XVI International Botanical Congess

About 520 protected areas (PAs) representing a variety of ecosystems covering about 4.5% of the country's territory have been created to conserve the national biodiversity. These are managed by a set of official conservation policies planned and controlled by bureaucracy in collaboration with urban environmentalists ignoring the essential fact that wild life habitats are also life support systems for more than 3 million people living inside the PAs and traditionally dependent on them for their subsistence needs leading to continuous conflicts between the natives and PA managers. Of late, however there is a growing realization that strategies will have to be evolved in collaboration with rural communities incorporating their traditional wisdom along with modern scientific approach to achieve tangible success. Symbiotic association between nature and the natives is a well-established fact in Indian philosophy though urbanization has led to distortion resulting in parasitic relationship. It is therefore felt need of today to revive these traditional symbiotic systems of natives and incorporate these in the conservation strategies recognizing the role of natives in conservation and sustainable utilization of natural resources. An attempt has been made in this paper to study and document these traditional practices of natives aimed at conservation and sustainable utilization for biodiversity.