Gaura Devi

Gaura Devi (1925 – 1991) was a grassroots activist and a rural women community leader from India who played an important role in the Chipko movement. She was conferered the Uttarakhand Gaurav Samman in 2025 posthumously.

Life Gaura Devi was born in 1925 in a village named Lata in the state of Uttarakhand. She moved to a nearby village named Raini by the Alaknanda River. By the age of 22 she was a widow with a child. Her new village was near to the border with Tibet.

Birth of Chipko

Gaura Devi came to the forefront of the Chipko movement in 1974. On 25 March 1974, she was told by a young girl that local loggers were cutting trees near their village. The men of Reni village had been tricked out of the village by news that the government was going to pay out compensation for land used by the army. After this incident, the Uttar Pradesh Government established a committee of experts to investigate the issue of felling of trees, and the lumber company withdrew its men from Reni. The committee stated that the Reni forest was an ecologically sensitive area and that no trees should be felled there. Thereafter the government of Uttar Pradesh placed a 10-year ban on all tree-felling in an area of over 1150 km2.