Traditional methods of pest management in shifting cultivation after bamboo flowering in North-East India: Experience of Tamenglong District of Manipur

Abstract

North East India is a landlocked region where hill, mountain and plateau account for72% which is cover by difference types of tropical and deciduous forests and bamboo. These forests are the main source for a large number of hill tribes of North East India where they can practise shifting cultivation for their subsistence. An estimated of 4, 43,336 families depend their livelihood on jhum cultivation and clear a forest area of 3,869 square kilometres every year. But the region has suffered from famine when the gregarious flowering of bamboo due to heavy damage to the crops in the jhum fields by the outbreak of rat population. Despite of employing a number of scientific methods to control the rat swam, Tamenglong district of Manipur has suffered from rat flood till today. Hence the present paper is attempted to reconstruct the traditional knowledge of pest management after bamboo flowering by using snow -balling method of sampling