Biodiversity is perhaps the most unacknowledged component of the natural environment, and the attention of policy-makers rarely goes beyond trees and animals, if even that. But biodiversity is much more than just trees and animals. It is the building block of nature, without which there would be no nature, or an inhabitable planet.

Biodiversity is the extraordinary variety of all living things on Earth. It encompasses plants, animals, micro-organisms, fungi and even pathogens, the genetic information they carry, and the complex ecosystems they create. I've learnt this the hard way, and am only just beginning to understand it.

When I acquired my half-acre of land in Puranikoti village in 2002, there were only two houses here; the landscape comprised rolling, grassy hillsides with a few apple trees and some deodars and blue pines. My own plot was carpeted with wild daisies, buttercups, lilies and primroses. The place was practically overrun with bees, butterflies, cicadas and dragonflies, and there was a continuous buzzing on sunny days. The birds formed the next level on the food chain, and were in turn subordinate to feral cats and pine martins. Purani Koti was a biodiversity hotspot!

Not any more. Most of the land in the village has been built over, the trees felled, the buzzing of dragonflies replaced with the rasping of jackhammers and saws. To compensate, I have planted more than 200 trees on my land, of the fruit and jungle varieties. But it has been of no avail, for trees alone on just one plot cannot create........

© National Herald