Assessment of Fuelwood Consumption in Kanha-Pench Corridor, Madhya Pradesh

Energy is the prime mover of economic growth, and is vital to sustaining a modern economy and society. Future economic growth significantly depends on the long term availability of energy from sources that are affordable, accessible,secure and sustainable). 70% of India’s population resides in rural areas, and 77% of rural households meet their energy demand from fuelwood and wood chips (MSSRF undated).

WWF-India’s Satpuda Maikal Landscape (SML), located in Central India, is spread across 19 districts in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh, covering a total area of 1,43,551 sq. km. Of this, roughly 40,837 sq. km. is under forest cover, with some of the country’s most famous Tiger Reserves and Protected Areas. This landscape also holds a significant percentage of the world’s tiger population, and has some of the largest contiguous forested tracks which form important wildlife corridors.

Some of the important Tiger Reserves in this landscape are Kanha, Satpuda, Pench, Melghat, Tadoba and Achanakmar. In addition, 6 critical corridors within the landscape have also been identified to ensure connectivity for wildlife. The major threats in this landscape are habitat fragmentation, infrastructure development, encroachment, unplanned tourism, poaching, human wildlife conflict, unregulated livestock grazing, Non Timber Forest Produce (NTFP) overextraction and other resource extraction like mining.