Matrix of agroforests and private forests in northern Western Ghats
CEROS

Ecological Restoration in Northern Western Ghats

Project Timeline: 2023-2025

People: Vishal Sadekar, Sharvani Deshpande, Jithin Vijayan, Rohit Naniwadekar

Collaborators: Western Ghats Nursery, Vanoshi Forest Homestays, Dhananjay Shedbale, Sahyadri Sankalp Society, Beej Katha, local community members from villages in Sindhudurg District, Rohit Aggarwal, John Eapen, Hemant Shah

Funding: Godrej Consumer Products Ltd., On The Edge Conservation, UK,

Plantation being done with the help of the local communities.
Saplings being carried to the Restoration Plot.
Saplings being planted in the disturbed forest area.
Restoration Workshop being held at the restoration site in Maharashtra
Monitoring of the saplings planted is done periodically
Plantation done collectively with the villagers.

What We Do?

Northern Western Ghats (NWG) have a rich biodiversity with high endemicity of amphibians, reptiles, birds, and plants alike. This landscape has been facing rampant land use change and is vulnerable to forest loss and fragmentation. Seeing the urgent need for saving the remnant forest and creating new habitat, our work focuses on restoring the natural landscapes in the NWG. After conducting research for the last 3-4 years, the original forest type in the low elevation areas of the NWG was found to be primarily evergreen. The objective of our work is to find suitable partners to work with to restore the land and  planting rare endemic and threatened tree species which are ecologically most relevant to a particular location. 

Studies from our lab have suggested the importance of the forests for biodiversity as well as the usefulness of evergreen forests/forest patches for native birds and pollinators which are also known to benefit humans and animals alike. Given this background, we are currently working with three stakeholders, private landowners, agroforesters and villages for sacred grove restoration. Private land holders are those who are willing to spare some land for restoration and share a common goal with us , which is to bring back the native forests. We have sites in Dodamarg, Kudal, Goa, etc. Agroforesters are those who have recognised the importance and benefits of having native vegetation within their plantations and are open to plant the rare evergreen trees of NWG. We currently are planting native trees in the Cashew Monocultures in Dodamarg taluk of Sindhudurg district. 

Realising the limited scope of reach with agroforesters and private land holders, we are now engaging with villages to revive and restore the sacred groves. Restoring sacred groves not only benefits biodiversity but also helps foster nature-culture relationship which is an age-old tradition in some of the landscapes. 

Till 2025 we have planted around 8000 saplings belonging to nearly 120 species of native plants of Northern western Ghats, many of which are rare, threatened and endangered. 

Plantwise app:

In partnership with Dr. Akanksha Rathore and Viswesh Suri from BITS Hyderabad and Dr. Navendu Page from Thackrey Wildlife Foundation, we built a decision support tool to help nursery partners and restoration practitioners to know what plant species to plant for a given location. This tool is based on the principle of Species Distribution Modelling and is curated to help plant rare species of trees which are ecologically most relevant to the given landscape. This tool is currently restricted to the Western Ghats but will soon be expanded to some other areas in the country (https://plantwise-india.org) 

Latitudinal and longitudinal data gives the user a list of species suitable for planting at that location.
Plantwise interface

Why This Matters?

Western ghats, which is one of the hottest biodiversity hotspots, is facing rapid land use land cover change. With less than 1% of protected area and less than 10% reserved forest in Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg districts, northern western ghats are seeing degradation of its ecosystems due to anthropogenic activities like Monocultures, Infrastructural Developments and Mining. Given that these landscapes are facing severe loss, it is necessary to engage in restoration that is robust, sustainable and ecologically relevant. 

Plantiwise tool: With willingness for restoration increasing amongst the people, there is a gap where people are not sure which species to focus on while planning the restoration effort and Nursery practitioners not knowing which species they should integrate while selling saplings for restoration purpose. To bridge this gap, Plantwise gives restoration practitioners and nursery owners list of plant species one can use as per the restoration and business needs. 

Key Findings:

  1. Past studies have found that low elevation areas of Northern Western Ghats were primarily composed of evergreen dominated forests. With repeated disturbance, the forest type was shifted to deciduous. 

  2. The evergreen saplings planted by CEROS show a good survival. Across all sites we see an average of 91.12% survival as of 2025. 

Publications

  1. Biswas, N., Sadekar, V., Biniwale, S., Taneja, Y., Osuri, A. M., Page, N., Suryawanshi, K., & Naniwadekar, R. (2025). Chronic Disturbance and Climate Water Deficit Shift Tree Communities From Tropical Evergreen to Deciduous in the Western Ghats, India. Journal of Vegetation Science, 36(6), e70080. https://doi.org/10.1111/jvs.70080

  2. Suri, V., S. Deshpande, N. Page, A. Gopal, R. Krishnamani, A. Kumar, A. Rathore and R. Naniwadekar. 2025. PlantWise: A tool for selecting native plant species for ecological restoration in the Western Ghats, India. Version 1.0. https://plantwise-india.org.