About 150 students, researchers and academicians from universities across India are participating in the programme. Mangaluru: The National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK) Surathkal inaugurated a two-day workshop on ‘Emotional Drivers for Biodiversity Conservation Action’ on Wednesday at the Silver Jubilee Auditorium, NITK campus.
C Ravishankar, deputy conservator of Forests, Mangaluru Division, said legal frameworks and population estimates are essential, but conservation succeeds only when local communities join in. Ullas Karanth, Padma Shri awardee and emeritus director, Centre for Wildlife Studies, Bengaluru, who is also an alumnus of NITK said that engineers have no option of saying they have no solution, and that problem-solving habit gave him confidence in a field where it is easy to become a doomsayer. He cited the forests of Madikeri, where faith in local deities has brought villagers and the forest department together to protect forest land. He also pointed to the role of mangroves and the vulnerability of India’s coastal ecosystems, and called on young people to take up conservation. The mathematics he studied at NITK later proved central as wildlife ecology became highly quantitative. He added that conservation also needs biology and the social sciences, which is the cross-disciplinary approach the workshop follows.