‘Experimental’ Aravalli Biodiversity Park opens today

NEW DELHI: Ten years after the first plantations began in a mining-ravaged stretch of the Aravali range in Delhi, a forest is in bloom. The Aravalli Biodiversity Park in Vasant Vihar, set up on the same site where Delhi Development Authority planned a luxury hotel in 1996, will be inaugurated on Wednesday. Had it not been for a PIL in the Supreme Court, this important lung would have been all brick and mortar.
The canopy height of trees here has reached 30-40 feet and the mini bio-reserve already boasts of some fascinating wildlife sightings. The leopard gecko and the black eagle have both made an appearance.

Developed almost entirely by biologists with a meticulous selection of flora from all over Aravalis stretching from the capital to Gujarat, it is a successful scientific experiment—to revive land that had nothing but Prosopis julifora or vilayati keekar for a cover.

The Centre for Environmental Management of Degraded Ecosystems under Delhi University that took up the project for DDA got the keekar uprooted first, making a clearing for native species to grow in the form of biotic communities—a group of species that belong to the same region.

Interestingly, the same people who filed a PIL in SC to secure the area have now confronted the park authorities claiming the pristine ecology of a "thorn forest", typical of a quarry, has been altered by the biodiversity park project.



Vikram Soni, a scientist who works extensively on water-related issues, and a couple of others recently approached C R Babu, professor emeritus and head of CEMDE, who conceptualized biodiversity parks in Delhi. Their complaints are mainly against a fernarium and an orchidarium being developed inside the park. "They cut down a naturally generated dense biodiverse quarry forest to build a fernery, an orchidaium and a butterfly parks," Soni said.

But the reality is different. The park has only native Aravali varieties and is using some deep mining pits where moisture levels are higher and it's comparatively cooler to grow orchids and ferns.

Babu says such biodiversity parks are critical for big cities. "When we started, we didn't change the contours of the mining pits. We wanted to use them as water recharge pits so not a single drop is wasted. The native plant species started attracting birds that were not seen for decades."

"The Ridge or Aravalis are not only about vilayati keekar. They had many other species that never got a chance to grow after keekar invaded these forests. The biodiversity park brings these species back," he says. Students are conducting studies; many doing their dissertations on the park. One will soon publish a paper on air quality inside the park in comparison to other parts of the city. "This is like a living museum or a lab. We have to understand that the park has been created. It was not naturally like this, at the same it has revived original Aravali species, including some Jurassic-era ones like mosses and lichens," M Shah Hussain, scientist in charge, ABP, says.

While the debate on whether plantations or scientific intervention is required to regenerate such forests infested with invasive species, experts believe this green patch has given much relief to a capital struggling to breathe.