There is a familiar frame that runs through documentaries on India’s environmental crisis. It shows canals thick with plastic, water barely visible beneath layers of waste, banks lined with what cities have thrown away, plastic bottles, house waste, polythene bags. 

When the camera lingers on such scenes, a certain discomfort kicks in, but it goes away once the scene moves on. 

A  three-kilometre stretch of the Buckingham Canal in Tamil Nadu’s Cuddalore district could have been one of those frames. For years, it carried the same story: plastic bottles wedged into the mud, polythene bags caught along the edges, the water slowed to a near standstill. The canal had stopped functioning as a waterway. 

Like many other canals in India, it had become a holding space for waste.

But here, the story did not stay that way.

The Tamil Nadu Forest Department established Chennai’s third mangrove forest along the Buckingham Canal, planting 20,000 mangrove seedlings across 20 hectares during 2025–26. 

The project features an innovative fishbone structure designed to support healthy tidal flow essential for mangrove growth. According to an X post by IAS Supriya Sahu, “8 main fishbone canals have been created with 8 feeder canals and 186 distribution channels.” This engineering ensures........

© The Better India