The Cardamom Plucker Project can be considered as a prime example of community participation in conservation and research efforts. This initiative operates around the Eastern Sinharaja Research Station, where a significant portion of the forest undergrowth is dedicated to cardamom cultivation. A selected community is permitted by the Forest Department to enter the forest and harvest cardamom.
Recently, the society developed a project to effectively utilize the surrounding community who worked as cardamom pluckers for research and conservation. Participants undergo training to collect information about animals by capturing plants, animals, scat samples, and interesting incidents and signs related to wildlife. There, with the help of GPS-tagged phones, photos are saved with the GPS coordinates of the location. Additionally, if a photograph holds particular importance, such as the mating behavior of a specific amphibian or reptile, the associated weather data is recorded, and the records are kept for further research.
Also, this project serves as a clear example of using the community for conservation, with villagers and cardamom pickers volunteering to remove snares in the forest through a comprehensive awareness project. As a result of these efforts, the number of snares at the forest edge has significantly decreased over the past few years, and no leopard deaths have been recorded since 2018 to date.