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The Liana Trust seeks to enable community-led conservation and education in rural India.

What We Do

Rural Education Reform

We hope to enable a generation of care-takers for nature; because only what we feel compassion & wonder for, are we moved to protect & conserve. Often communities living around wild spaces lack access to relevant, inspiring education.

Growing Our Wilderness

Being a stone’s throw away from one of the most dense tiger populations on the planet has revealed the urgent need for extensive conservation action in the agricultural landscapes that fringe the Nagarahole Tiger Reserve.

Human-Snake Conflict Mitigation

Snakes thrive in agricultural landscapes and conflict is high with an estimated one million people getting bitten every year in India. To co-exist, an understanding of how to mitigate risk and a shift in both mindset and habit are key.

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Mural Painting for Outreach and Awareness

To initiate conversations around snakes and snakebite, we are painting informative and interactive murals in collaboration with HSI - India. Panels on government office buildings inform viewers on how to avoid snakebite and what to do in case of a bite. A maze designed by artist Sangeetha Kadur, painted on numerous school walls, engages students to seek out the correct response to snakebite. These serve as part of larger campaign to create a better understanding on how to mitigate and manage human-snake conflict within the community.

News

Launch of Snake Rescuer Manual

The Karnataka Forest Department has Taken cognisance of the rising number of cases of human-snake interactions as well as the steep increase in number of individuals attending to these. As a first step toward implementing standard operating protocols and bringing in a system of reporting and monitoring, we have co-authored a training manual that will help snake rescuers improve their practices and efficacy while reducing stress to the snakes and enabling people to co-exist with snakes safely. We are also setting up the training and licensing process alongside this and we expect that snake rescuers in Karnataka will have all undergone training and be properly licensed soon.

King Cobra Venom Research

Since king cobras haven’t been medically significant in South India till now, there has been no antivenom produced for them and very little research done on their venom. However, king cobras are now a commonly encountered snake in rescues and are one of the main attractions in zoos and reptile parks, there is a need for a safety net for the people who work with them every day. We have created a naturalistic enclosure for our first king cobra, Aragon, and have extracted venom from him once. The Evolutionary Venomics Lab at the Indian Institute of Science is characterising and testing the venom against existing antivenom. More details soon.