Arunachal Pradesh-based NGO, Youth Mission for Clean River, organized a webinar on ‘stream rejuvenation and biodiversity conservation’ to celebrate World Environment Day on June 5.
Session speaker Gomar Basar, who is the co-founder of Egam Basar (EB) project, highlighted the success story of water and biodiversity conservation, eco-tourism, and sustainable agriculture management by EB-Project Nature at Soi village in Basar.
He shared that earlier in 2009, water supply and irrigation structures became redundant due to scarcity of water and wetland rice cultivation (WRC) had to be abandoned in Soi village due to massive shifting cultivation and deforestation in and around Bolen springshed over several years and denudation of forest leading to decreasing water table.
This crisis, he said, gave birth to the EB-project nature which was founded in 2011 to intervene and find the solution to address both the water and livelihood issues.
The village now gets sufficient potable water throughout the year and enough water to revive paddy fields and other hort-agri activities. By motivating hunters and youths for the protection of wildlife and biodiversity, the area now has benefited significantly in terms of wildlife, bio-resource, forest, agriculture conservation, and eco-tourism promotion, Basar mentioned.
A sizeable number of participants attended the webinar.
Meanwhile, YMCR chairman SD Loda said that the NGO could not conduct tree plantation like every year due to the ongoing lockdown. He, however, said YMCR will conduct fruit-trees plantation program along the national highway once the lockdown is lifted.
