Forest Dependency among the Indigenous Communities of Karlapat Wildlife Sanctuary in Odisha State of India: An Analysis of Socio-economic Parameters

Abstract

Background: The forest dependence among communities indicates the human-environment inter-relationship, which demonstrates the degree of such reliance in various regions and in different time periods. Aim: This study aims at understanding the purpose and frequency of forest dependence among indigenous communities of Karlapat wildlife sanctuary in relation to their socio-economic parameters. Place and Duration of Study: The study was carried out inside Karlapat wildlife sanctuary, covering six village sites and the primary work was conducted from September 2024 to April 2025. Methodology: The data were collected from 180 households in the concerned villages. Microsoft Office (Version.2010) was used to organise the data. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 20) was used for ordinal logistic regression to understand the connection between socio-economic parameters and the level of forest dependency. Results: Fuel-wood was the primary reason for forest dependency, while in the summer months, slash cultivation was practiced in small patches, as permission was restricted to small patches. Analysis revealed that the occupation of respondents showed a strong and significant effect on forest dependency. Considering the service with agriculture as base, the level of dependency increased significantly with occupational shift from service with agriculture to small business with agriculture (OR = 2.97), daily wage with agriculture (OR = 6.62) and agriculture only (OR = 94.60). The results showed that a transition from primary level of education (OR = 3.54) to no formal education (OR = 5.02) resulted in increasing forest dependency. Though respondents with higher education and high income level were more likely to less dependent on forests, almost all the respondents are forest dependent for firewood purposes. Conclusion: This study shows an intrinsic relationship between accessing forest resources and the occupation of the population. The low-income group populations are more dependent on the forest for non-timber forest products like mushrooms, berries, plate-making leaves and tubers of numerous categories. Their forest reliance also represents a wide knowledge of traditional medicine species. The regulated way of forest conservation also signifies awareness of forest resource maintenance by the communities. The purpose of forest reliance does not compromise the environmental condition, though slash cultivation is practised in a few patches by a very small section of people.