Carmarthen Bay in West Wales is much loved for its broad, peach-white sands, its migratory birdlife and its sweeping sand and mud flats and salt marshes. It’s the birthplace of the Arthurian legend of the magician Merlin and one of the landscapes that inspired celebrated Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. In 2009, the UK’s Joint Nature Conservation Committee listed Carmarthen Bay and Estuaries as a Special Area of Conservation, for the presence in the Bay of and its saltmarshes of sea rush (Juncus maritimus) and marsh-mallow (Althaea officinalis), rare invertebrates  and the twait shad (Alosa fallax), a threatened migratory fish.

Coed Rhyal – an ancient oak woodland – occupies a northwest-facing slope overlooking Carmarthen Bay. Whilst the inland Bay is less visited than its coastline and marshes, and certainly less studied, ancient deciduous woodlands such as Coed Rhyal, a recent acquisition by Sacred Groves, are also key to the region’s rich ecosystem. At Coed Rhyal, a closed canopy of ancient oaks provides both the moisture and shade for a host of symbiotic flora and fauna, from honeysuckle climbers, to edible bilberry, primrose and ferns and the bluebells that explode in a glowing counterpane of mauve each early spring.

“Coed Rhyal has some wonderful ancient woodland indicators, such as wood sorrel and campion,” says woodland and forestry manager Marc Liebrecht, custodian of Coed Rhyal for Sacred Groves. “There are veteran trees and, crucially for biodiversity, there is deadwood with plenty of friendly cracks and crevices for bats and birds to nest and floor as well as deadwood that’s great for fungus.”

A permissive path [a route designated by law for use by the public], thought to be an old horse and cart path, runs through the woodland and dog walkers and runners often use the route. On his last visit to the wood, Liebrecht met a local dog walker there who was pleased that Coed Rhyal – which translates as Rhyal’s trees – has been acquired to be kept wild for posterity. 

“Rewilding is usually appreciated by local communities who want to preserve their natural heritage,” Liebrecht says.

Although improvements have been made since the end of World War One, when woodland covered less than five percent of Wales’ landmass, today woodland only covers 14 percent of the current land surface in Wales (in comparison to a European average of 37 percent), and as of 1998, only 38 percent of Welsh woodland was composed of native species such as oak (Welsh Assembly Government, 2013). Wales’ ancient woods are worth preserving. Ancient woodland is the UK’s richest and most complex terrestrial habitat: home to more threatened species than any other natural environment. Centuries of undisturbed soils and accumulated decaying wood create the perfect home for communities of fungi and invertebrates, as well as specialist species of insects, birds and mammals.

Back in Coed Rhyal, as the path ascends, the route passes abandoned coal works and gaps in the canopy open out to glimpses of the estuary and Carmarthen Bay. These snatched vantage points make Liebrecht privileged to be able to visit this ancient wood. 

“The path meanders up the slope and has such a nice feel about it,” Liebrecht explains. “There is a viewpoint where you have unbroken views of the estuary and its setting in the wider landscape. It’s breathtaking and also somewhat soothing as you feel so cool under the forest canopy.”

WHAT IS FOREST BATHING?

Forest bathing became part of a Japanese national public health program in 1982 when the forestry ministry coined the phrase shinrin-yoku and promoted topiary as therapy. Shinrin-yoku, or is defined broadly as “taking in, in all of our senses, the forest atmosphere”. The program was established to encourage Japanese to get out into nature, to literally bathe the mind and body in green spaces, and take advantage of public-owned forest networks as a means of promoting health. Some 64 percent of Japan is occupied by forest, so there is ample opportunity to escape the megacities that dot its landscape. Now there’s scientific evidence to bolster the claims of shinrin-yoku,with phytoncides, compounds released by plants and trees, have been shown to reduce the stress hormone cortisol and activate the immune system. 

Tommy Carr, leader of Welsh forest bathing group Mindful Walks (@mindful_walks) on Wales’ ancient woods:
“Old woods differ from younger woods for me in terms of a feeling of being something greater than just trees, there’s a sense of the whole ecosystem and the sheer size difference which affects light and shade. Younger woods can have their own quality but it’s the ancient woods I love. Walking together in these woodland landscapes I think that people cannot help but build a greater appreciation and love of them. Though it isn’t always explicit that we talk about the woodland and conservation itself, taking people who rarely walk in nature and reconnecting them to their own nature is crucial. There’s been a big increase in small woodland ownership in Wales since the pandemic and lockdowns. I hope that the increase in interest and desire to protect these habitats will continue and we can recognise the true natural resources of Wales.”

Monisha & Vikram Krishna, Co-Founders Sacred Groves:
“As we walked down the path less trodden at Coed Rhyal, we felt that we had been taken back in time to the world of Enid Blyton and her incredibly imaginative stories set in the backdrop of the enchanted woods. We dedicate Coed Rhyal to the children of Wales and hope to support many more such treasures in the future. We have miles to go and many promises to keep!”

Author: Sally Howard, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Founders, Sacred Groves

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At almost 4,000 meters above sea level, the high-altitude grasslands of Peru, known locally as punas, are a complex and increasingly fragile ecosystem. Climate change, the melting of glaciers and unpredictable rain patterns have shrunken the wetlands, with alarming consequences for some of the country’s most vulnerable communities, who depend on them to graze their sheep, alpacas and llamas. Though Peru is home to 70 percent of the world’s tropical glaciers, their size has diminished by 40 percent in the past four decades. As glaciers recede, the drying grasslands force herders to concentrate in smaller areas, leading to intensive grazing practices, which further degrade the puna.

In search of a solution, the residents of Miraflores and Chanchayllo, two small Andean villages in the Nor Yauyos reserve, decided to look back into the past; a bet that has yielded extraordinary results. With the help of the U.S. non-profit The Mountain Institute (TMI) and enlisting Colombian archeologist Alex Herrera, local authorities were able to bring back to life a 1200-year old ancestral hydraulic system. The complex network of waterways had been used for centuries, but it was abandoned in the 17th century when Spanish colonizers forced indigenous populations to relocate.

The silt dams, reservoirs and canals were used by ancient communities to slow the movement of water through the soil and grasses. The slower pace of water they produced mitigated the impact of both floods and droughts, created nutrient-rich soil and expanded the wetlands, allowing for rotational grazing. While livestock and crop productivity have indeed increased since the system was revived, Herrera explains that the success of the project should not be measured in terms of output, but of sustainability. “Andean knowledge is not about maximizing production, but minimizing risks,” he tells us, “and that can be antithetical to the current growth paradigm.

Ancestral technologies look to increment production to provide food for everyone over time, not to increase revenue.”

For the team behind the revival of the waterways, its success lies in its bottom-up participation and collaboration. The initiative was decided upon in community assemblies and relied heavily on local knowledge. The project is not an off-the-peg solution: combining, as it does, complex forms of social organization and an understanding of the ecosystem built over centuries and passed orally across generations.

Though the TMI believes the success of the project raises hopes for highland communities everywhere, Herrera is quick to point out that adapting it to different contexts might prove to be a complex endeavor. “Andean technology is not just material; it is also the capacity to organize work over time and space. This type of solution requires local knowledge and, more importantly, a local commitment to sustain it over time. And this can only come from the communities themselves, not from external actors,” he explains. Listening to indigenous populations, he adds, is a good place to start.

Author: Jimena Ledgard, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Grassland banner image and 1. Alexander Herrera Wassilowski, 2. The Mountain Institute

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For years, locals in the remote district of Ratnagiri in Maharashtra have supplemented their agrarian livelihoods by poaching the Indian pangolin, a species given the highest protection under India’s Wildlife Protection Act. Through his non-profit Sahyadri Nisarga Mitra, Katdare, locally known as Bhau, had tried everything from organising awareness campaigns to training police to identify poached pangolin parts.

A Ratnagiri local himself, Bhau dropped out of college and has chosen to learn from the field since 1992. He began to wonder, through his immersion in local communities, if creating an emotional connection with the pangolins in the minds of the locals could be the key to finally putting an end to poaching.
“In many ways, conservation is the essence of all religion,” he says.

In 2020, he enlisted the help of the temple priest in the Dugwe village of Ratnagiri. Together they created an event celebrating the scaly mammal – “Khawlotsav” or Pangolin Festival – coinciding with the World Pangolin Day that falls on the third Saturday of February.

Bhau asked toymakers from a nearby town to make a large effigy of the animal, which was then hidden in a deep thicket. When villagers found it, they bedecked it in the finery usually reserved for the village deity and brought it back to the temple with great fanfare. Traditional dances were performed in its honour, and prayers were dedicated to the animals that ate the ants and termites that often infested locals’ crops. Villagers even prayed for better sense and wisdom to prevail upon animal traffickers and poachers. The pangolin replica was then installed in the temple, beside the idol of the village god and finally, it was placed on an elegant scarlet palanquin and paraded from house to house.

In the past, Bhau’s team had made people swear oaths to protect the species and raise awareness not only in their region, but also in neighbouring villages.
“At the end of the festival, they all swore the same oath again, and I could sense a shift,” he recalls.

A few months ago, someone sent him a video of the villagers’ reaction to a pangolin that had strayed into the village. In the past, it would have been killed without a thought. This time, however, when someone suggested they kill it as usual and sell its scales, a village elder reminded them of their oath to protect pangolins.

On a recent visit to the Dugwe village temple, Bhau discovered that the priest – his old ally – had placed a picture of a pangolin permanently next to the deity. The discovery has made him hopeful that their festival might become a tradition.

As he gears up for World Pangolin Day this year, the 60-year-old barefoot conservationist aims to continue fostering lasting connections between men and animals through India’s rich religious and cultural traditions. To advance the cause of sea turtle conservation in a neighbouring district, he plans to organise a drama performance about the ten avatars of Lord Vishnu, who took the form of a turtle in his second incarnation.
“If we get them to think of turtles as incarnations of their favourite god, maybe we’d have a shot at protecting them too,” Bhau says.

Authors: Geetanjali Krishna and Snighdha Bansal, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Sahyadri Nisarga Mitra

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What can one person do when an entire megapolis begins to lose all of its natural water bodies? Ask Bangalore-based ex-techie Anand Malligavad. In the last three years, he has managed to rope in entire communities to revive five large lakes in India’s Silicon Valley. Now his charity Lake Revivers Collective plans to work on 40 more by 2025. Malligavad has no technical training in lake conservation and rejuvenation: “All I have is a sense of urgency that if we don’t repair the damage we’ve already wrecked,” says the environmentalist, “it’s going to end badly for all of us…”

It all began when Malligavad visited the 36-acre water body, Kyalasanahalli Lake in 2017. “It had been reduced to a bone-dry cricket field and dumping ground,” he recalls. “It struck me that I’d actually seen Bangalore transform from a city of lakes to one where everyone depends on water tankers to meet their daily needs!” So he approached Sansera, the engineering company he worked for, to fund the rejuvenation of the lake. With local volunteers, three earth movers and six trucks, Malligavad removed almost 400,000 cubic meters of mud from the lake. Again with the help of volunteers, he planted 18,000 saplings of indigenous trees including 3,000 fruit trees, 3,000 native plants and 2,000 medicinal plants. The excavated mud was used to create five `islands’ in the lake for birds to nest. In a mere 45 days, the area was transformed and the next monsoon rains filled up a lake that had been parched for 35 years.

Buoyed by this success, Malligavad quit his job to work on lake revival full time and was joined by environmentalist Akshaya Devendra. Not only have they revived four more lakes since then, they have also managed to rope in local corporates to fund their work and volunteers to donate their time. “Some of the lakes we’ve worked on have been in really bad shape,” he says. “For example, Konasandra Lake was so full of sewage and runoffs from nearby pharma companies that instead of water, it had a stinky gel-like sludge.” With funds donated by one of these pharma companies, Malligavad and his team cleaned up the lake in under three months.

These experiences have helped Malligavad develop a lake revival model that can be quickly and cheaply replicated across different terrains. “First, one must view the lake in its context,” he says. This involves, among other things, planting of native trees and plants nearby and strengthening its banks with local grasses. “In the projects we’ve undertaken so far, we have afforested forty percent of the area around our intervention zone,” he says. “This improves the area’s biodiversity and bolsters its water-holding capacity.” Second, the rejuvenated lake must be able to sustain itself naturally after their interventions. To this end, Malligavad and his cohorts at Lake Revivers Collective plant water-purifying lotuses and lilies in the water, soil-binding grasses on the lake’s edge and intersperse these with Miyawaki plantations (a Japanese technique of plantation which enables native saplings to grow ten times faster and denser than usual). Third, they always involve local stakeholders – local communities as well as corporates. “When they reap the undoubted benefits of having a clean waterbody in their vicinity, they are further encouraged to keep it that way,” he says.

And benefits there are aplenty. In the long run, these revitalised lakes will increase the water table levels of a parched Bangalore and provide habitat for hundreds of bird, animal, insect and plant species. Meanwhile Malligavad has acquired quite the reputation as Bangalore’s Lake Man. “After 39 years of consuming so much on this planet, I’ve decided it’s time to give back,” he says. “Now I’ve dedicated my entire life to water, wildlife and afforestation and it feels good…”

Author: Geetanjali Krishna, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Anand Malligavad, Bengaluru, India

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