A group of students from Goa University successfully completed their one month internship program on ‘Rural Ecology and Economy’ held for the month of December 2022 in Rajasthan under the Rajputana Society of Natural History (RSNH) in collaboration with Global Forum for Sustainable Rural Development (GFSRD).
Students had stayed at Rajputana’s Aranya Niwas in Royda village in Udaipur for the period of one month. They had chosen different aspects for their study in three different study sites namely villages Royda, Losing and Piplantri from Southern Rajasthan. Three students namely, Anuraj Gaonkar studied the diversity of butterflies, Vibhuti Gawas studied spiders and Vaishnavi Naik studied Odonates (dragonflies and damselflies) diversity in these study areas. The studies of rest six were based on community interactions that involved the study of the tools and techniques used in faunal conservation by Pooja Gaude, human wildlife relationships in Southern Rajasthan by Anchal Naik, impacts of development on the habitats and associated animals of Southern Rajasthan by Karishma Naik, status of habitats of Southern Rajasthan with respect to the flagship species by Jonathan D’costa, customary conservation practices of the communities from Southern Rajasthan by Tejashri Mahale and animals in ancient Indian literature by Aishwarya Nene.
The students had gathered the related information by interacting with the local knowledgeable people as well as from the renowned scientists and many others from Southern Rajasthan. The students prepared a detailed report of the studies carried out by them and the online presentations of the same were held on 24 February 2023. Dr. Vinay Singh Kashyap hosted the program and Dr. Jayanta Choudhury, Founder, GFSRD gave the information about the GFSRD platform and the work carried out by them. Dr. Shiladitya Chatterjee, Chairman of GFSRD gave the inaugural speech and congratulated all the students for their hard work. Dr. Nitin Sawant, an assistant professor of Zoology from Goa University briefly talked about the Goa University and the internship program while Dr. Satya Prakash Mehra, a renowned environmental cum developmental professional from Udaipur Rajasthan spoke about the National Internship Program and about the successful completion of the tasks by the students. It was followed by the presentations of the work done by the students.
At the end the students were awarded with the e-certificates and congratulated for the successful completion of their internship studies and were encouraged to participate in such programs more in future by all the other speakers. Mr. Tapas Ranjan Chakraborty, Senior Programme Manager, Climate Change Programme, BRAC, Dhaka, Bangladesh put the expert comments.
The students showed enthusiasm for such work and opportunities in their careers in future. The program ended with the vote of thanks by Dr. Vinay Singh Kashyap.
