Longleng, November 24 (MExN): Team Leader of Lemsachenlok, Nuklu Phom, while giving a brief historical journey of the society shared about the cooperation of his community members who accepted the vision and the roadmap towards the future and how individuals and clans came forward to give away their land for biodiversity conservation.
“Conserving a huge forest area use by the community for jhum purpose and the adjacent rivers as biodiversity conservation is not a walk into the garden of rose because the livelihood sustainability of the community solely depended on forest,” Phom asserted.
“While working towards a permanent biodiversity the livelihood sector remains a huge challenge therefore, if it has to be permanent and sustainable, then the livelihood sector needs to be permanent,” he said. However, despite shortage of funds and constrained resources, the effort was conceptualized by the community and the citizens worked hard since 2007 and thus, today, the biodiversity gives asylum to hundreds of species some of them which are endangered species, he said.
The communities in these three villages carry their own tiffin and work hard to sustain the biodiversity conservation and protect the species though the initiative seems to be overlooked from many sectors which are very provoking.
“We have never aimed at receiving financial support when we started this project, yet it is also learned that there are different funds meant for the purpose and specially Amur Falcons which the community was completely sidelined while there is a lot of success stories,” he maintained.
Phom also added that though Amur Falcon is just one species in its biodiversity conservation journey, since 2012 the Amur Falcons have started roosting in its biodiversity conserved areas and every year 8-10 lakhs of Amur Falcons roost there and according to the latest calculation looking at the flock there will be more than 12 Lakhs of Amur Falcons and there are some purely white Falcons with the flock which are supposed to have migrated from the Arctic region. In 2016 one such white falcon was spotted and it was named Snow White Amur Falcon.
Reporting about the “Longleng” the Amur Falcon in which the satellite was tagged in 2016, Phom Said, while there were exasperating reports of the Amur Falcons, “Longleng” stopped transmitting its report for few days, which became a huge concern. But, after requesting the community members to pray, “Longleng” started giving its signal again. Phom said, the Satellite Transmitter on “Longleng” is cradled by prayer which he reported to the Scientists. Phom also said there are other Roosting sites which the Government should identify, dialogue with the community for giving safe refuge.
He also expressed that the vision of Lemsachenlok is to expand the conservation initiatives and whoever wish their supports will be facilitated. Lemsachenlok is a community development society, set up for planning, setting up programs and projects, monitoring and assessment of different community development programs. Entire program of the Community in Yaongyimchen, Alayong and Sanglu is executed under the Supervision of Lemsachenlok. Members of the society and other well wishers voluntarily contributed funds for community welfare through which all the works have been executed.
