To enable the sustainable livelihoods team effectively operationalise their initiatives, based on community knowledge, a consultation process with ANTHRA was initiated.
The key areas identified for inputs by the team were:
* Facilitate community-based consultation processes on livestock needs assessment
* Analyse community-based resource systems and environmental constraints in livestock promotion activities
* Costing of different livestock on the islands
* Possible varieties of livestock to be promoted considering local situation and environment
* Orientation and inputs to field staff on project planning and monitoring of livestock promotion programs
* Working out a framework on community capacity building on animal husbandry
* Formulating a study on biodiversity-based sustainable livestock inputs

Support to Project Rudra: Don Bosco Development Society:

Punam Sah, representing the Rudra project of Don Bosco Development Society, requested ANTHRA for assistance in planning livestock intervention in project sites where animals were dying in large numbers of an unidentified disease. The ANTHRA team met the commissioner of the Animal Husbandry Department, Maharashtra, to work out a suitable strategy for intervention. A detailed survey was conducted of livestock mortality and morbidity in the area for the first time.
A soil analysis was also undertaken and the details of this were presented to the department for future action.