Livelihood and potential conservation roles of wild edible herbs

Traditional communal area resources are mostly described as open access resources and are frequently associated with over-utilization and poor management of the natural resources therein. Yet it is those’ unproductive and impoverished lands’ that support and supply diverse sources of important biological resources from which local people benefit. Over 80% of poor rural households are known to depend on Wild Edible Herbs (WEHs) in Indian forest fringe areas. As a result, the daily usage of WEHs is a significant, yet underestimated component of livelihoods, biodiversity, land use and land cover. This underestimation results from the lack of monetization of the consumption of these resources at the household level, and the lack of formal markets, and hence they are not captured in national level accounting. However, they may account for a considerable proportion of the total biodiversity in natural and subsistence ecosystems

Crunchy, juicy devil's backbone

I remember my mother eagerly waiting for the rainy season to begin and for the tender shoots and fresh leaves of narale to sneak out from the trees in our courtyard in a central Karnataka village. Narale (Cissus quadrangularis) or devil’s backbone, as the succulent plant is known, remains dormant the whole year and starts regenerating soon after it receives the first shower of rain in June. Till October, my mother would regularly collect its angular shoots and leaves for making chutney and serve it with an advice: the zigzagged stems can fight kidney stone

Spatial patterns of tree and shrub species diversity in Savanadurga State Forest, Karnataka

A study conducted in Savanadurga State Forest in Karnataka indicates that the spatial variation of trees was high and similarity among the species in the adjacent plots was low, suggesting that the spatial heterogeneity is influencing the pattern of diversity of tree species. The degraded forest, which is considered as shrub and tree savanna of the Anogeissus–Chloroxylon–Acacia series is highly diverse, recording over 59 tree and 119 shrub species. Tree species similarity index among quadrats in the forest is less than 0.02, indicating high diversity in tree species within a limited area of the sample. Conversely, the shrub species are far more similar than the tree species when the two plots are compared. The number of stems > 1 cm DBH observed in the sampled plot (7844/ha) is high, further reinforcing that the area is rich in species and stems. Correlation between species diversity of mean and standard deviations of adjacent plots of the focal plot was high, indicating that the species-rich patches in the forests are likely to associate with other speciesrich patches. The study is based on 30 quadrats of 25 m ´ 25 m laid at 1 km interval over the state forest

Livelihood responses to Lantana camara invasion and biodiversity change in southern India: application of an asset function framework

Natural resources play key roles as assets in the livelihoods of rural communities. However, the benefits of these assets in livelihoods are frequently conceived narrowly as income generating or vulnerability reducing. We contend that they have other important roles to play in poverty reduction and livelihood change. In this paper we use a case study of two ethnic communities in a village in southern India to investigate livelihood responses to change in forest biodiversity through an examination of changes in attributes of natural assets resulting from the invasion of Lantana camara and wider socio-economic change. The invasion of forest by Lantana has contributed to changes in the attributes and functions of four key natural assets: forest grazing, bamboo for basketry, Phoenix loureie for brooms, and wild yams. We observe that differences in households’ and individuals’ ability to substitute important functions of lost or declining assets affect their ability to adapt to changes in resource availability and attributes. Analysing changes in asset attributes for different user groups allows the social effects of environmental change to be disaggregated