These Women are Reviving Kerala’s Rainforest
Kerala, one of India’s five southern states, and situated between the Western Ghats mountains and the Arabian Sea, is considered a region of incredible natural beauty. Within this mountain range, considered one of the world’s eight “hottest biodiversity hotspots,” according to UNESCO, is the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary, fondly known as the “Noah’s Ark For Plants.”
This sanctuary, protecting valued plant species in the wake of the destruction caused by deforestation, urbanization and mining, but also climate change and invasive exotics, as the charity Rainforest Concern details, is carefully tended by an all-women team of 20 mostly local and indigenous conservationists. Here, these women, without any formal training in botany or conservation, are coming to the rescue of a dying forest. Together, they have turned this haven into a nurturing powerhouse for 2000 native plants as The Better India reports.
Grounded Restoration Roots
Back in 1981, German conservationist, Wolfgang Theuerkauf, was given seven acres of old-growth rainforest by a spiritual mentor in Kerala. At the time, the surrounding land was being cleared for tea, ginger and lemongrass plantations. Theuerkauf was moved to act when he saw the ancient forest, one holding 27 percent of India’s higher plant species, start to disappear.
He began to collect endangered plants in the area, bringing them back to his sanctuary. He then trained 20 women, most local and some from indigenous communities, in conservation techniques. Lacking a formal education, they nonetheless came equipped with a real familiarity with their surroundings. They learned by doing: touching, transplanting, watching, and trying again when they failed until they got it right. These women went on to steer the sanctuary’s conservation efforts.
One of them was Laly Joseph, now in her 50s. “I was training to become an X-ray technician but I needed a job quickly. I liked working with plants, so I joined.” That was 37 years ago. Today, she leads the sanctuary’s plant conservation work and has co-authored several scientific papers describing newly discovered species.
She explains to the Guardian, that the team have perfected their own cultivation methods: “Others say fine compost is good for plants, but we found it wasn’t the case for us here. We found coarser compost works better. So we create our own compost by collecting dried and green leaves, which are then dried and sterilised over heat before putting them through a sieve.”
Before joining the sanctuary a decade ago, Lakshmi PC earned just one rupee per kilogram (two pounds) of beans she picked at a coffee plantation. She now manages over 100 species of Arisaema and Sonerila plants. “I do not wish to leave this place; it’s very peaceful here,” she says.
Another, as Green Matters reports, is Sheena Mol PS, a senior gardener who joined at age 15. Her work at the sanctuary has helped support her children and mother after she was widowed early on in her marriage. “This is my first job, and I like it very much here,” she explains.
Significantly, Kerala’s culture is notable for the high social status given to women, the result of the former strength of a matrilineal kinship system.
The Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary Today
While Theuerkauf died in 2014, his legacy lives on. At a time when just seven percent of the region remains under primary vegetation cover, the sanctuary, partially supported by Rainforest Concern, spans 79 acres after it bought degraded land, and adjoining agricultural land. It now grows nearly 40 percent of all native plant species found in the Western Ghats. These rare and disappearing flora are skillfully and patiently cultivated using traditional wisdom and hands-on experimentation until they can be reintroduced into the wild.
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Today, the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary, located at the edge of the Periyar reserve forest, as Green Matters details, is home to multiple plant species, many of which are notoriously hard to cultivate outside their natural habitat. They are grown under soaring rainforest trees, in greenhouses and open beds, offering the right conditions enabling fragile species to take root again. Rather than trees, the team focuses on herbaceous plants such as creepers and small-rotted species that are typically the first to disappear, but which hold the ecosystem together.
“Forests are substantially more than trees,” shares Subrabha Seshan, an educator at the sanctuary, with Green Matters. She points out that there are 5000-6000 flowering plant species in the Western Ghats, thousands of fungi, and hundreds of mammals.
The 2000 species cultivated include: 260 of the 280 fern species found in South India, 110 of the 140 known impatiens (spurred flowering plants) in the region including some rare species that have almost vanished in the wild, some 100 native tree species, herbs, and shrubs, creepers, climbers, orchids, succulents, carnivorous plants and epiphytes (plants growing on the surface of other plants, and over 200 types of mosses and liverworts.
The Forest is More Than Trees
A cherished ‘side effect’ of the forest restoration project has been the growing presence of fauna that the thicker, cooler and more complex forest attracts.
Today, the sanctuary is home to 240 bird species, 20 snake species, 25 amphibian species, over 65 butterfly species, and 15 small mammal species. Meanwhile, deer, Indian bison, and elephants roam freely, and there are tiger tracks. These multiple species show that the team is on the right path.
“We’re restoring nature’s agency to heal itself,” Sushan tells the Guardian, “and then supporting certain species by working with nature’s agency. So we do some work, but nature’s doing most of the work.”
