Going Green

At Kanha Earth Lodge we realise how important a healthy wildlife habitat is for everyone. Our policy is to practise sustainable wildlife tourism under high standards. We are signatories of TOFT and M.P. Eco Tourism Board and have generated our own lodge checklist to raise the awareness of conservation and sustainability for our lodge employees and all the local partners who engage with us on a day to day basis. We are developing a Performance measure by generating a criteria and self-audit within our lodges and with our local partners. Our Lodge has been built with high standards of green architecture, which was acknowledged by Stone Foundation of India by awarding us the winner in 2010 -11 for Sustainable use of stone in green architecture. Kanha Earth Lodge has also been awarded Best Eco Lodge in 2012 by M.P Eco Tourism Board and The Most Admired Eco Lodge of the year by Golden Star Awards in Feb 2013.

Main focus areas are

Minimise Environmental and Ecological Impact

Choosing products of "green purchasing" and "energy conservation" can assist minimise habitat impacts. At all our lodges we try to use them and educate our staff on why we are using such products. With this we hope we can change the attitude of tens of personnel working at our various lodges and build an institutional culture "We are part of the natural system not above it".

Maximise Social/Cultural Impact

Each of our lodges is to some degree an eco-lodge. We try and encourage to employ and procure most of whatever is possible from locals only. By this we guarantee that the locals are also included into the emerging wildlife tourism sector and are directly benefited. We encourage locals to demonstrate and share with us and our guests their native skills, cultural practises and their way of life. We would like to help, save and appreciate both their social and cultural practises.

Economic Impact

We believe that conservation of wild habitats and wildlife in India is only possible if it has an economic incentive. Through our Conservation Cell we are developing programs that will directly involve the locals and benefit them. We believe that carefully developed natural resource based enterprise development programs involving the locals will reduce their direct dependence on the wild habitats. Thus we plan to introduce a list of programs that will encourage the locals to conserve the nature for their own and their children's future.

Training

We conduct an intensive annual training program for our lodge naturalists and staff during the off season monsoon period. The training includes wildlife observation skills, communication skills, recording and documenting observations, activities of the Conservation Cell and others. From this year onwards we plan to increase this effort to at-least 2 training programs per year. Over and above this all the lodge staff participate in a monthly update and briefing session. We provide regular updates and material to our lodge naturalists on wildlife and conservation related issues and also have a well stocked wildlife library at each of our lodges for ready reference.