June 2010: It was 5:30 a.m. and my phone rang loudly. Being a late riser, I was rather annoyed until I saw the number and recognised it as one of the villagers of Mangalajodi, a picturesque hamlet on the banks of the Chilika Lake in Orissa. Picking up, I heard the troubled voice of Madhu, an eco-guide at Mangalajodi, saying “Sir kuch log Mangalajodi main shikar kar rahe hain (Sir, there are people poaching birds in Mangalajodi).”

April 2010: The Wildlife Aware Nature Club (WANC) took root in 1989 when WWF-India launched its Nature Clubs of India (NCI) movement in a bid to encourage conservation action at the local level. WANC was started by a group of youngsters who decided to create awareness on wildlife issues and today, it is a potent force in Karnataka, actively defending the region’s wildlife.

An oft-repeated story has it that a wise man once came across a young boy on a beach, gently tossing washed-up starfish back into the sea. Gesturing towards the hundreds of starfish dying on the sand, he questioned the effectiveness of the child’s action. The boy picked up another one, threw it into the water and turning back to the wise man said, “It made a difference to that one.”

An unknown author once said, “If nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies.” One cannot help but reflect on these words when reading about the Kenneth Anderson Nature Society (KANS).

The Centre for Social Markets (CSM) is an independent, non-profit organisation founded in 2000 by social entrepreneur, Malini Mehra, to accelerate the transition to more just and sustainable societies. Their focus is on making markets work for the ‘triple bottom line’: people, planet and profit.

“In Eturnagaram, we were spellbound by its splendid valleys and dense forest. We had explored smaller forests till then but we were experiencing the magic of a tiger forest for the first time. But even here, we could sense the changes that were slowly gnawing away at this habitat.”

The Rushikulya river merges into the Bay of Bengal near Ganjam town in Southern Orissa. A wide stretch of beach on the northern side of the river is the favoured nesting site of olive ridley turtles.