Hi!

Over the past few years, we've been working to develop a fascinating five and a half acre piece of land in Hatod into a "self-sustaining microreserve" and wildlife corridor.

Though it certainly can sound an unlikely sort of proposition, there's a strange magic to the place with traces of extraordinary ancient civilizations littering the brush-jungle for miles around us,..
and since we're already down to land-availability of about 0.003 sq. km. per head in India anyway, it's more than an appropriate target to go for ~ with our focus on 2020, or even just upon yesterday.

We call our project-site "The Last Resort",....

Over time, our efforts on this project have been increasingly appreciated by our neighbours (mostly farmers), and there is now a growing community involvement focused especially upon turning a 180 hectare publicly-owned hill we adjoin into a model minireserve ~ with us and our northern neighbour, Mr. Ajit Singh, providing a long-term wildlife corridor-to-water through our properties. The idea has also been lucky enough to receive some administrative support towards this end, especially through the goodwill and good offices of the Chief Election Commissioner of India, Dr. M. S. Gill, whose family farm happens to be just across the river from our site. It may be worth mentioning here that no administrative funding of any sort is directly received on any of these accounts by The Last Resort itself.

The hill (looking tiny in the picture above due to optical-foreshortening, but actually large enough to be seen from 5-10 kilometers away) has a history of having been a favorite nursery for big cats-with-cubs through centuries. Till very recently, there in fact used to be a proper royal hunting-machan (hide) on our site, that was dismantled some years before we acquired the place for the stone it was constructed of to be used in building a house nearby. The foundation of the machan can still be seen if one rigorously seeks it out, marking that a lot of big cats have certainly also been popped on our site at the base of the hill through the centuries.

Big cats have continued to come and spend time upon this hill and in our own little forested wildlife corridor, through the 3-4 years we've been working on our microreserve. Most of these cats (but not all), are probably taking time out from life in the Madho National Park, whose south-eastern boundary wall passes about one to five kilometers from us (West, North & East).

(For the record: there's an eerie feel to walking through a small forest surrounded on all side by farms, with big cats known to be nearby ~ i. e. perhaps behind that bush over there???)

The postion we proceed from on all of this is that the entire Indian subcontinent today labours under such an immense human-population burden, that the only chance of survival for much of our flora and fauna into the future is for these to be consciouly drawn into and accomodated within what is rapidly becoming entirely our evolving environment.

If this sounds almost like proposing that we domesticate our wildlife, that is almost what we do indeed mean:- well-thought-out communities with lands equitably distributed on the micro scale to all appropriate uses, including proactive nurturing and sustenance of the local biodiversity.

"The Last Resort" is a project that proceeds as individual action upon this proposition on private land, and is a fully unregistered Non-NGO.

On this project, we are (at best) little more than socially-concerned small-scale landowners in a genuinely backward district of Central India, trying to make friends with our environment. We are certainly not Development Professionals attempting to carry forward a community agenda,.. but do hope to network with, learn from, and involve such professionals as we proceed (which is one of the reasons for development of this website).

The target with regard to The Last Resort itself is simply to create a self-sustaining alternative development model on five and a half acres of privately-held rural land in Central India ~ with a focus upon the year 2020. In this, we intend to support and nurture components of the local biodiversity in symbiosis with a modest agricultural/ horticultural capacity, AND provide good long-term careers to not less than five landless adult "adivasis" (a generic Indian term for a broad spectrum of socially-disadvantaged indigenous tribal folk) from the neighborhood ~ three of whom we intend to also eventually house on site en familie.

For Self-Sustenance in this framework, the employees are obviously to generate income through an on-site enterprise. Touchstones on choice of this enterprise would include simplicity of training and of operation, optimized value-addition on local skills and resources, and prudent marketing. There are many possibilities that we have still to learn about.

We also need to learn about solar, wind, and other alternative energies; animals, insects, birds, bees, trees, waste-management; and a hundred thousand other things.

For Social Relevance ~aside from direct returns to the local community in terms of jobs generated~ we would ideally hope to choose an enterprise with easy reproducibility for others, and also perhaps integrate a skills-training program for jobless strong-arm-lads and able ladies in the neighbourhood.

From the perspective of the small-scale rural Indian landowner with a dream, it will always be wonderful to associate with development, environment, and conservation professionals who can advise, guide, and perhaps even assist in making this a reality, and we look forward to such opportunities coming our way.

On the ground, the site is an elongated form tapering inwards from its southern to its northern boundaries, and is bordered along the two longer sides by a river (east), and a canal (west). It is a six acre site as seen on the map, but this includes a half-acre patch of "public land" (south-east) on which we may, or may not, seek a long-term lease from the government (picture above shot from south-east corner of site).

The site itself lies on the eastern foot of a reasonably large and well-forested hill, with the northern boundary running where hill, canal, and river approach closest to each other (about 30 metres).

One result of this conjunction is that the northern section of the site is therefore an abundant, pristine, and ancient local brush-jungle, as it has never been worth clearing and leveling for agricultural or other purposes through the years. A second happy result of the conjunction is a perennial underground rainwater-seepage from the hill-mass down to the river, which helps sustain the latter as a year-round open water-source along the entire length of the site and more. The canal along the western boundary, however, is an agricultural waterway fed now and then to a total of about 2 months in the year. It is about ten feet wide, carries water to a depth of three feet, and traces our high ground ~ thereby creating some interesting micro-environments with it's periodic water-flows and seepages.

The differential in elevation between the canal (higher) and the river (lower) is thirty feet or more, of which half slopes sharply down from the eastern edge of the site to the normal water-level of the river. The river itself is perhaps 30-50 feet wide on the water-surface, and about 10-15 feet deep in the normal course. The entire length of the river-bank on-site is densely forested, with tree-limbs arching out over the water. Several mugger crocodiles live along this length in a healthy symbiosis with the thriving smaller wildlife.

By local standards, the site already is a significant microreserve ~ however micro it may be.

Both the canal and the river flow directly from the lowest, and last, of three major lakes in the Madho National Park ~ less than two kilometers upstream. Though not counted amongst the more important parks of India, the park has recently been expanded north and east of us (2-5 km.) to adjoin the Sind River at Amola and Narwar. Notice-boards and dry-stone walls already mark the new park-boundaries, but a lot of improvement is more than overdue in it's management (see "Eco Notes").

1. A program of controlled afforestation has been gradually covering our site over the last few years, to produce appropriate and adequate habitat areas for the wildlife species we would be best advised to particularly seek, attract, and accommodate.

2. Given that most Indian zoos and many National Parks are facing problems of acute over-crowding with regard to a considerable diversity of wildlife species, we may seek to identify surplus-populations of important species in this context, and offer accommodation to specific viable numbers of some of these, if possible (however, no independent enclosures are intended to be maintained, except as may be required against item # 4, below).

3. To the extent that implementing the above item may demand a fence beyond the ordinary around our entire site, we may seek funding-assistance on this account, if necessary, against the larger social and environmental relevance we hope to achieve with this project.

4. On the basis of learned advice from appropriate quarters, we may establish appropriate breed-and-release facilities for certain smaller local fauna. However, as a private establishment, we would in that case certainly reserve the option that a bird on the table may be worth two in the bush.

5. Whereas most of the site will be given over to the maintenance of guest species in a self-regenerating balance, a certain portion of the land will be set aside to optimally yield agro-produce by application of proven agro-technologies of the day.

6. We have the following broad target on Self-Sustenance & Social Relevance..

a. Initiate a profit-generating local enterprise, or facility

b. Generate full-time employment for five local people
(*just for the record: part of our current agro-yield routinely goes towards mid-day meals for kids attending a local charitable school run by Ajit Singh)

7. A small, contiguous, fixed section of the site is set aside for establishment over time of the following (this does not cover essentially passive structures that may be located anywhere on-site ~ such as ponds and water-supply, stairway to the river, path through the forest, random stone benches, and perhaps even a small arbor or two, etc.).

To put it briefly, the project-concept essentially emerges from the following perceptions of the Indian situation:

From this (and much else, of course), one concludes simply that for very many of the wildlife species of our time and place on this planet, survival into the future increasingly depends upon (a) our efficiency and alacrity in accommodating them into our changing milieu, and (b) their own ability to adapt to this opportunity, as it arises.

Accordingly, our perception is that India today is in a unique position to chose from just the following two targets with regard to management of the nation's wildlife resources into the future: