Since 2005, the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) has been working in schools situated around Tiger reserves in Central India for spreading awareness about conservation and coexistence with nature among children.
As conservation tools and technologies have evolved through the last couple of decades, the BNHS team started an initiative to spread awareness about new conservation equipment, such as camera traps to the school children who often come across these devices around their homes and surrounding forests.
Monitoring equipment and misconceptions about them
Though used extensively for monitoring and tracking wildlife, camera traps are a subject to a lot of misconceptions within the local communities, who believe that they have been installed for monitoring of village citizens and their activities.
BNHS’ sessions and a win for conservation education
During BNHS awareness sessions, the students learned about handling the camera traps, monitoring them & collecting the data. Last year, 54 students across 9 schools participated in this initiative during which camera traps were installed at the locations for 20 days, post which the photos were analyzed. The activity was very well received by the students who participated enthusiastically. The camera traps installed by them managed to capture the presence of tigers, wild boards, spotted deer, leopards, and sambar deer. This was a win for the project as this helped inform the students about the presence of wildlife in their area as well as bust the misconception about camera traps.
Camera Trap Exhibition
On the 29th of April 2022, an exhibition was organized for showcasing these images. Such activities go a long way in encouraging students to get involved in conservation activities and learn more about their surrounding environment and wildlife. As they say, you can’t expect people to conserve forests until they fall in love with them.