The Timbaktu Collective has been involved in land and ecology related activities with the village communities with a view to reestablish the people's relationship with nature and more importantly to take responsibility of and control over what are their natural resources. This is absolutely vital here if any drought proofing has to be done.

After the experiments in Timbaktu and the hills that surround it, the Collective began to promote the concept of ecorestoration through natural regeneration in a village called Mushtikovela in 1992. It took over a year to convince people to begin protecting about 125 acres of revenue waste lands in the hills surrounding the village.

The impact was felt almost immediately. Over the next 7 years 7 more villages had joined in and about 8000 contiguous acres of revenue wastelands were being protected and regenerated into a forest.

The area under natural regeneration though contiguous, may be divide into two clear watersheds with a few micro watersheds in between. Starting at Mushtikovela, there is a ridge running North East to South ending at Kogira. These hills form the catchment for the two major rain water harvesting tanks that had been construct over 500 years ago. The water from the catchment flows down Eastwards into the Mushtikovela tank and Westwards into the Kogira tank. Based on the varying topography on East and West the benefit of flow into Mushtikovela is more than into Kogira. In between there are about 5 or 6 micro watersheds and each have some small tank or kunta situated strategically.

The natural regeneration work consists mainly of 9 activities

1. Protection from Fires;
2. Protection from over grazing;
3. Protection from tree cutting;
4. Construction of small rock filled dams (RFD) to prevent soil erosion and increase water recharge.
5. Tree Seed dibbling;
6. Grass seed broadcasting;
7. Planting of trees where possible;
8. Monitoring what fauna have returned;
9. Monitoring how much grass is cut and removed from the area.
10. Monitoring how many sheep, goats and cows come for grazing;

Each village has a Forest protection committee (Vana Samarakshana Committee - VSC). These have been federated to form the Kalpavalli Samrakshana Samiti which has 1,320 members in the general body. All works undertaken are supervised and monitored by the VSCs who have established a system of watchers. These watchers patrol the area every day and in case of fires, intruders or tree cutting, they inform the VSCs, which mobilise immediate preventive action. Heavy fines are imposed on anybody caught felling trees. Almost no trees are felled any more by the locals.

Each VSC also has fire control volunteers and every year 25 to 27 kms of firebreaks are made so that fires do not spread. The members of the VSCs, the watchers and the cadres of the Collective spend a lot of time convincing shepherds who come with their sheep and goats from villages are far as 25 kms away, to avoid lighting fires.

While the hills were almost barren when the Collective initiated this activity, the root stock that remained began to send new shoots up, the grass seeds began to germinate, birds began to come back and new trees began to establish themselves. The soil has improved and many more varieties of grasses have come back. The hills provide much more cattle feed to the farmers compared to the time before protection began. During 2002/2003 alone, 6,872 bullock carts loads of grass was taken from the hills and over 40,000 sheep were brought for grazing from 23 villages.

Now trees like Maddhi, Neerudhi, Pacchari, Neredi, Palawara, Kanuga, Sandra, Rela, Eetha and Modhuga have reached an average height of 15 to 20 feet. The Bodha grass, that is used for fodder and thatching, and the fronds of the Eetha (the Indian date palm) are the most important minor forest produce now and they give a regular income to the VSCs. The populations of rabbits, wild boars, bears, foxes, reptiles, insects and birds have grown many folds.

The regeneration of forests on these waste lands has been highly successful and many villagers who were skeptical earlier have now begun to support the work and appreciate the achievements. The awareness level is very high among the people and the CBOs take their responsibilities very seriously.

This work has been supported by various agencies over the years, the most important being OXFAM - UK, CEBEMO - Netherlands, BILANCE - Netherlands, CORDAID - Netherlands and IGSSS - New Delhi.