There is nothing wrong with taking a state-level government programme beyond Kohima and into the districts. It is, in fact, encouraging. The Department of Environment, Forest and Climate Change is holding the state-level Wildlife Week 2026 programme in Mokokchung on October 6, perhaps its first major state-level programme here since the state-level World Environment Day celebration in 2017.
But taking a state-level event to a district should mean more than shifting the venue. Its value lies in what follows after the dignitaries leave.
Mokokchung has no notified wildlife sanctuary or national park, but it has 10 notified Community Reserves covering about 63 square kilometres. Against the district’s total geographical area of 1,615 square kilometres, that is roughly 4%.
At the state level, the contrast is even more striking. Nagaland’s notified protected areas, such as wildlife sanctuaries and national parks, cover only about 1.45% of the state’s 16,579-square-kilometre geographical area. In contrast, the state has 128 Community Reserves covering about 909 square kilometres, or 5.5% of its total geographical area, according to department records.
That makes Community Reserves an important part of Nagaland’s conservation framework. It also makes it reasonable to ask what is actually happening inside them.
Notification is not conservation. A boundary on a government record does not by itself protect a forest, nor does a Community Reserve fulfil its purpose simply by being notified. Its value depends on what is being protected, how it is monitored and whether its rules are observed.
These are pertinent questions in Mokokchung. Are the 10 community reserves properly mapped and demarcated? Are GPS coordinates available? Are biodiversity registers being maintained and updated? Is there documented evidence of the wildlife they harbour? What monitoring is being carried out and by whom? What role are the local reserve committees playing?
And then there is hunting.
October is traditionally associated with the opening of the hunting season in Mokokchung. If hunting is prohibited in these Community Reserves, is the ban actually being enforced? What evidence is there that hunting is not taking place? Are the reserves being monitored, and by whom? Conversely, if particular community arrangements permit hunting, how do those arrangements relate to the very purpose for which these areas were notified as Community Reserves?
These are not peripheral questions for a Wildlife Week programme. They go to the heart of what the programme should be about.
The department has an opportunity in Mokokchung to move the conversation beyond the familiar language of conservation and towards the less glamorous but more important work of mapping, documentation, monitoring, enforcement and results. It can put on record what exists, what is working, where the gaps are and what will be done about them.
Otherwise, Wildlife Week risks becoming just another official observance that arrives with ceremony and leaves with little more than photographs.
The point of bringing Wildlife Week to Mokokchung should be to make conservation more visible here, not merely the government more visible here.
