RE: Daily Pioneer:PENCH VILLAGE’S SOLAR WAY FOR TIGER CONSERVATION
Rasanayagam Rudran
From: sat...@gmail.com
Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2016 07:03:08 +0530
Subject: Daily Pioneer:PENCH VILLAGE’S SOLAR WAY FOR TIGER CONSERVATION
To: satpu...@gmail.com
Daily Pioneer
0
A remote village of Ghatpendhari in Pench Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra has created history. It became the first of its kind in any buffer zone of a tiger reserve in the country to get renewable green energy through installation of Mini Grid Solar power. The project that has a generation capacity of 2.4Kilo Volts (KV) energy has been hailed by experts as solar solution for tiger conservation.
The village is inhabited by indigenous communities listed under the category of Below Poverty Line. It is amid the thick forests of Pench, located close to the border of Madhya Pradesh in the Nagpur district of Maharashtra. The villagers earlier relied on erratic power supply through the transmission lines from MP.
The power cuts in the village were thus rampant and according to a local villager even getting a mobile phone charged involved a 40 km-50 km trudge through dark jungles and wild animals around. To add to this, the local communities largely used kerosene lit lamps in their homes to deal with power crisis, which was not only expensive but also not environment friendly.
However, based on the remote location of the village and hardships borne by the villagers, Satpuda Foundation (SF) selected it under the project. SF is a non-profit organisation working on wildlife and forest conservation in Central India, with focus on green energy solutions in tiger reserves.
“Of the 200 households in the village, 76 have been connected to the solar mini grid through 70 poles. The solar service had a trial run for the past three months since June available for nearly eight hours between 6.30pm to 12pm and 4am to 7 am. It was commissioned by the Chief Wildlife Warden, Shree Bhagwan on Thursday. Each house has been provided with LED bulbs of 3 and 2 Watt along with a mobile charging socket, says Mandar Pingle, conservation officer of Satpuda Foundation.
"Two youths have been trained to take care of technical problems. Further, the failures can be monitored online too, with every house been allotted a unique ID, adds Pingle.
Welcoming the step, Kishor Rithe, Member, Maharashtra State Wildlife Board says that the transmission lines passing through the forests often electrocuted tigers and their prey. Further, proposals on transmission lines through Tiger Reserves got inordinately due to reluctance of Forest Departments and Wildlife Departments in granting approvals, due to misuse of power lines for electrocution of tigers. To add to the above, open transmission lines passing through the forest often disrupted by heavy rains are left unattended for weeks compelling villagers to live in the dark, says Rithe. The clean energy is also a solution to Government's plans for setting up more thermal power projects in this region which would ultimately pollute as well as degrade besides lead to loss of tiger habitat in the Satpuda Landscape, he maintains.
The project was funded by the Mumbai based tiger conservation NGO Conservation Action Trust with technical support from Bangalore based SELCO Solar Light Private Limited.
Former Member, Standing Committee of National Board for Wildlife,
Member, Maharashtra state Board for Wildlife,
Member, Maharashtra state Bio-diversity Board.
Administrative office:201,Plot 17,”Sapphire”Apptt, 201,Puranik Layout,
Bharat Nagar, Amravati Road, Nagpur. Tel.: 0712-2040288 (Tele-Fax)
Rasanayagam Rudran
From: sat...@gmail.com
Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2016 19:45:01 +0530
Subject: Re: [cbwm] RE: Daily Pioneer:PENCH VILLAGE’S SOLAR WAY FOR TIGER CONSERVATION
To: rud...@msn.com
Rudy
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