Restoring damaged ecosystems

Ecosystems experience various types of disturbance. These include natural disturbances such as cyclones and droughts, disturbances resulting directly from human activity such as habitat fragmentation and timber extraction, and hybrid disturbances such as a greater frequency of droughts resulting from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Ecosystems are known to be resilient and capable of full recovery from disturbances, especially when disturbances are infrequent or low in intensity. However, the growing human footprint and changing climate diminish ecosystems’ natural recovery potential, locking many in a perpetually degraded condition. Ecological restoration aims to assist ecosystem recovery and in the process, revive the biodiversity and ecological processes that maintain ecosystem health and generate many of the goods and benefits on which humans depend.

Our restoration programme in the Western Ghats mainly focuses on the region’s unique, biologically diverse tropical rainforests and montane grasslands. Over the past two centuries, most of these forests have been cleared, degraded, or reduced to fragments scattered like islands amidst towns and cities, dams and mines, farms and agroforestry plantations. Working with local residents, landowners, and administrators to recognize and protect these forests is an important first step, but protection alone is not enough. One also needs to ecologically restore these lands to improve habitat quality, support the conservation of threatened species, and enhance ecosystem functions. Beyond the forest patches themselves, efforts to enhance native tree diversity on surrounding farm and agroforestry lands can extend restoration’s impact to the wider landscape.

We are presently active in three Western Ghats landscapes – the Anamalai and Nilgiri mountain ranges in Tamil Nadu, and the Malenadu region in Karnataka. We began in the Anamalais in 2001, extended into Malenadu by 2020, and efforts in the Nilgiris commenced in 2024. Our team works closely with other NCF teams engaged in forest restoration in the Eastern Himalaya and in the Sahyadris.

Scientific research and systematic data collection are integral to our restoration projects. Research helps better understand the forest’s degraded condition, and set targets for restoration. It is an important monitoring and evaluation tool that helps track whether forests are recovering as intended, and gauge the effectiveness of our interventions. And from research can emerge new ideas on how we can restore better, more efficiently, and at scale.