**4. Conservation models**

"Preservationism" and "sustainable use" are perhaps the two conservation models among the conservationists of India. Although both conservation models aim to conserve bioresources and landscapes, "preservationism" restricts any humanmediated activities, whereas the "sustainable use" approach advocates the involvement of local people [29]. The sustainable use approach involves local communities for conservation of biodiversity with extractive human use, while preservationists argue that some species especially large vertebrates, habitat specialists, and other sensitive species cannot be conserved with high human densities and extractive use of forests. Both the paradigms have their own strengths and weaknesses, and therefore, none of the models can be explicitly applied to all the cases.

#### **4.1 Preservationism**

The preservationist paradigm of conservation is based on its biological, ecological, and ethical values of each species. It considers that mere maintaining ecosystem services and sustainable use do not go to preserve all the forms of biodiversity. Thus, it advocates strictly protecting natural ecosystems from human activity and ensuring that they are minimally altered [29]. Successful implementation of this approach has resulted in fruitful results, which are evident from the fact that most of the threatened wildlife is now only restricted to protected areas. For example, the Asiatic lions and the wild Ass can only be spotted in Wildlife Sanctuaries of Gujarat. Similarly, Kaziranga National Park of Assam has now become home to the single highest population (more than 60% individuals) of one-horned rhino and the Asian water buffaloes in the world. Further, the number of tigers has increased significantly from 268 in 1972 to more than 2900 in 2018 through the establishment of tiger reserves.

Although this approach is most common and successful for the conservation of large vertebrate animals and another organism including plants, it too has some demerits. The restriction of human activities and resource use usually gives rise to conflicts with local communities and administration. It emphasizes more on law and order problems, protection, poaching, and illicit resource use. Resettlements carried out in this approach often considered overly bureaucratic, authoritarian, and expensive. Furthermore, civil engineering works such as the construction of roads, waterholes, and watchtowers are taken more into consideration rather than

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*Sustainable Management of National Parks and Protected Areas for Conserving Biodiversity…*

conservation aspects such as implementation and effective management of wildlife. Therefore, preservationists must prove with examples that they can compensate the costs of local communities for their extractive use and livelihoods along with

It has been observed that several local communities use resources in a much judicious way rather than exploiting the resources. These traditional resource use practices involve temporal shifts in resource use such as food preference, hunting, spatial limitations for some forest areas (such as sacred groves), and shifting agriculture. Such resource use patterns of indigenous communities are considered sustainable which forms the basis of "sustainable use" paradigm of conservation in India [29]. This paradigm assumes that the upkeep and survival of biodiversity can be enhanced by providing control to local communities for traditional management as their livelihoods depend on biological resources. For example, nomadic Changpas of Ladakh have sustained their pastoralist lifestyles for centuries and coexisted with endangered wild species like the Snow leopard [8]. Similarly, the Indian state Kerala has attained social sustainability through their mutualistic equitable resource use rather than unequal competitive resource consumption [30]. Thus, when local communities are provided with the complete access and management of land use like shifting cultivation and pastoralism, local sustainability is maintained, and biodiversity is conserved in a more effective way [29]. However, this is not the case in every protected area and these traditional practices are not being followed in some reserved areas. For example, Kailadevi Wildlife Sanctuary, which was considered as a successful model of participatory conservation, has too suffered from the local extinction of tigers. Similarly, intensive jhum cultivation in a locally managed forest has not only reduced forest cover but also caused a decline in biological diversity [31]. Further, many local people such as Tibetan refugees, Gujjar, and other pastoralists do not follow the traditional practices of pastoralism that were maintained for centuries [8, 19]. Similarly, selling of community-owned reserves and growing of cash crops in northeast India have increased during the past decades [32]. Thus, traditional sustainable practices no longer seem to exist in reality, and they are being faded away even in sacred groves [33]. Therefore, this approach needs to put forward as examples for the successful conservation of large vertebrate species such as the tiger and elephant compatible with extractive use and high-density human populations. Before adopting any sustainable use models, the impact of uncontrolled human pressures on wildlife

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92435*

should be evaluated carefully [18].

**5. Approaches for sustainable management**

India followed the "preservationism" model for biodiversity conservation during

the initial establishment of protected areas, but it resulted in increased conflicts with local people. In order to buffer conflicts of the local people, India was the first country to introduce the concept of "Joint Forest Management" in its National Forest Policy, 1988, which has the provision of involving the local communities for sustainable conservation and management of forests. Thus, there is a shifting paradigm from "preservationism" to "sustainable use" approach during the recent times. This approach is managing forest resources with varying degrees of success by taking care of community needs and aspirations for the past 30 years. Although rural communities and forest officers are developing a positive attitude toward

**4.2 Sustainable use**

conservation of endangered species and ecosystems.

conservation aspects such as implementation and effective management of wildlife. Therefore, preservationists must prove with examples that they can compensate the costs of local communities for their extractive use and livelihoods along with conservation of endangered species and ecosystems.
