Senapati Forest Division launches PRA exercise to rejuvenate Barak River watershed
Source: The Sangai Express / DIO-IPR

Senapati, January 08 2026: In an effort to rejuvenate and revive degraded areas and improve the livelihoods of communities residing along the Barak River Watershed, the Senapati Forest Division on Thursday as a pilot initiative launched PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal) exercise at Saranamai village under the Barak catchment area.

The PRA exercise involved mapping of local resources, land-use patterns, wealth ranking, matrix ranking, timeline and SWOT analysis of the village.

The baseline data generated through this initiative will help in formulating a detailed action plan under the new CAMPA scheme of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change MoEFCC) .

The division plans to cover all the villages falling under Barak watershed in the days to come.

It may be noted that the Barak River holds immense ecological, hydrological, environmental, religious-cultural, spiritual, and economic significance in and around Senapati District.

Barak river with its origin at Liyai Khullen village of Senapati District, flows through Manipur and further drains to plains of lower part of Assam and finally in Bay of Bengal as river Meghana in Bangladesh.

The Barak basin, which formed part of the greater Ganga-Brahmaputra River system, is the second largest basin in North-East India.

It is fed by several important tributaries, including the Makru, Irang, Tuivai, etc .

Despite its vast ecological and socio-economic potential, the Barak basin and its catchment areas have been facing increasing threats in recent years due to forest fires, floods, bank erosion, deforestation, and degradation, shifting cultivation, soil erosion in catchment areas, landslides, lack of awareness etc.

To mitigate all these issues and threats, an integrated and multi-tiered approach for rejuvenating the river and its watershed through forestry intervention is required.

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