Bodo dancers
Protected Area celebrations
Conservation contagion is a type of social contagion that can cause ideas to proceed exponentially instead of linearly. Recognition of and focus on this concept are unique to Community Conservation projects and have not been observed by other conservationists or scientists. Although we cannot predict success in achieving it, contagion seems to respond to large amount of media advertising and bringing people together from different areas allowing messages to expand into other social networks. The Manas celebrations were to help to increase the probability of conservation contagion, to celebrate and raise the awareness, giving a higher focus on the Manas Biosphere Reserve rather that the Manas National Park which was ordinarily focused on, and to give a regional focus on the golden langur and the Manas Biosphere deforestation. These celebrations were to increase the human energy to activism within the region.
You need the help of motivated community members who know how to arrange such events in their own communities. Assam communities already had such leaders with such skills.
While achieving conservation contagion may not be completely predictable, it is possible to maximize the possibility of achieving it through mixing people from different regions and thus generating excitement from jumping social networks. Seeing how conservation contagion had been accidentally attained in Belize, mainly through countrywide advertising and bringing communities together from different parts of the country, allowed me to attempt to create a similar situation in western Assam. Instead of focusing on a small area, the project initially focused on the complete Indian range of the golden langur bringing together five existing NGOs and CBOs to work together to protect the endemic golden langur within its entire Indian range. The huge crowds that occurred, I believe stemmed from our original transparent, trusting relationships with communities who felt pride and ownership in the project.