A Study on Effectiveness of Tabos and Cultural Practices on Bio-diversity Conservation in Eastern Ghats of Tamil Nadu, India

Taboos and cultural practices are regulates people the way interact with the world around them by prohibiting the use of items consider as sacred. Sacred grooves are one of the valuable, but primitive practices of nature that plays an important role in biodiversity conservation. The present study was conducted to find out the effectiveness of taboos and cultural practices on biodiversity conservation in the Eastern Ghats of Tamil Nadu. Of the thirty-eight districts of Tamil Nadu, Salem and Tiruvannamalai districts were purposively selected based on the high tribal population. From each district, one block was selected namely the Pethanaickenpalayam block from Salem district and Jawadhu hills block from Tiruvannamalai district respectively. Totally 182 tribal respondents were selected by using the Proportionate Random Sampling method. The data was collected through a personal interview method by using well-structured interview schedule. Percentage analysis, and Cumulative Square Root of Frequency methods (Descriptive statistics) were used to analyze the collected data. Findings were meaningfully interpreted and relevant conclusions were drawn. Overall results show that above half (53.29 percent) of the respondents were found to have a moderate level of effectiveness with taboos and cultural practices on biodiversity conservation followed by more than two fourth (44.52 percent) of the respondents with a lesser level of effectiveness and only 2.19 percent of the respondents with a high level of effectiveness.