Guwahati, September 7, 2014: With the increasingly challenging scenario of preserving India’s endangered species and threatened habitats, Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) with support of International Fund for Animal Welfare recently organised a day-long media workshop titled ‘Enhancing the Quality of Green Journalism’. Journalists covering different protected areas of Assam, and neighbouring state of Meghalaya, participated in this workshop. The main aim of the workshop was to bridge the gap between media and NGOs for the betterment of conservation initiatives in northeast India.
The workshop facilitated a common platform for some of the leading conservation journalists and the IFAW-WTI team to discuss and share their diverse experiences. The need for media and conservation sectors to combine their efforts in the future to help save the biodiversity of northeast India was also emphasised on.
The Chief Guest and the guiding force behind the workshop Dr. Parimal Chandra Bhattacharjee, Trustee,WTI, talked about the vast spectrum of environment and wildlife with the participants stressing, “Media is strong force with respect to print and audiovisual communication and in ‘Green Reporting’ media has a major stake, being a social connect towards any conservation action. If the quality of reporting in media is enhanced with proper knowledge base, it will work as a gatekeeper for the protection of biodiversity and nature at large.”
Samudra Gupta Kashyap, Assistant Editor, The Indian Express and Mrinal Talukdar, Joint Editor of DY-365, the popular TV channel of northeast, were the mentors of the workshop. Both the seasoned journalists respectively shared their experiences of green journalism with the participating journalists.
S G Kashyap commented, “It is very important to keep the media abreast of things happening on the environment and wildlife front.”
On the other hand Mrinal Talukdar emphasised on more and more such interactions with the media at different levels.
While discussing the hurdles and limitations in researching conservation stories, the journalists also shared some fascinating anecdotes. Many incidents encountered by the IFAW-WTI team in the wilderness of northeast were also shared by Dr. Rathin Barman, Deputy Director, WTI and Dr. Bhaskar Choudhury, Regional Head, WTI.
“It is a constructive workshop and it will help media persons greatly. The deliberations shared by Samudra Gupta Kashyap are praiseworthy”, said Debashish Baruah, a Kaziranga based journalist who participated in the workshop.
It was felt that with proper guidance from the conservation experts, especially with regard to reliable and authentic resource materials, media personnel could also be a part of the larger canvas of conservation communication in a more effective way.
Debjani Patikar, a journalist from Guwahati appreciated the initiative of IFAW-WTI for organising the workshop, remarking “It was a brain storming session. Many unknown areas of wildlife reporting were highlighted during the discussion. Developing contacts with environment and media experts who can suggest and guide while researching on a wildlife story, helps us a lot.”
The session concluded with the media participants expressing their willingness to increase the number of green stories in their respective publications and the NGO sector from their end to take media side by side in conservation action,
Wildlife Trust of India has been doing wildlife welfare service covering pan northeast canvas for more than a decade since its inception. In Kaziranga National Park, the organisation has been working on various projects for 13 years which include rescue and rehabilitation of all wildlife such as mammals, reptiles, avaians through the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation & Conservation (CWRC) and five Mobile Veterinary Service Units.
