Soul Searching

it could have been a church, with people confessing their sins. Only, it was a consultative meeting, where wildlife mangers and the conservation fraternity confessed that protected area management under Eco Regional Planning (erp) was an abysmal failure. Held on August 6-8, 2001, in New Delhi, the meeting organised by the Wildlife Institute of India (wii) and the Union ministry of environment and forests (mef) brought out the inadequacies of the so-called intergrated conservation efforts promoted by erp . The main agenda was to discuss the erp in the light of the India Ecodevelopment Programme, funded by the Global Environment Facility (gef).The