What’s the best way to conserve a forest? 

In the opinion of KJ Raju, 75, a retired mathematics professor, referring to the Longwood Shola forest (a 116-hectare reserve forest on the northern edge of Kotagiri in the Nilgiris) that he and a handful of other ecologists have been attempting to protect for the last 27 years, you should simply leave it alone. 

Well, don’t completely desert it, Raju clarifies. 

A forest, he says, needs two things: protect the native trees and purge the exotic ones. And, to further this goal, Raju, Padma Shri awardee Michel Danino, M Balamurugan (who was at the time headmaster in Kotagiri’s government school), and Michael Ezekiel (at the time a music teacher and a social worker) became a part of the newly formed Longwood Shola Watchdog Committee (LSWC) formed by the Forest Department in 1996. 

But, long before the committee was formed, one individual had already gauged the forest’s importance. Michel Danino and his wife moved near the Longwood Shola forest in 1982 when he started work at a nearby research institute. 

A former professor of IIT Gandhinagar, Michel says he’d spend hours in the forest, often marvelling at how so many “plant and animal species worked in concert in this unique ecosystem. The trees seemed to communicate and were able to wage a war against intruding exotics.” 

His observations during this time compelled him to raise his voice against what was happening in the forest. 

“⁠⁠As illegal cutting and felling was rampant, I started doing four things: physically preventing locals from collecting firewood or felling young trees, putting constant pressure on the local Forest Department staff, though without much success; writing long detailed letters to the higher officials, getting senior journalists to report on the destruction of this important pocket of Shola forest,” he shares. 

A couple of years later, Michel took then Assistant Conservator of Forests, Dr N Krishna Kumar (who much later became Principal Chief Conservator of Forests) to the Longwood Shola forest and showed him hundreds of fresh stumps. 

“He submitted a strong report to his higher-ups. Years later, it was he who mooted the idea of a group of citizens (or watchdog committee) to assist the Forest Department, leading to the formation of the Longwood Shola Watchdog Committee in 1998.” 

Inside one of the Nilgiris’ last Shola forests

The significance of the Longwood Shola forest is splattered across the pages of ecological history. 

The word ‘shola’ is an ancient Tamil word found in the oldest Sangam literature. It refers to evergreen montane tropical or subtropical natural rainforests growing at an altitude higher than 1,500 metres above sea level, mostly along the Western Ghats. 

The Shola forests of the Nilgiris, in particular, haven’t had an easy life, becoming threatened by man-made plantations (eucalyptus, acacia, cypress, tea) during British rule. 

According to a report in Mongabay India, India has lost 30 percent of its forests in the last few decades, with over 50 percent of Shola forests having been lost since 1850. A walk down the lanes of ecological history reveals that, much before the Longwood Shola Watchdog Committee stepped up to protect the Longwood Shola forest, in the 1900s, after pockets of the forest were reserved under the Madras Forest Act of 1882, local people were urged not to convert the natural forests into plantations. 

In the latter half of the 20th century, afforestation attempts were made by the Forest Department, which planted wattle to meet fuelwood needs. However, it was later realised that wattle severely degrades the forest soil and does not allow any undergrowth; wattle plantations are in effect dead forests. In contrast, Shola forests have a rich biodiversity, countless flora and fauna species, and a capacity to store large amounts of rainwater in their soil, slowly releasing it in drier times. 

And what’s really at stake when patches of Shola forest are lost? 

According to a report on the significance of the Longwood Shola forest, it’s a perennial water source to fifteen villages and hamlets, meeting the water needs of around 30,000........

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