ANNOUNCEMENTS
Rural communities around protected areas in peri-urban regions are often dependent on mixed crop-livestock farming as their only source of livelihood. Tourists visit protected areas as wildlife tourism is highly promoted and rural and cultural tourism is not. So how can rural communities around protected areas reap many of the benefits of tourism? Community-based ecotourism is one such alternative source of livelihood through which the rural communities can take maximum advantage of tourism. But how do the communities equip themselves to be able to host tourists and ensure limited yet good communication with them? Funded training programs, policies that promote rural tourism and ecotourism promote community-based ecotourism. Through training, members of the rural communities get the opportunity to equip themselves with the skills required to work in the tourism sector. For this study, I assessed the effectiveness of one such training program in Uttarakhand. The young members (trainees) of the rural communities in 2 villages near Jhilmil Jheel Conservation Reserve (JJCR), Rasiyabad, Uttarakhand were being trained for nature-guiding activities in JJCR and surrounding areas and I conducted semi-structured interviews with those trainees for primary data collection. I examined the scope of community-based ecotourism as a rural livelihood in 2 villages namely Gaindi Khata and Dudhala Dayalwala village near JJCR. I also conducted Participatory Rural Appraisal to understand whether the women of the rural community in these 2 villages interested in participating in such training programs which equip them with skills required for community-based ecotourism. Village officials such as Pradhan and the Eco-Development Committee head of these 2 villages were also interviewed to understand the active schemes in the village and whether they support community-based ecotourism initiatives or not. After analysing the primary data collected, I concluded that the nature-guide training program has been effective in terms of capacity building and knowledge required for wildlife tourism (especially avitourism) in JJCR and its surrounding areas but there is no policy to ensure that taking nature guides is mandatory in JJCR, and thus the training program did not ideally lead to securing the livelihood of the local community and community-based ecotourism is at a nascent stage in these 2 villages and there is need for training programs for women.
Keywords: Ecotourism, community-based ecotourism, nature-guide, Uttarakhand, Jhilmil Jheel Conservation Reserve.
