of the virus if it reaches these rural, forest-dependent communities.

A message on coronavirus

4/1/2020

 
Research in India suspended

We share our condolences with anyone who has been affected by COVID-19 (coronavirus). In a way, even if you do not have friends or family that have been infected, we have all been affected by the pandemic.  Our daily lives and routines have changed, and uncertainty seems to be the only thing that is certain. This pandemic started because of humans extractive relationship with nature. Although we all desire to return to 'normal,' we need a new normal. We hope everyone can take time to reflect on how we can repair our relationship with nature, and how us as individuals can use our skills and passions to help make the world a better place. 

It is unfortunate news we share today. Sarika Khanwilkar will be returning to the United States and she is now a Fulbright Alumni. Our research in India has been suspended until Tiger Reserves can be safely re-opened and travel resumes. 

​
Accomplishments and Status:
  • February 2020 - present: Sarika started Hindi language classes.
  • February 2020: 16 days were spent around Kanha and Pench Tiger Reserves in Madhya Pradesh, collecting field data on vegetation.  ​
  • February 2020: Sarika gave a talk at the Fulbright South and Central Asia conference held in Kochi, India.

January 2020 update

1/15/2020

 
​Community engagement and outreach updates

Wild Tiger believes in teaching the next-generation of budding scientists and policy-makers about wildlife conservation and career development. 
​
Accomplishments and Status:
  • November 2018 - present: Sarika serves as a Council Member with the Student Conservation Association’s Alumni Engagement Council. 
  • October 2018: Presented on Wild Tiger's mentorship program, the Youth Council, at the Society for Conservation Biology Conservation Marketing and Engagement Conference in Washington DC.
  • December 2018: Presented on tigers and tiger conservation at St. Mary's Elementary School in Fredericksburg, TX.
  • September 2019: Sarika gave a virtual webinar on her research at the Student Conservation’s Association 2019 Unconference. ​

Research updates
​
Forest health and forest livelihoods in central India
Sarika’s research uses high resolution satellite imagery to classify land cover (such as trees, bare ground, urban areas, and water) and create maps, and household questionnaires to understand how people are using the forest.

Accomplishments and Status:
  • October 2019: Invited speaker at her alma mater, Gonzaga University. Presented at the Biology department's student and faculty seminar.
  • August 2019: Poster presented at the Student Conference on Conservation Science at the American Museum of Natural History. New York City.
  • April 2019: Poster presented at the NASA Land Cover Land Use Change Science team meeting in Rockville, MD. Sarika presented her progress in using remote sensing data to detect forest degradation.
  • In January 2019: Poster presented at the Central India Landscape Symposium in Melghat Tiger Reserve, Maharashtra, India. 
 
Project Dhvani
Sarika has partnered with Pooja Choksi and Vijay Ramesh, fellow PhD candidates at Columbia University to start Project Dhvani. This project utilizes the burgeoning interdisciplinary science of sound ecology, which uses sound recordings, big data and machine learning to measure the state of our forests and identify vocalizing species in a particular area.

Accomplishments and Status:
  • May - July 2018: The team began initial research surveys in and around Anamalai, Kanha and Satpura Tiger Reserves. They developed relationships with local NGOs and Forest Department staff, and performed field reconnaissance for future study sites and tested methods to record and analyze forest sounds.
  • Funding for this work has been received from National Geographic Society, The Earth Institute, Columbia University’s Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Science, and the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity.

PhD in Ecology and Evolution, Columbia University in New York
In 2019, Sarika completed all her coursework, and passed her oral exams to qualify as a doctoral candidate. Sarika was honored to be selected as a U.S. Fulbright Student Researcher to India in 2020. During her Fulbright year, Sarika will be doing fieldwork and, as apart of the Critical Language Enhancement Award, she will study the Hindi language in Dehradun, Uttarkhand, India before she begins her research and community engagement. Sarika will complete her language, research and community engagement work for her Fulbright year in India in February 2021. Since the beginning of her PhD, Sarika has received funding from: Columbia University's Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology and the Society for Conservation Biology.

TRACT and advancing conservation efforts in India
Sarika has been learning and working with TRACT (Tiger Research and Conservation Trust) led by Poonam and Harshwardhan Dhanwatey since 2015. From April – June 2017, Sarika was in Kuno-Palpur Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh working as a Field Researcher with Devavrat Pawar.

Accomplishments and Status:​
  • January 2018 - Sarika gave a talk at International Society of Tropical Foresters conference at Yale University on how TRACT has successfully galvanized community members to protect themselves and minimize conflict with wildlife.
  • In May 2019, Devavrat Pawar published a paper on his work in Kuno-Palpur Wildlife Sanctuary with Sarika as a co-author in the Journal of Threatened Taxa

    Author

    Regular updates from the Wild Tiger team.

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    October 2022
    August 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    May 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    December 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020

    Categories

    All
    Bi-annual Update
    Captive Tigers
    Education
    India
    In The News
    Research
    United States

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • About
    • Mission
    • Our story
    • Our team
  • Our Work
    • India
    • Tiger trafficking
    • Education programs
    • Experience Wild India
  • Updates
  • Contact Us
  • Donate