A clean field after the eradication of Lantana camara (Santosh Gupta)
Introduced as an ornamental plant to India in the 1800s, Lantana has infested the forests, grazing grounds, and farmlands. It has invaded over 13 million hectares, which is around 4% of the total land area of the country. In the context of Madhya Pradesh, the species has encroached on shared and remote villages’ lands along the fringes of protected areas such as the Kanha Tiger Reserve, impacting wildlife and local communities in multiple ways.
Tribals in the Kanha landscape generally inhabit upper catchments of rivers, usually having large portions of uplands as part of their landholdings. These lands have never attracted investments from land development projects. They used to cultivate millets (particularly Kodo and Kutki) every alternate year. Apart from this crop, the farmers collect tendu leaves (Diospyros Melanoxylon) from these lands every year. Keeping the soil quality in view, they take these crops every alternate year and in some cases, once in three years with a gap of two years. This gap of two years helps Lantana spread on private land.
Traditional practices for controlling lantana camara are chopping the main stem, clipping aerial shoots, burning, and grubbing (total uprooting). These practices however, either led to vigorous regeneration of Lantana or were labor intensive. The cut rootstock method/technology applied under the project provides minimum disturbance to the soil, wherein the plants’ roots are cut three inches below the ground. It is followed by lifting the bush and keeping it upside down to prevent it from gaining ground.
The Foundation for Ecological Security (FES), an NGO located in India, has been working on the eradication of Lantana Camara from the commons land since 2010-11, however from the year 2016-17 onwards, with the support from GIZ, FES also started supporting village institution in eradicating Lantana from private upland. Significant activities are undertaken for the eradication of Lantana and as shown hereunder:
A. Improving community governance mechanism; local communities were engaged by ensuring that the village executive committee took the Gram Sabha (Village Governing Body) into confidence and prepared the by-laws to conserve the lantana-eradicated site. Rules and regulations were framed for the uprooting of the Lantana, its payment process, and usages of the uprooted Lantana for fencing the plot, preparation of biochar, or other usages providing ecological benefits.
B. Adoption of the ‘cut rootstock method’ for the uprooting of Lantana; removing Lantana is tricky because methods such as burning, haphazard uprooting, or cutting result in the recurrence of the species.
C. Appropriate measures were taken to minimize the recurrence of Lantana seeds through regular monitoring and plantation of grass seeds and other plants.
D. Grass seed sowing; with the active support of the village institution, the collection of indigenous grass species was done. Before the advent of the monsoon, the community prepared the grass seed ball and sowed it in the plot. A seed ball helps the seed to protect it from insects, birds, and runoff. In the rainy season, these grass seeds germinate and grow. With the grasses coming, the lantana seeds do not get a suitable environment to germinate and grow.
Eradication of Lantana from the private lands helps the communities access their lands. This has resulted in the cultivation of millets on the same land, which was otherwise left fallow for so many years.
Location: Mandla, Madhya Pradesh, India
No. of Technology sites analysed: 100-1000 sites
Spread of the Technology: applied at specific points/ concentrated on a small area
In a permanently protected area?: Nee
Date of implementation: 2015
Type of introduction
| Species | Count |
| cattle - dairy | 500 |
| Specify input | Unit | Quantity | Costs per Unit (INR) | Total costs per input (INR) | % of costs borne by land users |
| Labour | |||||
| Removal of lantana | ha | 1.0 | 7229.0 | 7229.0 | 16.0 |
| Total costs for maintenance of the Technology | 7'229.0 | ||||
| Total costs for maintenance of the Technology in USD | 90.36 | ||||
Quantity before SLM: 242 kg per ha
Quantity after SLM: 350 kg per ha
These are the estimated figures
Increasing soil moisture in the uplands will help improve water availability in the lowlands
