How India's First 'Green Village' Turned Hunters Into Conservationists

Two nonprofits came together to manage Hawai'i's Kaua‘i’s Hā‘ena State Park in a community-led way, creating a more equitable relationship between the tourism industry and the local community. Native Hawaiians work at the park, lead restoration projects and run educational programs. And to prevent overtourism, tourists must make reservations and pay to enter.

Farmer associations and Indigenous and local communities across Guatemala are working together to recover ancestral agricultural practices and educate farmers in agroecology. The collective, called the Utz Che’ Community Forestry Association, is building agroecology schools that are free to attend and facilitate co-learning in which students learn from each other. Their work protects native forests and local livelihoods from the damage caused by intensive monoculture.

Enrolling indigenous knowledge in environmental conservation programs empowers communities and promotes responsible land management. Conservation programs in Australia and Canada rely on indigenous communities to monitor and maintain remote and protected areas. Investment in these programs not only furthers the goal of environmental conservation, but also pays dividends by bringing jobs to indigenous communities.

The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y) has built over 204 wildlife crossings, fencing systems, and protected corridors across a 3,400-kilometer stretch of the Rocky Mountains. Since Y2Y's founding in 1997, reports of wildlife-vehicle collisions have substantially reduced, thousands of safe animal crossings have been documented, and 9.8 million hectares of connected habitat has been protected.

After initially not involving the indigenous Q’eqchi community in designating land for the Río Sarstún Multiple Use Area – land that this community lives on – the government and the Q’eqchi since partnered together to advance conservation efforts and land management. Over a decade later, the two stakeholders work together on things like overfishing and ecotourism, part of a larger global trend of governments and local communities working collaboratively toward conservation.

Native American student graduation rates are much lower than that of any other demographic. The Red Cloud school teaches students on a reservation in South Dakota about the Lakota history to empower the kids and encourage resilience.

An Indigenous-led grassroots organization, Malinggai Uma Tradisional Mentawai, works to protect endangered primates in Indonesia's Mentawai Islands by reviving traditional hunting practices, forest patrols, and conservation education; initial qualitative evidence suggests incremental community mindset shifts, though broader systemic impacts remain limited by socioeconomic challenges.

The Karuk Tribe of Northern California is revitalizing its ancient practice of cultural burning as both a proactive wildfire management strategy and a revival of crucial cultural traditions. Through coordinated, culturally-focused prescribed burns called KTREX, the tribe is restoring the ecosystem, improving community wildfire resilience, and strengthening traditional ecological knowledge.

A former illegal logger in Sumatra transformed into a forest protector by planting 1,000 trees and leading his Indigenous community to secure legal recognition of 521 hectares as customary forest, creating sustainable income alternatives while restoring damaged ecosystems.

The community living in Northern Guatemala’s Sierra del Lacandón National Park monitors the landscape for fires set by people looking to clear the forest illegally and is trained to prevent them from spreading. They’re focusing on ecotourism as an alternative way to earn a living.