After solidifying plans with Indian conservationists, CCC Director Rob Horwich travelled to India in February to begin developing community and government support for a reforestation project in Western Assam. Protection of what remains of the region's forest reserves is crucial to the survival of the golden langur, probably the most endangered primate in India. The langur has a limited range in Western Assam and parts of Bhutan, and the massive deforestation in that area caused by illegal logging poses a severe threat to the species. Conservation efforts have faced obstacles such as lack of enforcement for protected areas and extremely volatile political conditions in and around the reserves.

In the midst of this complex situation, CCC, in conjunction with the Central Land and Forest Protection Committee (CLFPC), and the Indo-U.S. Primate Project, with funding from the Margot Marsh Biodiversity Foundation, has begun work to stem the deforestation and foster local support for primate and forest protection. Using a Jeep purchased with Margot Marsh funds, Horwich and Rajen Islari, President of the CLFPC, spent three weeks in February and March travelling to villages located within the reserves and promoting the new Community Forest Conservation Program. Horwich and Islari met with village leaders and encouraged them to work with CCC and CLFPC to create management plans for their lands. These plans would include maintaining and replanting many of the deforested areas. In turn, CCC and CLFPC pledged to urge the Assam Forest Department to guarantee participating villages a percentage of future wood for fuel, building and other activities.

By the end of the trip, Horwich and Islari had addressed eight assemblies of villages, most of native Bodo people and some of Nepali and Santhal peoples. These latter ethnic groups were relocated to the area by the British for labor in the logging industry. A total of 72 villages of all three groups signed up to participate in the program. In addition, Horwich and Islari met with government agencies, Assam Forest Department staff and army and police personnel, encouraging them to assess their role and effectiveness in stopping the large scale forest destruction.

Throughout the trip, the community assemblies were marked by enthusiasm amongst villagers for the reforestation program and were a major success. In the Bodo village of Bharatnagar, the meeting on the Community Forest Conservation Program was followed by an impromptu demonstration of Bodo music and dance for the visitors. Village women and girls performed traditional Bodo dances and the village headman accompanied them on a traditional Bodo instrument. The villagers then commemorated the visit and the opening their new outdoor market by naming it "Robert Market" after Rob Horwich.

In addition to support from the villagers, the Community Forest Conservation Program is also gaining support from government agencies. The Forest Reserves of Western Assam have recently been designated a Biopshere Reserve, indicating a renewed committment to protecting the area. Horwich is scheduled to return to Assam in the fall to continue assisting with strategizing and developing community and government support. CCC is very excited about the changes that are already underway and the prospects for reestablishing and protecting the precious natural resources of this beautiful corner of the world.

A program for a community co-managed park system was begun in June of this year with a $750,000 UNDP grant awarded to the Protected Areas Conservation Trust (PACT) of Belize. PACT is an NGO that receives funding from the Belize government for conservation. CCC played a role in obtaining the grant and will be working with PACT to create the new park system.

The 3 year project will unify work that CCC and others have been carrying out in Belize for the past decade by giving structure to some of the community conservation programs already underway. It will focus on developing four major protected areas while providing valuable models for other community initiatives. It will also promote interactions between the four areas and other projects. Successful and unsuccessful experiences will be shared and learned from and all community programs will eventually become part of a loosely coordinated park system.

In May-June, CCC Director Rob Horwich and Assistant Director Jon Lyon travelled to Belize on an initial trip to facilitate the beginning of the project. Horwich and Lyon, who will be advisors to PACT over the 3 year period, met with PACT staff, including the new Project Manager, Lisel Alamilla. Ms. Alamilla has a Masters Degree in environmental education, training in business and tourism and has worked on a number of community development projects in Belize. As Project Manager, she will be overseeing all aspects of the project and coordinating the components for each of the four parks.

While in Belize, Dr. Lyon also helped to work out a memorandum of understanding with the Belize Government's Land Information Center so that the project could begin creating GIS maps for the four parks. Horwich and Lyon travelled with Ms. Alamilla to several parks for initial meetings with communities associated with the parks. Ms. Alamilla will continue to attend meetings with these communties over the course of the project. Dr. Lyon will be returning in July to create community land use maps with the help of these communities.

Five Blues National Park

Five Blues was proclaimed a National Park on April 22, 1991. The park centers on a 200 ft. deep lake of different hues of blue. It is situated amongst beautiful karst hills riddled with caves containing Mayan artifacts. The government expressed its committment to community co-management by creating an agreement between the Friends of Five Blues Association of St Margaret's Village and the Forestry Department to manage the park. Income from the park is to be used for park/community development.

In 1994, the Association received a UN Global Environmental Fund grant and began to implement the management plan. Despite sporadic fundings since then, the Friends of Five Blues, has maintained the park through the help of Peace Corps volunteers, a Swiss volunteer and a group of students from Princeton University. The park now attracts approximately 1000 visitors a year.

Aguacaliente Wildlife Sanctuary

In 1998, the wetlands near the village of Laguna were declared the Aguacaliente (Lu Ha) Wildlife Sanctuary. Lu Ha means warm water in the Kekchi Mayan language. The 5,492 acre area is a wetlands in a low basin with several lakes that receive water from the surrounding hills. Due to its flooding regime, the area is only accessible during the dry season, and is home to a unique vegetation community and many wetland bird species. Members from 11 nearby villages formed the Aguacaliente Management Team to co-manage the Sanctuary with the Belize government.

Manatee Area

The Manatee Area includes the Manatee Special Development Area (SDA) and the Manatee West SDA, created in 1992-3 by the Belize government. Covering over 170,000 acres, Manatee contains an extensive lagoon and river system and a wide array of other ecosystems including beaches, mangrove forests, lagoons, pine ridge forests, riverine forests and unique karst tower forests. The Southern Lagoon has the largest population of manatees in Central America and other remarkable wildlife such as the endangered hawksbill turtle, jaguars, other cats, howler and spider monkeys, American crocodiles, jabiru storks and many other birds.

In 1993, CCC, with two Peace Corps volunteers, began work with the village chairman and others from Gales Point, located in the Southern Lagoon. They established the Gales Point Progressive Cooperative for the purposes of helping to conserve the areas natural resources and develop an ecotourism program with economic benefits for the community.

Freshwater Creek

Established in 1926, the Freshwater Creek Forest Reserve is one of Belize's oldest reserves. Part of the 55,000 reserve surrounding the large Honey Camp lagoon has now been proposed as a National Park under the new PACT project. The reserve features rainforest and pine savanna and has a large population of logwood. Logwood, which was used for making a dye, was the original reason that the English colonized Belize.

In 1995, the NGO Help For Progress, with the Belize government, began work with communities around the forest reserve. Three of the communties and a group of landowners formed the Association of Friends of Freshwater Creek Forest Reserve as a means for co-management.

Assam is one of 7 sister states in northeast India, connected by a narrow strip to the main peninsula of India and sandwiched between Bangladesh and Bhutan. Because the area is inhabited predominantly by tribal peoples, its political history has been plagued by groups seeking tribal autonomy since 1947. There are currently fifteen recognized extremist groups in the area fighting for local independence. Several of these groups operate from within the Assam forest reserves because of the security provided for their activities. Some groups are also rumored to collect tarriffs from log smugglers, while others are reputed to protect the forest by killing illegal woodcutters who do not heed warnings.

Ethnic violence between Bodo and Santhal tribal peoples has also erupted within the reserves, leading to the flight of both legal and illegal forest communities. Legislation by the Central Land and Forest Protection Committee (CLFPC) has stopped the return of the illegal, encroaching villages and many of the legal villages are being reestablished within the forest. There are still, however, 200,000 - 300,000 refugees of both legal and illegal communities who remain in refugee camps. Many of the camps are located within the forest reserves and still pose a threat to the forests through illegal logging for firewood and log smuggling.

Militant groups and ethnic violence have created an atmosphere of fear which has caused the Assam Forest Department to become ineffectual in protecting the reserves. Log smugglers are deforesting the reseves at an unprecedented rate, jeopardizing the wildlife and ecosystems that exist in the 350,00 hectare area. This volatile situation makes conservation in Western Assam as complex and difficult as anywhere in the world. CCC hopes that community involvement will be the key to creating a successful conservation program in Assam.

This year's Spring Watershed Forum, held April 16th, was an opportunity for teachers, students and experts to share ideas and experiences with Geographic Information System technology. Organized by CCC Coordinator Barb Schieffer, the forum was part of the ongoing incorporation of GIS technology into Kickapoo Valley schools as part of the Kickapoo Watershed Consortium water monitoring program. The acquisition of the GIS equipment for the schools was made possible by a grant from the Wisconsin Advanced Telecommunications Foundation solicited by CCC Assistant Director Dr. Jon Lyon.

Opening the morning session were presentations by Doug Avoles and Phil Hahn from the Monroe and Vernon County Land Conservation Offices. Both discussed the use of GIS for mapping and conservation work in their respective counties. Doug Avoles also described Monroe County's use of GPS (Global Positioning System), which can be accurate to within centimeters, to create a fully digitized map of the county. An additional expert presentation was made in the afternoon by Helen Kahn, an employee of the Ho Chunk Nation. She discussed her work using GIS and GPS in the Kickapoo Reserve to do both biological and cultural (archaeological) mapping.

Teachers from around the Kickapoo Valley presented work being done in their schools using the new GIS equipment. Mark Vachavake and Jack Pfitsch of the Wauzeka Schools explained their project in which they are integrating math and biology classes while monitoring five sites on Plum Creek in the lower Kickapoo Valley. Using water quality and macroinvertebrate data and some tree sampling, they are examining correlations between these data sets. Russell Gilbert and his students from North Crawford Schools presented an apple marketing survey they are conducting at a local apple orchard. While mapping out where customers come from, students are learning to use GIS and providing valuable information to the orchards.

Other presentations included John Gibb's project to map North Crawford school bus routes using GIS and Walt Griffin's project to map the school area at the Westby Schools. Jean Krause of the La Farge Schools is planning a riverwalk project to study and map trees and other aspects of the environment near the high school. Sue Hess of the Viroqua Schools led participants through the Kickapoo Watershed Consortium website, now online at cwspot.com/waterkick. The website will contain GIS data and maps produced by the schools, as well as data provided by the citizen monitoring program.

Sylvia Attleson talked about the progress of Kickapoo School's Spanish teacher Denise Buckbee's Environmental Ambassador Exchange Program. The program will be sending area Spanish teachers, community members and students to the Rio Ayuquila watershed in Jalisco, Mexico from August 2-12. While there, they will be learning about and monitoring the Ayuquila along with Mexican teachers and students. Future plans for the program include hosting Mexican teachers and students in the Kickapoo Valley for a similar water monitoring exchange, creating a Spanish language newsletter on local water monitoring to send to the Mexican schools and creating local resource centers for both rivers.

The Forum ended with a discussion and idea sharing session. Suggestions of potential future GIS projects included comparing water quality at different spring heads and looking for correlations downstream; having students map their own properties; monitoring for fish species; using GIS to help townships in land use planning; and having students do hands on stream rehabilitation work. This year's Forum was an exciting opportunity to view the progress of GIS use in the schools and the creative and innovative projects that teachers and students are producing with their new technological capabilities.

Community Conservation Consultants is pleased to announce that our new website is now up and running at:
www.communityconservation.org

The website provides a wealth of information on CCC and conservation and many wonderful color photographs that make our projects come alive. Through the website, CCC hopes to gain greater public exposure and appreciation for the importance of community-based conservation efforts as well as making information on community conservation easily accessible.

The CCC website includes descriptions of all projects past, present and pending, profiles of staff and associates, a selected bibliography of research articles related to our work and popular media coverage, and updated project information from our biannual newsletter. The site also provides links to other conservation organizations around the world and CCC email. All CCC books, posters and t-shirts are available to order through the site. Many thanks are due to Bob Mandel of Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin for making this site a reality.