Help Tourism

The 2010 HSBC – TOFT Wildlife Tourism Awards are intended to:

• Highlight the important work being done by the tourism industry in support of tiger and forest conservation
• Increase awareness of responsible tourism as a force in conservation and habitat renewal
• Reward and encourage best practice operations
• Encourage sustainability in tourism enterprises
• Promote community enterprises and initiatives around Tiger Parks.

Judges comments:

Help Tourism is a fascinating ecotourism business, with both private and NGO aspirations. It supported community owned tourism lodges in many places including Manas National Park with the Bodo tribal leaders. Since 1992 their efforts have reaped rewards and now include such lodges and carefully constructed itineraries in Assam, North Bengal and Arunachal Pradesh. Furthermore they are a unique business, both lodge and tour operators, operating in the conservation and community space, in off the beaten track and more remote regions. This award would highlight their team’s excellent approach to private sector’s partnership with a dedicated mission, in its key destinations.

The Award sponsored by The Blue Yonder includes a prize of INR 25000 towards equipment/services for the benefit of the winning community.

“We are deeply grateful that the continuous conservation efforts of the communities of East Himalaya have been recognized. The Award will be an additional boost for the community tourism movement in Northeast India. Spiritually, and practically as it enables us to fund new conservation and community development activities”, said Asit Biswas, director of Help Tourism after the ceremony.

More information about the Award and the other winners on the TOFT website

TOFT, the Travel Operators for Tigers, is a ‘supply chain’ pressure campaign initiative aimed at a Global collective and inclusive Travel trade response to the tiger crisis in India, and by association, all the forests and wildlife being affected in the Indian subcontinent .

Objectives:

• To advocate and support better tourism practices in wilderness areas, with specific guidelines for operators, service and accommodation providers and visitors. Look out for the TOFT signs and PUG ratings.
• To empower local communities to become involved in wildlife tourism projects and initiate low impact and sustainable development which helps conserves the parks and benefits the communities through employmnet and business opportunities.
• To catalyse initiatives throughthe lodge communty that enhance wildlife conservation and community support, including waste and water management, trade cooperatives, local employment, fair wages and local enterprises and services.

Help Tourism with Expert Klaus Schaette started 2008, at first, a pilot project in Lava, Neora Valley addressing the waste problem, to avoid burning all waste in open fire on the streets, a common practise in India; a smelling, health hazardous procedure and not envi-ronmentally friendly. This time, we addressed the waste problem in three new areas up-coming for Tourism, where people already feel the awareness, that littering waste creates problems.

In Assam, Bongaigaon and Abhayapuri are fast developing into a new tourist destination and acting as a Gateway to Manas National Park, Tiger-, Biosphere Reserve and World heritage site. The Bamungaon picnic spot, is next to the newly opened Astha nature camp.

Picnic spot

This beautiful picnic spot at the green hill-ocks, co-managed by community and forest department, is said to be a demonstration site of participatory conservation; as already visited by many local tourist, it looks like a dumping site, littered with paper, plastic, cans and bottles.

The local N.G.O (Bamungaon eco society) asked Helptourism for assistance, a good opportunity for us to give the locals an exam-ple on proper waste management.

In Abhayapuri we found used oil drums and a work-shop, where the incinerator was built.
Our program started on February 8th at the picnic spot for around 40 interested people.

Manufacturing a simple incinerator from an used oil drum

We all collected the waste, separating it for recy-cling, dumping or burning; to burn only the light plastic in the newly built incinerator without smell and smoke. To keep the picnic spot beautiful, we introduced waste baskets, a Pit for dumping and one for compost (organic waste, dry leaves). At the end, the local NGO invited all for a waste free lunch on organic plates. With the NGO we discussed offering local food specialities to picnickers, instead of selling chips packages, thereby avoiding the pollution of the picnic spot with plastics.
In Bansbari, Central Manas Forest Re-serve, the Forest Department and the Helptourism Tourist camps Maozigendri and Ultapani were our partner in the pro-gram. Altogether we could attract almost 100 participants, included local schools for the joint activity.

The separation and burning can be seen in the pictures.

In Ultapani, a village in the Manas Bio-sphere Reserve, the local guides organized our program. We had more than 100 participants, among them many interested villagers. The separation and burning was a big attrac-tion with training effect, the dumping pit had been prepared at the spot.

In Singalila Forest Reserve, Manebhanjan near Darjeeling, West Bengal the Local Guides Asso-ciation had asked Helptourism to assist in the Waste Problem at the Singalila Trek. They showed us the waste at the Trek; in our discussion we developed a self-help concept with baskets, dumping pits and Incinerator.

Community workshop "Waste Management in Singalila"

They organized a training program with almost 40 guides, Forest Guards and villagers.

The simple system of waste management presented in the program, is a self-help concept and primarily for remote areas, as Tourism Camps, with limited access to recycling. It is about waste separation, to keep the place clean, introducing waste baskets and a Pit for Dumping and Compost. The burning is reduced to “light plastic (Plastic-bags and wrappers) in a self-built incinerator, generating more heat, to avoid smell and hazardous smoke.

Not for Burning are:

• pieces for recycling as Water-bottles (PET), PVC (Pots, carpets, cables, Flip-flops), Glass- bottles and metal
• Organic waste, kitchen waste, dry leaves and straw give excellent compost

Aluminium foil packing are a major waste problem

These packages for chips, tobacco and sweets are on sale everywhere; once empty, you find them littered all over the landscape. They will not rot like paper, cannot be recycled nor burned, since they are coated with metal. To clean the environment, they should be kept only in a dumping pit!!
But they are rather good for the business, the industrial food industry.

by Klaus Schätte – kschaette@freenet.de

To revive the old glory of Manas Nationalpark as one of the most diverse areas of the subcontinent – an image that had badly suffered during the times of the Bodos struggle for more autonomy – all available hands were needed. Consequently, when the ecotourism concept for the Manas Maozigendri Area in Bodoland, Assam was drafted the volunteers of the local conservation NGO felt a need not only to welcome visitors to come and see but to actively participate in their work. As a feasible way to achieve this, the visitors have to sign a temporary membership form. The membership system has some basic advantages. The education of tourists, an important component of ecotourism, is well addressed. The guests do not only enjoy the flora and fauna, but also join directly in its conservation. Patrolling on foot, on bicycle, on jeep and sometimes on elephant inside the Nationalpark are part of the tourism package as are monitoring of endangered species – especially the Bengal Florican – in the buffer zone. Instead of big groups that are guided from watchpoint to watchpoint, the visitors are distributed to join small patrolling groups. Thus, the visitors come to see places inside the park that are off the formal routes.
The approach is a new concept of community and tourist participation in conservation and interaction. It will take time to review the success of the model but at least the first groups were very excited about this completely different style of visiting a Nationalpark and being part of the efforts to remove the park of the list of World Heritage in Danger.

The membership form is available for download (200 kb, pdf)