It has been a few months since the locals spotted the great Indian bustard (GIB) in Siruguppa, Ballari district, one of the last remaining documented breeding sites of this critically endangered bird in Karnataka.
"There were eight birds when we last saw them in 2019, they didn't arrive here this breeding season (2020 winter)," says Santosh Martin, former honorary wildlife warden of Ballari district.
He has been documenting GIBs in the area since 2006 and has seen how these birds sustained themselves by foraging the nearby jowar and mustard fields even when the grasslands shrank.
But their survival skills were no match for the Forest Department's interventions in the 250 acre land of their key breeding site, which was bought and handed over to them by an industry under the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) programme.
The CAMPA programme is meant to promote afforestation and regeneration activities as a way of compensating for forest land diverted to non-forest use.
In the writ petition Santosh and others filed in the High Court in 2020, they say: "In May 2020, the Karnataka Forest Department began digging hundreds of pits to plant saplings of tall trees in the very same area the GIBs were found. Converting a grassland to a tree plantation is not conducive for the GIB. In addition to this, anti-poaching camps and five watchtowers are being constructed in great haste. These buildings and tall trees will cause hindrance to the birds as they have a poor frontal vision and cause them to fly away in search of favourable habitat."
And Santosh's worst fears came true: the last flock of GIBs flew away, even as the multi-storied watchtowers came up in their breeding site. The fact that only around 150 GIBs exist all over India tells us the gravity of the loss the CAMPA project has caused.
Ballari Deputy Conservator of Forests (Territorial Division) Sidramappa M C says planting has been stopped in the area and that an expert committee has been constituted as per the High Court direction to revive the GIB habitat.
However, in March, the Forest Department uprooted, instead of trimming overgrown Prosopis juliflora (Ballari Jaali), Calotropis sp (Calotropis gigantea). GIBs are known to rest under the shade of these two common grassland shrubs/plants for over eight hours a day.
Santosh sums up: the Forest Department showed up and everything vanished.
This episode unfolded just a few months after a Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) report (2019) recommended “closer attention and suitable corrective actions from the department” to rectify the shortcomings in implementing CAMPA projects, after it found out a shortfall of 50.65% in compensatory afforestation carried out from 2013 to 2018.
Further, CAG noted deviation from the working plan while taking up compensatory afforestation.
Similarly, several other afforestation and plantation programmes of the Forest Department seem to have had limited success due to various reasons — from the lack of planning, a casual attitude and the neglect of the local ecosystem.
C Yatiraju of Tumakuru Science Centre recalls the excitement of dispersing 50,000 seed balls in Chikkanayakanahalli taluk under a territorial afforestation programme. Hundreds of volunteers had participated in the event. But after two years, he hasn't seen any assessment or evaluation being done. "It was just a one-time approach. We do not know if the dispersion happened effectively," he says.
In March, a Parliamentary Standing Committee headed by Jairam Ramesh raised concern about the high mortality rate of the plants planted during various plantation and afforestation drives in the country and the lack of a mechanism to keep track of the survival of these plants.
The Committee also expressed concern that though a huge amount of money was being spent on such exercises, there was no mechanism to verify the claims made by forest officers about having planted a given number of plants at a site or even the number of plants which have survived after a certain period of time.
Green enthusiasm
Over the years, greening programmes have gained wide attention from a cross section of people and organisations.
The Forest Department does not seem to have used this enthusiasm and public attention effectively to nurture and restore ecosystems.
People on the ground blame the lack of a participatory and scientific approach for most plantation and afforestation programmes failing to meet the primary goal of ecological restoration.
Though there seems to be a slight change in approach to stress on diversification, the wrong choice of tree species and monoculture plantations continue to steer the greening programmes of the Forest Department.
Forest nurseries are a sight to behold, with robust plants that have been nurtured by watchers and nursery people who have mastered nursery techniques.
Shivanand Kalave as per his FB profile who has been studying around 10 nurseries in the Western Ghats over the past decade points to an important aspect: diversity. A nursery generally has 35-40 species while some maintain up to 80 species. "This is in a region that harbours around 4,000 flora," he says. There is another issue here: a few species are grown in large numbers while others are limited to a few hundreds or even lesser.
"While the department scores well in raising seedlings, it has failed to plant and grow them efficiently. This happens when the funds from a project take priority over the outcome of the work," says Kalave.
Diversity and quality of plants pose a challenge to farmers who seek plants under different plantation programmes.
In 2016, Nagesh, a farmer in Chintamani taluk, Chikkaballapur district wanted to plant eight varieties of plants in his farm under the Krushi Aranya Protsaha Yojane. However, he had to settle for three as others were not available in the nursery. To adjust the numbers, he had to buy 50 silver oak plants while the requirement was five. Of them, only 20 survived after a year. He is still waiting for the incentive for each surviving plant that the department has to give under the scheme.
"This is the case with many farmers. Last year, 20 farmers returned empty handed from the Forest Department nursery as they didn't get the plants of their choice which suit the environment well," says Ambarish, a facilitator who works with 200 farmer families in the taluk.
A Forest Department official in Chintamani says that they prepare the plants based on farmers' demands and they can't help if some place orders at the last minute. Moreover, the seedlings are raised based on the circular they get from the head office every year.
Biodiversity to biomass
Ecologist M D Subash Chandran explains how the sweeping nature of the afforestation programmes can be counter-productive. "We mix species without understanding their traits. Only native species should be planted in an area in accordance with the primary ecosystem. There are various factors to be considered, from watershed evaluation to the planting design. The focus seems to have shifted from biodiversity to biomass. Indiscriminately planting doesn't support an ecosystem and results in many problems such as human-animal conflicts," he says.
Mahesh Bhat who has documented the Hesaraghatta grasslands extensively, has seen how the ecosystem gradually overcame the shock of habitat destruction, carried out under the guise of afforestation. "The entire process, of machines digging the land and tankers crushing the grass, is destructive. The amount of carbon they emitted in the process is far more than the oxygen released by the trees," he says.
D Yatish Kumar, Chief Conservator of Forests, Kanara Circle, says that even though the forest department is not for planting acacia in certain sites, they help rejuvenate the ecosystem or save the forests from destruction. "Again, the views against acacia are based on various beliefs and unverified information," he says.
There are instances of well-meaning green enthusiasts carrying out forestation activities without sound scientific backing. Such activities manifest as change in forest and ecosystem profiles in the long term.
Nyla Coelho, co-author of Tending our Land: a new story, has observed such efforts in the Belagavi region. Plantation drives under Miyawaki methods in grassland ecosystems of the Western Ghats is a classical instance, leading to long-term ecosystem distortions.
Coelho says one should exercise great caution and restraint in any kind of human intervention within the Western Ghats. "They are welcome to undertake forestation activities in degraded landscapes and avenue plantations in residential areas within city and town limits. Why enter villages in forested areas to undertake plantation activities without the backing of sound science? We have already lost grasslands to plantation drives," she says.
Don't modify natural habitats
Conservation biologist Sanjay Gubbi stresses the need for a scientific evaluation of how much the natural habitats have been modified or lost due to afforestation before a course correction.
The Forest Survey of India report in 2019 mentions that the main reasons for the 1,025.48 sq km increase in forest cover from 2017 to 2019 in the state are plantation and conservation activities.
Former Karnataka Principal Chief Conservator of Forests B K Singh explains that this is because individual monoculture plantations such as areca nut, rubber, teak, coconut etc are also considered forest cover and tree cover.
On the other hand, the species selection under plantation drives of the department indicates that they are driven by industry and not necessarily ecosystem rejuvenation. "Earlier it was the pulpwood industry, now biofuel," says Leo Saldanha of Environment Support Group.
This won't happen when communities lead afforestation and plantation drives. The Forest Rights Act allows communities to actively engage in forest protection, management and regeneration. The Act acknowledges that the forests belong to people first and the department ought to afforest with people’s involvement. The failure to implement the Act has made the relationship between people and the forest department aggressive, he observes.
Former National Board for Wildlife member Praveen Bhargav stresses the need for drastic policy level changes with a primary focus on consolidation of forests through strategic acquisitions to minimise habitat fragmentation and to establish wildlife corridors.
"Planting saplings is no antidote to forest loss and fragmentation. It is time we understand that ecological recovery of degraded forest with root stock can be achieved by just protection without planting a single sapling," he says.