Five hectares of hope: A forest reborn in SGNP
‘Moth Lady’ V Shubhalaxmi and her team took just 3 years to reforest five hectares of barren land in nat’l park
From the heart of Mumbai’s green lung, steadily depleted by human activity, comes a story of hope and renewal. “It’s back to being a forest,” says V Shubhalaxmi, of the five hectares she and her team have nursed back to life in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP).
Until four years ago, the land, at the Mulund edge of the national park, was barren. Like so many other areas in the 103-sq km national park, scarred by encroachments which includes thousands of slum dwellings, this portion too had been destroyed. It housed cricket pitches, a slum settlement, a small garbage dump, and had become a place where locals loitered as they came and went, at will, through a gap in the boundary wall.
Four years on, the canopy in this area is thriving and it’s teeming with fauna – an unmistakable sign of nature’s resilience and push towards survival.
“Most of the saplings we planted have survived,” says Shubhalaxmi, better known as the ‘Moth Lady’ and founder of iNaturewatch Foundation (INW), a Mumbai-based non-profit and environmental consultancy firm. Although she wrapped up the project a year ago, Shubhalaxmi visited the reforested area last week, just to check on it. The truth is, it keeps calling her back. “It’s hard to describe how I feel, knowing we helped nature find her way back in,” says Shubhalaxmi, who used a reforesting technique increasingly adopted by eco-conservationists around the world.
“I had approached the state Forest Department during the pandemic for a restoration project, as DCB Bank wanted to contribute its CSR funds. They offered this portion, in Khindipada,” reveals Shubhalaxmi, an entomologist who worked with the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) in a senior capacity for 22 years.
With funds amounting to over ₹1 crore, Shubhalaxmi and her team, which included five experts and four locals as caretakers, began the first phase of the project in April 2021: they planted 10,000 saplings, exclusively native species, within the first two months. “We sourced them from nurseries in Pune, Karjat and even Nashik and also developed our own nursery.”
Most importantly, the team used an eco-restoration method called Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR), which essentially accelerates, rather than replaces, natural processes by removing or reducing barriers to natural regeneration.
“Eco-restoration follows nature, which works with a combination of plants: trees, shrubs, herbs, climbers, flowering plants etc. It’s a joint family, with vegetation at every level,” explains Shubhalaxmi, reeling off the names of species growing here naturally – Flame of the forest, pongam, wild fig, Indian ber, lawla, Easter tree, laburnum, jamun, among others.
Priti Choghale, the project officer who spearheaded the plantation, says that where there was a gap between trees, they planted sapling as ‘canopy plugs’. In large open spaces, they created zones such as ‘deer browse zones’ featuring bamboo and wild banana.
“We also created ‘pollinator zones’,” adds Roshni Tiwari, then an intern with INW as an intern. “These zones have flowering plants that attract bees and butterflies.” Other zones featured shrubs and herbs, all aiming at increasing vegetation.
Other reinforcements had to be made: contour bunds to stop soil erosion, improving water seepage, de-weeding, adding organic content and mulch to improve soil quality. It took an army of volunteers – 235 corporate volunteers and 234 nature lovers – to achieve this.
During their second monsoon, Shubhalaxmi and her team experienced their first ‘aha! moment’. “A sure sign of natural regeneration is the presence of wildlings. While some would have sprouted anyway, the increase in the number of wildlings, particularly near plantation sites, told us that the forest was regenerating. Besides, soil quality had improved, due to which the wildlings survived longer. Our quarterly biodiversity surveys also told us that fauna was flocking to the space and multiplying,” she says.
Now began the painstaking – and joyful – process of recording and documenting the flora and fauna to quantify the project’s success. “We monitored the surviving plants every quarter to check the survival rate,” says Choghale. In the project’s third year, the team realised that the plantation’s survival rate was a phenomenal 72%.
Experts were bought in to survey the fauna, which was being spotted in abundance. Tiwari, who conducted a few of the insect surveys and is following in the Moth Lady’s footsteps, notes, “One of the butterflies we spotted had never been recorded around this particular plant, which I am still researching.”
The project was not without its challenges. Trees had to be fenced and tree guards erected to protect the tender wildlings from grazing. “There were also instances of vandalism as the SGNP boundary wall is perforated. “Also, people who lived on the other side of the wall continued to throw garbage over it,” says Ketki Marthak, one of the trustees of iNaturewatch Foundation.
As the forest regenerated, a group of young eco-ambassadors began to take root. “We started an environmental stewardship programme in the project’s final year, thanks to a grant from the US Consulate. We included 50 tribal children and slum residents of Palaspada, one of the closest settlements,” says Shubhalaxmi. “We encouraged the children to explore wild vegetables, make bird homes and feeders, butterfly gardens etc. The tribal children were already well versed in this but we built upon their knowledge by showing them how to conserve the forest.”
The team also introduced changes in their settlements, introducing them to waste management, avoiding water wastage and beautification. “The children themselves initiated clean-up drives, influencing their parents.”
But Shubhalaxmi was not done yet. She started introducing the regenerated forested land to the wider community. “This included nature trails and walks, bird and butterfly watching, naturalist training programmes for students and internships on eco-restoration. We’ve done it all for free,” reveals Shubhalaxmi, who is working on eco-restoration projects in the Taloja Hill and the Ambivli biodiversity park, and on developing nature trails elsewhere in SGNP and in Navi Mumbai.
“We’re very pleased with Dr Shubhalaxmi’s work,” said an official from the state Forest Department. “Our aim was to keep out the encroachments we had cleared and replace them with thick forest and this project has achieved that goal.”
Given the success of this restoration project, will the forest department replicate it in other areas in the national park? “There are patches of degraded forest near the periphery of the SGNP, where there are slum encroachments. In Mulund, for instance, this is the case along a 3-4-km boundary from Tara Singh Garden to Khindipada. This method of eco-restoration can be used to revive the forest here,” the official says.
Last week, when Shubhalaxmi returned to the five hectares she and her team had revived, she gazed at the expanse of new vegetation with a sense of wonder. “Nature is extremely resilient. As soon as you provide the habitat for biodiversity, nature will come to occupy it,” she says, offering a simple message, but one that holds a profound truth.
From the heart of Mumbai’s green lung, steadily depleted by human activity, comes a story of hope and renewal. “It’s back to being a forest,” says V Shubhalaxmi, of the five hectares she and her team have nursed back to life in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP).
Until four years ago, the land, at the Mulund edge of the national park, was barren. Like so many other areas in the 103-sq km national park, scarred by encroachments which includes thousands of slum dwellings, this portion too had been destroyed. It housed cricket pitches, a slum settlement, a small garbage dump, and had become a place where locals loitered as they came and went, at will, through a gap in the boundary wall.
Four years on, the canopy in this area is thriving and it’s teeming with fauna – an unmistakable sign of nature’s resilience and push towards survival.
“Most of the saplings we planted have survived,” says Shubhalaxmi, better known as the ‘Moth Lady’ and founder of iNaturewatch Foundation (INW), a Mumbai-based non-profit and environmental consultancy firm. Although she wrapped up the project a year ago, Shubhalaxmi visited the reforested area last week, just to check on it. The truth is, it keeps calling her back. “It’s hard to describe how I feel, knowing we helped nature find her way back in,” says Shubhalaxmi, who used a reforesting technique increasingly adopted by eco-conservationists around the world.
“I had approached the state Forest Department during the pandemic for a restoration project, as DCB Bank wanted to contribute its CSR funds. They offered this portion, in Khindipada,” reveals Shubhalaxmi, an entomologist who worked with the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) in a senior capacity for 22 years.
With funds amounting to over ₹1 crore, Shubhalaxmi and her team, which included five experts and four locals as caretakers, began the first phase of the project in April 2021: they planted 10,000 saplings, exclusively native species, within the first two months. “We sourced them from nurseries in Pune, Karjat and even Nashik and also developed our own nursery.”
Most importantly, the team used an eco-restoration method called Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR), which essentially accelerates, rather than replaces, natural processes by removing or reducing barriers to natural regeneration.
“Eco-restoration follows nature, which works with a combination of plants: trees, shrubs, herbs, climbers, flowering plants etc. It’s a joint family, with vegetation at every level,” explains Shubhalaxmi, reeling off the names of species growing here naturally – Flame of the forest, pongam, wild fig, Indian ber, lawla, Easter tree, laburnum, jamun, among others.
Priti Choghale, the project officer who spearheaded the plantation, says that where there was a gap between trees, they planted sapling as ‘canopy plugs’. In large open spaces, they created zones such as ‘deer browse zones’ featuring bamboo and wild banana.
“We also created ‘pollinator zones’,” adds Roshni Tiwari, then an intern with INW as an intern. “These zones have flowering plants that attract bees and butterflies.” Other zones featured shrubs and herbs, all aiming at increasing vegetation.
Other reinforcements had to be made: contour bunds to stop soil erosion, improving water seepage, de-weeding, adding organic content and mulch to improve soil quality. It took an army of volunteers – 235 corporate volunteers and 234 nature lovers – to achieve this.
During their second monsoon, Shubhalaxmi and her team experienced their first ‘aha! moment’. “A sure sign of natural regeneration is the presence of wildlings. While some would have sprouted anyway, the increase in the number of wildlings, particularly near plantation sites, told us that the forest was regenerating. Besides, soil quality had improved, due to which the wildlings survived longer. Our quarterly biodiversity surveys also told us that fauna was flocking to the space and multiplying,” she says.
Now began the painstaking – and joyful – process of recording and documenting the flora and fauna to quantify the project’s success. “We monitored the surviving plants every quarter to check the survival rate,” says Choghale. In the project’s third year, the team realised that the plantation’s survival rate was a phenomenal 72%.
Experts were bought in to survey the fauna, which was being spotted in abundance. Tiwari, who conducted a few of the insect surveys and is following in the Moth Lady’s footsteps, notes, “One of the butterflies we spotted had never been recorded around this particular plant, which I am still researching.”
The project was not without its challenges. Trees had to be fenced and tree guards erected to protect the tender wildlings from grazing. “There were also instances of vandalism as the SGNP boundary wall is perforated. “Also, people who lived on the other side of the wall continued to throw garbage over it,” says Ketki Marthak, one of the trustees of iNaturewatch Foundation.
As the forest regenerated, a group of young eco-ambassadors began to take root. “We started an environmental stewardship programme in the project’s final year, thanks to a grant from the US Consulate. We included 50 tribal children and slum residents of Palaspada, one of the closest settlements,” says Shubhalaxmi. “We encouraged the children to explore wild vegetables, make bird homes and feeders, butterfly gardens etc. The tribal children were already well versed in this but we built upon their knowledge by showing them how to conserve the forest.”
The team also introduced changes in their settlements, introducing them to waste management, avoiding water wastage and beautification. “The children themselves initiated clean-up drives, influencing their parents.”
But Shubhalaxmi was not done yet. She started introducing the regenerated forested land to the wider community. “This included nature trails and walks, bird and butterfly watching, naturalist training programmes for students and internships on eco-restoration. We’ve done it all for free,” reveals Shubhalaxmi, who is working on eco-restoration projects in the Taloja Hill and the Ambivli biodiversity park, and on developing nature trails elsewhere in SGNP and in Navi Mumbai.
“We’re very pleased with Dr Shubhalaxmi’s work,” said an official from the state Forest Department. “Our aim was to keep out the encroachments we had cleared and replace them with thick forest and this project has achieved that goal.”
Given the success of this restoration project, will the forest department replicate it in other areas in the national park? “There are patches of degraded forest near the periphery of the SGNP, where there are slum encroachments. In Mulund, for instance, this is the case along a 3-4-km boundary from Tara Singh Garden to Khindipada. This method of eco-restoration can be used to revive the forest here,” the official says.
Last week, when Shubhalaxmi returned to the five hectares she and her team had revived, she gazed at the expanse of new vegetation with a sense of wonder. “Nature is extremely resilient. As soon as you provide the habitat for biodiversity, nature will come to occupy it,” she says, offering a simple message, but one that holds a profound truth.
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