The workshop will be useful for participants who are or planning to work with communities living near forest areas. Those are planning to create alternative livelihood models to offset losses due to wildlife conflicts.

Part 1:
The workshop will start with a talk that will share story of PashooPakshee. Our failure, learnings and successes. What one can take away using a collaborative model and not re-invent the wheel.

Part 2:
The second part of the workshop participants will be split into groups of 2-3s and will be assisted to come up with their own livelihood model, training plan, business plan, learn crucial aspect of how to assist communities in creating a robust pricing to make an initiative self sustaining. Forecast geographic challenges, community conflicts and how they can create a robust model that will survive these challenges.

Part 3:
Present the Livelihood Model to the participants

Many questions in ecology and conservation science involve count data, such as the number of individuals of a species, the number of species (species richness), counts of behaviours performed by animals, counts of events such as crop damage, counts involving binary data (sex ratio, disease incidence, survival, mortality etc.) and so on. How do we analyse and make sense of such data? Regular linear models, like regression and ANOVA, do not perform well with count data. However, there is a class of powerful models, Generalised Linear Models (GLMs), that works very well with such data. GLMs are now commonly used to analyse count data in ecology and conservation science. In this workshop, we will focus on understanding, modelling and arriving at conclusions to questions in ecology and conservation science that involve count data. We will aim to (i) get an intuitive understanding of the sampling processes that generate count data; (ii) fit and interpret GLMs to count data; and (iii) discuss common pitfalls to analysing count data and ways to overcome them. This session will involve both discussions of the way these models work and hands-on experience in fitting and interpreting them using the software R.

Looking at the nuanced structures of plants can be intimidating. But knowing what parts of a plant to look at and how, can help us become more familiar with plants. Plants are grouped into families based on certain features in their leaves, flowers and fruits. By recognising these features, we can reach the plant’s family and greatly narrow down the possibilities of its identity. Some of these families will be discussed in the advanced workshop on plant identification.

So, to identify plants, let us begin by learning about the types of leaves, flowers and fruits.

Leaves, flowers and fruits - the features used to identify plants, are also seasonal and vital for plant life cycles. Studying this cyclicity (called ‘phenology’) over long periods can help us understand many things about an ecosystem, even the impacts of climate change!

In this workshop, we shall learn the basic units of morphology that can be used to identify plants - leaf, flower and fruit types. We shall go outdoors and learn to recognise the different features of plants in the field. Lastly, using our new ability to identify plants and their seasonal stages, we shall learn the ‘SeasonWatch’ method of monitoring tree phenology.

Note: This workshop (current or previous editions) is mandatory for attending the advanced workshop on plant identification.

For 30 years now and running the Protected Area Update (PAU), has been publishing news reports on wildlife conservation, livelihoods, and relevant laws and policies, from across India and also South Asia. The newsletter primarily accesses news from the mainstream English media and presents it in a tightly edited format of 24 pages published six times a year. It helps give the reader a bird's eye view of conservation issues and developments from around the country and has become a standard source of information for those interested in matters of wildlife and conservation.

Related initiatives on part of the PA Update have included the publishing of books focused on themes and regions that emerge from the historical data published in the newsletter and an ongoing initiative at IIT Bombay in collaboration with Kalpavriksh and the Foundation for Ecological Security to create an online archive of this database and to make it available for all to use.

Over the last four years there has also been a sister publication called the Maharasthra Sanrakshit Kshetra Vartapatra (Maharashtra Protected Area Update), a Marathi newsletter that draws upon the Marathi media and focusses exclusively on protected areas and conservation issues in Maharashtra. This year, the PA Update team experimented further by creating a one source PA Update i.e. one issue of the PA Update with news reports published only in one newspaper - 'The Telegraph'. Another issue of the PA Update was focussed on one region of the country – the Central Indian Landscape.

The multiple experiences over the last three decades have convinced us is the PA Update team that this format of news gathering and sharing has huge potential and multiple possibilities.

Facing a live audience to present your ideas and the results of your experiments or field studies is a skill that is seldom taught to researchers but needs to be. From defending a doctoral thesis to presenting a project proposal, today’s research increasingly depends on presentations at meetings and conferences as a means of communication. The workshop offers proven techniques to get technical information across to a live audience, and answers these and similar questions.

• Is there a formula to calculate the right font size?
• How do I know whether I am speaking too fast or too slowly?
• How long should I hold each slide of text for the audience to read it?

As part of the workshop, each participant is required to make a 7-minute presentation on her or his research.

This workshop is designed for researchers, science educators and students who are interested science in journalism and writing. It will focus on developing pitches and writing science stories on ecological research or personal field experiences. The workshop will help the participants enhance their pitching skills, writing articles and identify the most suitable mainstream media outlets in both English and other Indian languages. They will explore techniques for adapting their content to resonate with different audiences and communicate their stories in English and other Indian languages.

Mayank Aggarwal is a journalist with about 19 years of experience and trustee of The Reporters’ Collective Trust. He produces journalism in all three formats, print, multimedia and audio. His writing and reportage are focused on the intersections of environment, business, climate change, technology and development. He is a media trainer and journalism community mentor working independently with several organisations.

Rupsy Khurana, is a science communicator and outreach officer at National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru. Along side, she is a freelance multimedia science journalist who produces visual and text stories on recent research in ecology, citizen science, climate change and other fields of biology.

Folklores are important part of the South Asia where diverse cultures coexist together. These interacting cultures are not only limited to the human societies but, with the non-humans as well. The cultures are diverse and possess great historical significance. One way to understand them is by paying attention towards oral traditions, such as folklores, proverbs, anecdotes, songs, plays, dance performances and many more. Since the oral traditions are not standardised and uniform, this calls for an exploratory approach towards integrating linguistics in understanding the cultural diversity and local knowledge. Many anthropologists and linguists have collaborated to acknowledge language as an essential que to the scientific studies. But the approach is a little new to conservation sciences which has been driven by scientific and westernised methodologies. Documenting stories, folklores in conservation sciences shall provide a creative, imaginative platform to inform the world about wonders of science and society and why one should care about them. Stories and folklores can play an important role for understanding the belief systems and emotional connection of the societies with the non-human world. In the rapidly changing landscapes and globalisation, the stories and cultures are getting lost in the fast-paced culture. It is important to incorporate this knowledge in formulating conservation strategies which are inclusive and just.

Conservation efforts are paramount for maintaining biodiversity and ensuring sustainability of both ecosystem as well as vulnerable communities that reside within these ecosystems. However, the efficacy of these efforts are frequently compromised by factors such as climate change, habitat degradation, and anthropogenic pressures, which increases inherent ecosystem vulnerability. Assessing these vulnerabilities are essential for developing conservation and adaptation strategies. Additionally, it provides a critical framework for evaluating the effectiveness of existing conservation strategies, ensuring that they remain relevant and effective in the face of evolving threats. This dual focus ensures that conservation initiatives not only protect natural habitats but also support the livelihoods and resilience of communities that depend on these ecosystems.

Through hands-on training in data collection, analysis, and interpretation, participants will be enabled to effectively utilise the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report 5 (AR5) vulnerability framework to identify priority areas for intervention. The training would specifically focus on developing unique indicators to quantify vulnerability. Participants would finally create their own vulnerability indices and would be guided to make inferences on the same. A vulnerability assessment can also be used as a monitoring and evaluation tool, and the workshop will delve into how it can be used to assess the impacts of conservation strategies, ensuring participants can measure the success of their interventions and make necessary adjustments.