Guwahati, June 22: An experienced field staff of biodiversity conservation organisation Aaranyak, Dibakar Nayak who has been extensively working with the community as well as the forest department for mitigation of raging human elephant conflict was given an opportunity to share his practical knowledge acquired from working in the field in a special forum in the recently held first Indian Wildlife Ecology Conference (IWEC) in Bengaluru.
“I attended a Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting on ‘Mixing Formal and Experiential Ecological Knowledge’ as an invited resource person during the IWEC held at National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru during June 14 to 16 this year,” Dibakar Nayak informed.
He said he shared his experience and lessons learnt out of working with the community as well as in close coordination with the forest staff in conservation and facilitating coexistence between villagers and wild elephants.
The SIG meeting initiated a dialogue between professional ecologist and experiential knowledge-holders from local communities from Western and Eastern Himalayas, Northeast India, Central India, Western Ghats and Eastern Ghats.
Several renowned scientists and researchers like Dr Anindya Sinha, and Sayan Banerjee from the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore, Dr. Samir Kumar Sinha and Dr Tanushree Srivastava from Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) were also a part of the SIG where Nayak was present
Dibakar Nayak has been serving in the Elephant Research and Conservation Division of Aaranyak since last three years.
He has also been associated with wildlife conservation, mostly elephants, in the districts of Udalguri and Baksa in Assam. He has been involved for last 18 years assisting the Assam Forest departments in Udalguri and Baksa districts in several activities including monitoring and combating human-elephant conflicts.
He has successfully assisted several doctoral students and researchers from around the country and few even from abroad in carrying out their field research on elephants, butterflies and other wildlife species in Udalguri and Baksa areas.