Dibrugarh, June 16: It is not the nine-to-five office job that he had hoped to land after completing his post-graduation. Neither is it loaded with the perks that he once dreamt of. But Nipon Saikia is happy that life as a tourist guide at the Dibru-Saikhowa National Park offers “job satisfaction”, if not financial benefits.
Nipon and several more youths became tourist guides under a novel employment-cum-conservation scheme launched by the Dibru-Saikhowa authorities. They underwent a crash course in conservation recently.
The idea of forming a group of tourist guides came from S.S. Rao, an Indian Forest Service officer who joined the park management as the divisional forest officer one-and-a-half years ago. “After taking up this assignment, I noticed that the park required infrastructure development the most and, along with it, a publicity campaign to attract more people to explore the abundance of flora and fauna,” he said.
Accorded the status of a national park in 1999, Dibru-Saikhowa straddles the twin Upper Assam districts of Tinsukia and Dibrugarh. It is spread across 765 square km, including a core zone of 340 square km, and is famous for its feral horses and a host of migratory birds. A unique feature of the park is the abundance of orchids.
Topping Rao’s list of priorities is a plan to train educated youths for the task of conserving the park, which is among the top 10 biodiversity hotspots of the country. “Dibru-Saikhowa does not have the manpower that a national park requires. We, therefore, decided to train groups of youths who want to do something for the park as tourist guides,” he said.