Improved cookstoves provided to forest guards of 45 anti-poaching camps in Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve to reduce emissions and smoke from their kitchens by up to 80%.
| Photo Credit: Special arrangement

The authorities of Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve, in Assam, have targeted 233 kitchens to protect the lungs of green warriors who guard the rhino habitat.

About 200 km east of Guwahati, the tiger reserve has 233 anti-poaching camps. This works out to a camp for every 5.82 sq. km, one of the highest for protected areas across the globe.

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Each anti-poaching camp is manned by 4-8 personnel whose primary duty is to patrol within their jurisdiction 24 hours a day in shifts and keep poachers and intruders at bay. However, the kitchens of these 233 camps fuelled primarily by firewood have been smoke chambers.

Forest guards of the Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve with the cookstoves.
| Photo Credit:
Special arrangement

“While the Forest Department is working to improve the supply of LPG cylinders, firewood will remain an important source of fuel for many camps owing to the remoteness of location and access,” the park’s field director Sonali Ghosh said.

From March 16 to 21, the park authorities provided 47 improved cookstoves across 45 anti-poaching camps to ensure “high morale and efficiency” among the field staff. Supported by the Wildlife Trust of India’s Rapid Action Project, these stoves are expected to reduce firewood consumption by up to 50%, lower emissions and smoke by up to 80%, reduce cooking time, and decrease firewood storage needs.

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The improved cook stoves are a mix of two-pot stoves for 37 anti-poaching camps, a single-pot stove for eight camps and two 50-litre capacity stoves that can cook for up to 100 people, for the kitchens at the Assam Forest Battalion and the Elephant Camp within the tiger reserve.

“The stoves were handed over after demo sessions. A post-usage survey will be carried out a month after installation, which will lay the case for a larger scale intervention in the next phase,” Ms. Ghosh said.

Forest officials said the anti-poaching camps rely on wood-based traditional self-made stoves that have several drawbacks, including time-consuming firewood collection, storage space, inefficient burning of wood, and health hazards caused by wood smoke.

“We have been trying to improve the quality of life in the anti-poaching camps, a majority of which are in remote locations and difficult to access, especially during the monsoon season when they are affected by floods. It will, thus, be difficult to replace firewood with alternative fuels but this specially manufactured stove should make life that much easier for our forest guards,” a senior official said.

Kaziranga is home to more than 80% of the country’s population of the greater one-horned rhinoceros and has one of the highest concentrations of tigers apart from the Asian elephant, Asiatic water buffalo, and the swamp deer. The park is also the address of nine of the 14 primate species found in the Indian subcontinent.