Deep inside the forests of Assam’s Manas National Park, anti-poaching camps and forest camps form the backbone of conservation efforts. These remote outposts house frontline staff who patrol vast stretches of forest, monitor wildlife movements, prevent poaching, and protect one of India’s most significant biodiversity landscapes.
Yet until recently, one aspect of these operations remained largely invisible: the waste generated by the very systems designed to protect the forest.
Now, Manas National Park is attempting to address that gap through what conservation practitioners describe as a rare and potentially first-of-its-kind initiative in India.
Through a formal collaboration between the Forest Department, Manas National Park, and environmental organisation The Midway Journey, a structured dry-waste collection and recycling system is being institutionalised across all ranges of the park, including forest camps and anti-poaching camps.
While protected areas across India have undertaken plastic reduction campaigns, cleanliness drives, and tourist awareness programmes, the Manas model seeks to bring waste generated within conservation infrastructure itself into a formal recovery system.
Looking Beyond Wildlife Protection
Protected areas are traditionally discussed through the lens of wildlife conservation, habitat restoration, anti-poaching measures, and tourism management. The everyday systems that sustain these activities receive little attention.
Forest camps require regular supplies of food, drinking water, medicines, batteries, cleaning materials, and other essential items. Most arrive in packaged form, creating a steady stream of dry waste even in some of the most remote parts of the forest.
According to Dr. C. Ramesh, IFS, Field Director and Chief Conservator of Forests of the Manas Tiger Reserve, waste generated by conservation operations has remained invisible because it falls outside conventional conservation discussions.
“The daily systems that support conservation work — supplies going into camps, food packets, bottles, ration packaging, cleaning materials and other types of waste — are rarely seen as part of the conservation conversation,” Ramesh told EastMojo.
In remote camps, frontline staff are primarily occupied with protection duties. Because these camps are dispersed across difficult terrain, the resulting waste often remains out of public view and outside institutional focus.
A Hidden Waste Stream
The issue came into sharper focus during field assessments conducted under the Root Connect project, an initiative implemented by The Midway Journey in the Greater Manas landscape with support from Royal Enfield Social Mission.
Initially, project teams concentrated on waste generated by villages, markets, and tourism-related activities around Manas. However, field observations while preparing the project’s Detailed Project Report revealed another significant waste stream.
“While waste from tourism and nearby villages was already visible, the study also highlighted that forest camps and anti-poaching camps were generating dry waste through regular supplies and field operations,” Ramesh said.
The findings prompted a broader reflection on what a comprehensive waste management strategy in a conservation landscape should include. Subsequent discussions between the Forest Department and The Midway Journey led to the development of a structured collaboration, eventually formalised through a Memorandum of Understanding.
More Than 100 Camps Across the Landscape
The scale of the initiative is considerable. Manas National Park has more than 100 forest camps and anti-poaching camps spread across multiple ranges.
These camps generate various forms of dry waste. Plastic wrappers, multilayered food packaging, plastic bottles, medicine strips, oil containers, batteries, and other materials associated with routine field supplies.
While each camp may generate only modest quantities individually, the cumulative volume across more than 100 locations becomes significant over time. Previously, there was no dedicated mechanism to systematically collect and channelise this waste for recycling.
“In many remote locations, staff had very limited options. Some waste was burnt, some was stored informally, and some accumulated because there was no clear recovery pathway,” officials said.
The absence of a structured system was not due to a lack of awareness among frontline personnel. It reflected the practical difficulties of waste management in remote forest environments.
Building a Recovery Chain
Under the new model, Forest Department officials at the range level will oversee awareness and segregation efforts within camps.
Dry waste will be collected through departmental vehicles and transported to a Plastic Waste Management Unit supported by The Midway Journey, where it will be sorted, classified, and channelled into appropriate recycling streams.
The initiative also includes collection sacks, staff orientation programmes, and standardised procedures for handling dry waste. By using departmental logistics networks that already move supplies and personnel across the landscape, the initiative aims to make waste recovery a routine component of conservation operations rather than a parallel structure.
Challenges in the Forest
Implementing waste management in protected areas presents unique challenges. Distance remains the most significant obstacle, Many camps can only be accessed through difficult terrain, and transporting accumulated waste requires careful planning without disrupting protection activities.
Other challenges include seasonal accessibility during the monsoon, wildlife movement patterns, staff workload, and the need to build new habits around segregation and storage.
“Managing dry waste becomes difficult when camps are far from roads, vehicles cannot move regularly, and there is no designated system for collection,” Ramesh said. Storage also presents practical difficulties, as waste must be safely contained until transport becomes available.
Beyond Clean-Up Drives
One of the key ideas behind the initiative is that waste management in protected areas cannot rely solely on periodic clean-up campaigns. Environmental organisations working in the sector argue that one-time drives often generate visibility without creating lasting systems.
“A clean-up drive may remove waste from one location for one day, but if the source of waste, collection process, storage, transport, sorting and recycling linkages are not addressed, the same problem returns,” representatives of The Midway Journey observed. “In many places, awareness programmes ask people to segregate waste, but there is no collection system afterwards. That can actually reduce trust because people feel responsibility has been shifted to them without providing a solution.”
The Root Connect project therefore focuses on building complete waste-management chains involving households, tourism operators, government agencies, forest camps, and recycling infrastructure.
The initiative also reflects a broader discussion emerging within conservation circles about the environmental footprint of conservation infrastructure itself.
“If protected areas ask surrounding communities and tourists to behave responsibly, the institutions themselves must also examine what materials they bring into the landscape and how those materials are handled after use,” practitioners involved in the initiative said — adding that the conversation is not about assigning blame to frontline staff, but about creating systems that support them.
The consequences of unmanaged waste in protected areas extend beyond aesthetics. Plastic and dry waste can contaminate soil and water bodies and persist in ecosystems for years. Burning waste releases harmful emissions and can leave behind toxic residues. Food-contaminated waste may attract wildlife and alter natural behavioural patterns.
Whether the Manas initiative ultimately becomes a model for other protected areas will depend on its long-term implementation. But conservation observers note that the effort is significant precisely because it seeks to institutionalise waste management rather than treat it as an occasional campaign.
By bringing more than 100 forest and anti-poaching camps into a structured recovery chain, it attempts to address a challenge that has long existed but rarely entered mainstream conservation discussions.
In that sense, it represents a shift from viewing waste as an unavoidable by-product of conservation to treating it as an integral part of conservation management itself. It serves as a reminder that protecting forests may also require examining the systems operating within them.
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