I’m passionate about restoring degraded ecosystems and have been pursuing my passion for the past three decades. When in my Master’s in Pondicherry University my classmates and I set about restoring a patch of land in the University campus. I was particularly interested in the soil and moisture conservation aspect. We made contour trenches and vegetatively stabilised them with local grasses and shrubs. Subsequently I did similar work at Rishi Valley School in Madanapalli and was part of their afforestation project funded by the National Wastelands Development Board. We restored a degraded patch of 15 acres in Didgi Village near Zaheerabad where the campus of the Deccan Development Society’s Krishi Vigyana Kendra operates from. Apart from this I have in my personal capacity done soil and moisture conservation work at private lands in Igatpuri, Nashik district and at a farm close to Karjat. I’ve also done water conservation and afforestation with native species in a farm at Kota, Rajasthan. When I was in the FAO of the UN, I have trained farmers in Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India about the importance of water conservation and choice of appropriate indigenous species for afforestation and agro-forestry. In Mizoram, I trained a group of farmers in practically marking our contours lines on their undulating land. I emphasised the importance of trenching and bunding to save valuable top soil and reduce erosion by run-off rain water.
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Ecoregion
Central Deccan Plateau dry deciduous forests, North Western Ghats moist deciduous forests
Expertise
Ecologist
Raghavendra Rao
Independent Consultant