Ecological restoration alleviates poverty and promotes biodiversity conservation on Bishnoi community lands in Rajasthan, India

Ecological restoration projects should benefit local people by reducing poverty levels.  Ideally, this intended direct benefit should be accompanied by improved biodiversity conservation.  We provide preliminary evidence that ecological restoration both reduced poverty and improved the conservation status of vultures and antelopes in and around villages containing Bishnoi people in the Great Indian Desert.  For example, we show that the village of Khajarli continues to harbor a successful local breeding population of the red-listed, long-billed vulture.  Beyond simply supporting these vultures, we provide preliminary evidence that the favorable ecological conditions on the community lands have helped to buffer these vultures against drought associated with recent La Niña events.  In addition, we show that restored community lands in villages with Bishnoi provide suitable habitat for blackbuck antelope.  We show that the ecological restoration, which included eradication of the highly invasive Prosopsis juliflora, also alleviated poverty.  The restoration project, combined with the Bishnoi’s religion-based conservation ethic, apparently helped protect endangered species, even in the face of vagaries in the global climate cycle.  Our data suggest that an environmentally sound lifestyle can both reduce poverty and lead to improved biodiversity conservation.