conservation - ian lockwood...planting town of munnar in kerala’s high range. it was built as an...

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NOT far from the bustling streets and temples ofMadurai, a city with some of the oldest links tosouthern India’s cultural history, is a mountain land-scape that has experienced relatively little ecologicalchange since the advent of Homo sapiens in India.The Palani Hills are composed of a lofty 1,000-2,000-metre plateau protruding eastwards from thespinal-cord-like Western Ghats into the semi-aridplains within eyesight of the temple town. Composedof weathered charkonite schist, the hills host a rangeof different ecosystems and forest types. Morpholog-ically they are similar to the Nilgiris and contiguous

with the High Range and Anaimalai Hills. Sri Lankaalso has a similar elevated range in the Central High-lands, and all of these mountains have similar Pre-Cambrian geological origins. Today the fragile eco-systems in the Palani Hills are under threat – fromboth anthropogenic and ecological actors – andthere is a pressing need to restore habitats beforethere is an irreversible change to the area’s ecology.This article explores the idea of ecological restora-tion, what it means and why it is an idea whose timehas come in the upper Palani Hills landscape.

Although they are named for the temple towndedicated to Murugan, the Palani Hills are mostoften associated with their hill station of Kodaikanal.Once a sleepy, little-known summer village, it hasnow metamorphosed into a major tourist hub at-tracting visitors from across the State, country andworld throughout the year. People are drawn to thetown’s salubrious climate, viewpoints, man-madelake, confectionaries and other attractions. Mosttourists come for short visits from the nearby urbancentres in southern India, and the traditional “sea-

The hills now face threats fromtourism, a tidal wave of waste,expanding development projects,and ecological changes linked toinvasive species.

There is a pressing need to restore habitats in the Palani Hills before the ecology of the

Conservation

Breathing life back in

e area changes irreversibly. T E X T & P H O T O G R A P H S B Y I A N L O C K W O O D

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son” that happens in the months ofApril and May has now been extendedfor most of the year. Some visitors stayon. The town hosts an eclectic mix ofpeople fleeing India’s urban centres:cheese-makers, organic farmers, re-tired civil servants, missionaries, art-ists and many others. While most ofthese people are drawn to the beautyand appeal of the hills, few of them areaware of the unique ecology of the areaand the dramatic changes that havetaken place in recent years.

Nine years ago an article in thisjournal (Frontline, August 15, 2003)addressed the lingering issue of pro-tected area and community-basedconservation initiatives in the PalaniHills. To this date, the issue remains inlimbo, while proposals and counter-claims work their way through variousgovernment offices and elected bodies.

Issues of competing claims on land inthe lower hills towards the east of therange and the cash-laced issue of tou-rism are factors that have contributedto the stalemate. In the meantime, themyriad set of pressures on the land-scape has steadily increased. The Pala-ni Hills now face threats from tourismnumbers, a tidal wave of waste, ex-panding development projects, andecological changes linked to invasivespecies. It is a crucial moment, andthough the challenge is significant,this is the time to act.

O N T H E N A T U R E O F S H O L A / G R A S S L A N D SOne reason why the Palani Hills arespecial is that they still host remnantexamples of the once dominant shola/grasslands vegetation mosaic. Therewas a time not so long ago when the

A PAN0RAMICVIEW of thePalani Hills.

upper Palani’s plateau supported avast shola/grasslands mosaic, stretch-ing from the present lake basin to thewestern boundary with the HighRange. This particular vegetation typeis typical of the upper areas (roughlyabove 1,500 m) of the Western Ghats.The notable areas that support (or sup-ported) it are in the Nilgiri Hills, theHigh Range and the Anaimalai Hillsas well as in a few other highlandpatches. Undisturbed shola/grasslandsystems are characterised by large ex-panses of montane savanna grasslandsinterrupted by pockets of dense ever-green tropical and subtropical broad-leaf forests called sholas.

Ecologists recognise undisturbedshola/grasslands as important hydr-ological systems, especially comparedwith plantations of introduced treespecies. They help to intercept damp

nto the sholas


GRASSLANDS AT IBEX Peak. These are threatened by encroaching exotic vegetation.

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monsoon air currents and absorbmuch of the dramatic rainfall of thetwo wet seasons. Shola/grasslands arethus vital elements in the watershedsthat millions of people living in thedrier shadow of the mountains dependon for sustenance. Biodiversity isunique in shola/grasslands, with lead-ing scientists calling them “sky islands”isolated from each other by changedconditions in the lowlands. There arerelic populations (such as rhododen-dron species) whose nearest relativesare in the Himalayas and still olderspecies (such as tree ferns, Cyatheasp.) that date back to the age of Gond-wanaland. The high altitude of thesouthern highlands means that coldtemperatures and frost play a key rolein the winters. The system periodicallyexperiences fires, and there has beenmuch debate in the past about the roleof fire in shola/grassland systems. Theshola/grasslands mosaic is now broad-ly recognised as the climax vegetationof these hills rather than as an accidentof anthropogenic influences (grazing,fire, and so on).

For much of the 20th century,montane grasslands were categorisedas “wasteland”. As a result, most of themontane grasslands were convertedinto commercial plantations of non-native, fast-growing tree species (nota-bly eucalyptus, pinus and acacia) in allthe major upper plateaus in the West-ern Ghats. In the Palani Hills, thismost often left the pockets of sholaundisturbed, but today these are hardto spot amidst the massive plantations.Afforestation of the montane grass-lands started in the colonial period butcontinues into the present in some ar-eas. Very few areas in the higher West-ern Ghats were spared fromplantations. Today the largest expans-es of undisturbed shola/grasslandssurvive only in Kerala’s EravikulamNational Park and Tamil Nadu’s Muk-kurthy National Park and the Anaima-lai Tiger Reserve (all areas that hadbeen set aside for controlled hunting atone point in time). However, crucialplaces like the upper Palani Hills (un-der reserve forests) have pockets ofhabitat that still retain surviving rem-

MIST RISING UP to cliffs at 2,500 metres in a relatively undisturbed part ofthe Palani Hills escarpment.

AT PRAYER POINT near Marion. Small populations ofNilgiri tahr are still holding out on the southernescarpment but are threatened by invasive tree species.


A LARGE-SCALED PIT viper.

A GAUR AT Kukaal.

GREEN FROG.

SHRUB FROG.

WHITE-BELLIED SHORTWING.

The biodiversity of Palani Hills


EXACUM WIGHTIANUM.

LYSIMACHIA LESCHENAULTII.

VALERIAN.

PRUNELLA VULGARIS.

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nants of the mosaic. It is these areasthat offer a significant opportunity forecological restoration efforts.

I N T O T H E R E M O T E P A L A N I SLast summer, I had the good fortune tospend an extended period in the Pala-nis where I participated in two surveysof the upper Palani plateau that helpedgive a real sense of both the incredibleecological wealth of the area and thefragility of the ecosystems. Both sur-veys were organised through the Vat-takanal Conservation Trust (VCT)with the support of the Tamil NaduForest Department. The aim was to geta qualitative assessment of the ecosys-tems along the southern escarpment

VCT VOLUNTEERSAND workers cut backwattle at the Vataparimarsh. This degradedmarsh and grassland isa key experimental siteto gauge theeffectiveness of therestoration measures.

HERE, SYMPLOCOSCOCHINCHINENSIS ina wattle forest nearGundar Valley. Sholaspecies are starting tocolonise plantations ofexotic trees on theiredges.

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that stretches from Kodaikanal to TopStation. Several of us had surveyed thesame area in 1996 during the kurinji(Strobilanthes sp.) blooming (Fron-tline, August 8, 2006). On this trip wewere specifically interested in the stateof grasslands in these remote parts ofthe Palanis.

The southern escarpment of thePalani Hills hosts what are arguablysome of the grandest, yet least known,landscapes in the entire WesternGhats. The cliffs of the escarpment riseabruptly from the plains of the Vaigaibasin and ascend to a tableland whoseedge undulates from 1,800 to 2,500metres. The escarpment runs in aroughly east-to-west direction and isinterrupted by steep ridges and cliffsdiving precipitously downwards to thedry plains. Deciduous forest mixedwith evergreen riparian woods carpetthe lower slopes. In the upper reaches,patches of grasses and evergreen for-ests provide a last habitat for smallpopulations of Nilgiri tahr (Nilgiritra-gus hylocrius), the endangered signa-ture ungulate of the Western Ghats.The union of the Palanis with the restof the Western Ghats near Top Stationis a riot of rugged landscapes, grandpeaks and lush forests.

The access to the escarpment is dif-ficult, and assuming permissions havebeen granted, a good day’s walk fromthe road head is needed before youreach the cliff habitats. Historically, aroad connected Kodaikanal to the tea-planting town of Munnar in Kerala’sHigh Range. It was built as an escaperoute in anticipation of a Japanese in-vasion in the early 1940s, an event thatnever materialised. For the first dec-ades of Independence, the road gavepeople with automobiles an opportu-nity to motor through stunning, undis-turbed shola/grasslands habitat. Thatchanged in the 1960s and 1970s whenthe upper Palanis was intensivelyplanted with non-native fuel woodspecies. Montane grasslands, underthe jurisdiction of the Forest Depart-ment, were considered “wastelands”and had to be put to productive use, inthis case to provide fuel wood, tanninand pinewood. There were also failed

experiments in potato cultivation, butin the end it was the large monoculturetree plantations that came to dominatethe landscape.

The road to Munnar was closed inthe 1990s because it seemed to encour-age uncontrolled tourist traffic and il-legal activities (poaching and ganjacultivation). It has now been takenover by a mix of introduced and nativevegetation. Fallen trees lie across largesections, a deep layer of humus hasbuilt up over tarmac, and there areonly remnants of the former road.Strands of Rubus ellipticus, the exoticraspberry of the hills, and other shrubshave engulfed large areas. The oldgranite milestones, citing mileage toCochin (Kochi) and Madurai, bear si-lent testimony to a time gone by.

On the first trek, our initial taskwas to find the old 80-mile round paththat once led along the most spectac-ular cliffs, connecting Kodaikanal viaMarion Shola to Vandaravu (the highpoint in the Palani Hills that was onceknown as the highest motorable roadin India south of the Himalayas). The80-mile round was once a four-or-five-day trek that many visitors to Kodaika-nal in the early to mid-20th centurytraditionally took during their sum-mer sojourns. I have always had a spe-cial affinity with the area: mygrandfather and father had both hikedand photographed their adventures onthe 80 and I followed in their footstepsin the 1980s as a student at KodaikanalInternational School. In the 1920s and1930s, the area was a relatively undis-turbed wilderness, and later, duringmy father’s time in the 1950s, therewere few plantations in the outer hills.However, by the time I came of age, thegrasslands had been largely consumedby vast plantations of exotic trees.

We ended up thrashing throughdense groves of wattle (Acacia melan-oxylon) that had been blown into amaze of fallen branches, upturnedroots and thick trunks with layers ofbrittle, peeling bark. Invasive Eupato-rium had taken advantage of thebreaks in the canopy. There seemed tobe no decomposers interested inbreaking down the fallen Australian


wood and navigating through it was anightmare. Halfway through thethicket I ended up upside down afterslipping off a wattle tree with my 25 kgbackpack, cursing the people that in-troduced the species to the hills. At lastwe found the trail of the 80, familiar tome from numerous trips during myschool and subsequent years. It passedthrough pockets of shola mixed in withplantations, and we witnessed signs ofelephants, gaur and what looked likewild dog droppings.

The path ascended to the 2,513-m

high point at Ibex Peak, the site of ourfirst survey. When we reached thecliffs, we were impressed to discover alarge meadow with a bewildering arrayof wild flowers, and grasses. The otherteam members started inventoryingthe myriad species, while I photo-graphed and noted down the records.

I could not help being floored bythe variety of colours and details of theflowers. However, on both sides of themeadow, plantations of pinus, acaciaand eucalyptus were expanding out oftheir original planted areas into the

marsh. On the adjacent cliffs, pinustrees of varying youthful ages had self-seeded and encroached into remnantgrasslands. Piles of Nilgiri tahr pelletslay collected on delicate mosses in theshadow of these invasions. It was abizarre scene. Mexican pine trees, sosimilar to Christmas trees with theirdrooping acidic needles, taking oversome of the last grasslands of the tahr,a species that clung to survival insmall, inconsequential numbers in thePalanis. We recognised that a smalleffort could quickly arrest the spread

SHOLA, IN CONTRAST to plantations and grasslands in thebackground, on the southern escarpment.


of the pine. During the next few days,we explored westwards along the es-carpment. The scenery was, as I hadremembered, stunning but the pro-gress of the unplanned tree invasionswas alarming.

During the original planting in the1970s, the cliff-side grasses had beenleft alone, but now they were slowlybut surely being swallowed up by thenon-native tree species which wereself-seeding and spreading into thelast domain of the grasslands.

Over the course of several days and

then on the second trip to Marion Sho-la, we had a chance to observe the Nil-giri tahr on the escarpment cliffs. Mostof them were at a distance but a fewherds were 30-40 m away. The planta-tions flowing over the cliffs were en-croaching on the habitat that the tahrprefer. There is evidently some pres-sure from poachers living in remote,hard-to-reach plantations on the low-er cliffs, and the tahr seemed to stayhigh on the escarpment.

To long-term observers of the Pala-nis, there has been a clear revival of

large mammal populations in the up-per hills. Residents of the township ofKodaikanal are well aware that herdsof gaur are found daily around the lakeand frequently in the middle of thetown and in their front gardens! Indi-an giant squirrels (Ratufa indica) havereturned to Bombay Shola (Frontline,November 6, 2009, and Nilgiri lan-gurs (Trachypithecus johnii) are mak-ing a slow return at Pambar andBerijam Sholas. Farther out towardsBerijam, there has been an increase inthe sambar (Cervus unicolor) popula-

PLASTIC WASTE LEFT by tourists in the Guna Caves shola has been dumped between the roots ofan ancient tree.


tion, and herds of elephants now seemto be permanently roaming the upperplateau (something that was extremelyrare 20 years ago). Reports of big catsare more frequent, with tigers beingfound in Berijam and signs of leopardon the rise nearer to human settle-ments. Two years ago, a pack of wilddogs (Cuon alpinus) made a dramatickill of a guar at the Vatapari marshwithin full view of a VCT team doingrestoration work.

T H E P A R A D O X O F P L A N T A T I O N SNon-native tree plantations in the up-per Palani Hills pose a curious, para-doxical challenge to ecologists,conservationists and foresters: a banon logging for altruistic reasons hasallowed non-native species to ravagenative populations with few checks.Once plantations were established ex-tensively in the 1970s, the upper PalaniHills were commercially logged forseveral decades. The wood provided animportant energy source for hill com-munities and raw materials for indus-tries in the plains. However,commercial logging in this area was

stopped in 2001 when the South IndiaViscos plant in Coimbatore was shutdown on account of serious water pol-lution concerns (wattle contains tan-nic acid, a key ingredient for tanninghides, and so on).

With the evolving notion of theWestern Ghats being a “biodiversityhotspot”, there was also increasing in-terest in protecting the area for its bio-diversity. Environmentalists at thePalani Hills Conservation Council hadalso highlighted the hydrological argu-ment for protection: “The health of thehill is the wealth of the plains.” Howev-er, other than the blocking of trafficand the halting of logging, little wasdone to address the serious ecologicaldamage that had happened in the dec-ades of rampant silviculture. What wenow know is that leaving alone themixed landscapes of plantation on for-mer grasslands, with patches of sholas,has contributed to a dramatic shift inthe ecology of the upper hills. The ram-ifications are significant for both bio-diversity and the hydrology of the hills.

It is important to remember thatthe sholas of the upper Palanis plateau

were largely left intact during the con-version of grasslands to tree planta-tions. Even today significant sholassurvive among the plantations thoughthe water flow and hydrology havebeen adversely affected. When logginghappened, native species were mostlyleft alone. What is less known is thatshola species have spread into planta-tions of the non-native species. In nu-merous locations across the Palanis,there has been shola invasion of theexotic plantations! This is a significantand unexpected change. In some cases,what were once montane grasslandsand were then converted into planta-tions under the guidance of foresters isnow evolving into a hybrid shola forest.From a biodiversity point of view, thisis intriguing though it is not what wasin place before the plantation drives.

T H E N E X T B I G T H I N GThe idea of ecological restoration indegraded montane grasslands in thePalanis is a vital solution to the woes ofthe Palanis, from an ecological, aes-thetic and economic point of view. It ishighly doubtful that the original shola/

EUCALYPTUS TREES INVADING grasslands on the Palani Hills.

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grasslands mosaic can be restored toits full extent. However, crucial areassuch as the cliff grasslands of thesouthern escarpment (Kodaikanal-Berijam-Marion Shola-Vandaravu)area are in urgent need of restorativeintervention. It is only relatively re-cently that the grasslands have beeninvaded by the non-native species andthus the restorative work should focuson weeding out non-native plants andgiving indigenous ones a chance tothrive and survive. Many of the grassesstill exist here, hanging on perilouslyamong the invasive exotic tree andshrub species. A sustained campaigncould conceivably address this prob-lem. The cliff area is significant be-cause it is the habitat for Nilgiri tahrand indeed they are good indicators ofthe health of the native shola/grass-lands vegetation. A further idea that isworth exploring at a different timewould be the reintroduction of cap-tive-bred tahr in the cliff ranges closerto Kodaikanal.

There are economic reasons to pro-mote ecological restoration. The verysignificant quantity of biomass thathas built up in the upper plateau plan-tations of the Palanis does little for the

natural ecosystems, but is a potentiallyprofitable source of biomass energyand/or timber. Technically, any resto-ration work could pay for itself withthe sales of wood, though this is an ideathat is rarely talked about. It wouldalso provide employment opportuni-ties and thus give populations in thehills a stake in restoration and conser-vation initiatives.

Restoration work on montanegrasslands is currently being carriedout by the VCT at the Vatapari marshnear the Kodaikanal golf links. It is thefirst time that anyone in the WesternGhats has tried to restore these sys-tems, and experience has proved thatthe process is slow-moving The VCThas received support from the TamilNadu Forest Department and estab-lished a partnership to move the ideaof restoration forward. Essentially, it isconducting the critical experimentalwork that must be implemented on alarger scale once there has been grea-ter acceptance of the idea of restoringmontane grasslands. A key aspect oftheir study is the study of steam flowand changes in hydrological patternsas the extent of the restoration ex-pands. At its nurseries, the VCT teamhas successfully propagated the varietyof native montane grassland speciesthat would be needed in any restora-tion initiative.

The Palani Hills face an uncertainfuture as tourism and development ex-pand into the periphery in the outlyinghills further away from the core area ofKodaikanal. The ecological changes ofthe past 50 years are significant and yetwe are understanding only now whatkind of a dramatic ecological impacthas been caused by the conversion ofmontane grasslands into non-nativetree plantations. There is a great needto map vegetation types and land usein the hills and create a dynamic GISdatabase of the area.

There is a need for further educa-tion about the ecology of the hills. Atti-tudes about natural ecology and therole of it in biodiversity and hydrologyare absent in the dash of tourists to seeall the sites, dance in pine forests, eatas much as possible, and breathe in the

THE FOREST DEPARTMENT andNGOs run nurseries that specialisein propagating native shola species.

THE Society for Ecological Res-toration defines ecological resto-ration as “an intentional activitythat initiates or accelerates therecovery of an ecosystem with re-spect to its health, integrity andsustainability”. Frequently, theecosystem is degraded, dam-aged, transformed or entirely de-stroyed by human activities.Ecological restoration is now akey management strategy in pro-tected areas across the world.

In India, it is a relatively newidea, but clearly there will needto be further interest in ecolog-ical restoration. The NatureConservation Foundation basedin Mysore has been conductingpioneering work in degradedrainforests converted into tea es-tates near Valparai. Their workin the Anaimalais has set thestandard for others trying to re-store similar rainforest habitats.At the same time the VattakanalConservation Trust has also beenbuilding up years of successfulshola regeneration in the PalaniHills, an idea first hatched by thePalani Hills Conservation Coun-cil through its shola nurseries.

The VCT’s work with restor-ing the Vatapari marsh near theKodaikanal golf links is the firsteffort in the Western Ghats torestore montane grasslands andwill establish clear methodolo-gies for further restoration activ-ities in the upper plateau areas ofthe Western Ghats. It is now set-ting up nurseries of native grass-es and shrubs that complementtheir success with raising differ-ent shola species.

See http://www.vattakanal-conservationtrust.org/ for fur-ther information.

Ian Lockwood

New ideain India

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famous Kodai air. At night the lakebasin reverberates with the deep tech-no thump of various hotel discos. Outof sight of most of visitors is a hillsideand shola edge polluted by veritablemountains of waste that the touristsand the township produce. The idea ofsustainable tourism that is less relianton vehicles, uses less fossil fuel, createsless waste and stresses the natural as-pects of the hills is still a dream in theworking.

Meanwhile, out in the remote Pa-lanis there is an urgent need for quickrestorative action to arrest the spreadof non-native species into the remain-ing native montane grasslands alongthe escarpment. �Ian Lockwood is an environmentaleducator, geographer, writer andphotographer based in Sri Lanka.More of his work can be sampled atwww.highrangephotography.com

REFERENCESBawa, Kamaljit S., Primack, Ri-

chard and Oommen, Meera Anna;Conservation Biology: A Primer forSouth Asia; ATREE/University Press,Hyderabad, 2011.

Chandran, M.D; “On the ecolog-ical history of Western Ghats”; Cur-rent Science; 73: pages 146-155; 1997.

Myers, N., Mittermeier, R., Mitter-meier, C., da Fonseca, G., and Kent, J.“Biodiversity hotspots for conserva-tion priorities”; Nature; 403: pages853–858; 2000.

Robin, V.V., Sinha, Anindya andRamakrishnan, Uma; “A view fromthe past: shortwings and sky islands ofthe Western Ghats”; Indian Birds, Oc-tober 2011.

Samra, J.S. et al; “Hydrological im-plications of planting bluegum in nat-ural shola and grasslands watershedsof southern India”; 10th InternationalSoil Conservation Organisation Con-ference; May 1999.

Society for Ecological Restoration(www.ser.org).

Thomas, S.M. and Palmer, M.W.;“The montane grasslands of the West-ern Ghats, India: Community ecologyand conservation”; Community Ecol-ogy; 891: pages 67-73, 2007.

RHODODENDRONS, SUCH AS this one on the Ibex Peakescarpment, are among the few trees that coexist withmontane grasslands.

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conservation - ian lockwood...planting town of munnar in kerala’s high range. it was built as an...

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