Jamun trees, cedar, wild champak and rhododendron grow in profusion. There are pretty ferns and a carpet of dense green underfoot. Scary strangler figs wrap themselves around trees and Indian willows stand tall. Creepers, shrubs, reeds, grand old trees, thick undergrowth, marsh, fungus – everything is bathed in eerie green light. In places, the sunlight barely gets through and the only sounds are from the birds and a stream. It looks and feels so primeval that any moment you expect a dinosaur to come crashing through! The Longwood Shola is all that is left of a forest that once covered the Nilgiris. Even this pocket of vegetation was close to vanishing some years ago. Trees were felled indiscriminately and, in the words of one anguished conservationist, M. Yoganathan, "It became one big public latrine."
But then, he and a few other individuals decided they would stop complaining and do something about it. In 1998, along with the forest department, the locals formed a Longwood Shola Watchdog Committee that would ensure the forest was conserved for posterity. Well-known naturalists such as Zafar Futehally and J.C. Daniels (who passed away recently), both associated with the Bombay Natural History Society, lent their name and support to the movement, as did eminent wildlife photographers such as T.N.A. Perumal. One of the first committee members was A. Phoobathy, who has worked with the WWF for more than 35 years. "Gandhi’s dictum, ‘act locally, think globally,’ is our underlying philosophy," he says. "Conservation is sustainable only if the locals are involved." So they got the area cordoned off and cleared the forest of its garbage. Trees, creepers, ferns, and shrubs were allowed to reclaim the forest land. Birds returned, and so did the animals. Today, Longwood Shola is a living and breathing 116-hectare forest. There are 44 species of trees, 31 types of shrubs, 12 kinds of ferns, 25 lianas and five epiphytes that grow here in profusion. The shola is home to 60 species of birds. Endemic species such as the Nilgiri laughingthrush, Nilgiri wood-pigeon, black and orange fly catchers, rufous woodpeckers, the Malabar whistling thrush and the white-bellied short wing roost in its trees. Some of the migratory birds that seasonally visit the shola are the Himalayan woodcock, the brown wood-owl, the crested goshawk, the great horned owl and the collared scops owl.
A. Phoobathy is the co-ordinator of the Longwood Shola Bird Club and he regularly talks to students and other bird lovers about the endemic species. In the time of the British, the forest was popular for its small game hunting, especially bird shooting, says Phoobathy. "It was the British who renamed the original Dodda Solai or big forest as Longwood Shola. You even find barking deer and Malabar giant squirrels here," he says. The forest is also an important water source, according to K. Senthil Prasad, who works with the NGO Keystone Foundation and is involved with wetland mapping, conservation and management in the Nilgiris. "The wetlands inside provide drinking water to thousands of villagers in downtown Kotagiri," he explains. "Preserving the forest is vital because it also controls the micro-climatic conditions of the town; it is a water resource and a wildlife corridor."
Just how important it is becomes clear when you visit the Nature Interpretation Centre just outside the Longwood forest. It sits amidst an ‘artificial shola’ that the forest officials have created. They cleared three acres of blue gum and wattle to replant it with indigenous trees. The centre has a wealth of information on the flora and fauna of the Nilgiris Biosphere supported by some spectacular pictures taken by wildlife photographers T.N.A. Perumal, K. Marudhachalam and R. Tolstoy. The centre is meant to give visitors a feeling of what it would be like to experience the forest, which is not open to the public unless they come with special permission.
Keeping it off limits was important as K. Raju, who is closely involved with reviving the forest, explains. "We managed to stop the felling of trees this way. The forest is left to rest, repair and recuperate without any human intrusion." Members of the watchdog committee regularly patrol the shola to ensure there is no illegal activity within. One of them is D. Chandrashekhar. The 25-year-old is an electrician at a tea factory, and he has been involved with environmental issues since he was in school. During one of his patrols he was gored by a bison and had to undergo surgery. But that has not stopped him from coming back. He says he has also sighted (from a safer distance) a bear and a leopard there.
In the words of N. Ramakrishnan, a doctor and environmentalist who works actively with the student community and the youth to clean and green Kotagiri, "Longwood Shola is an example of what local communities can do for their environment. They are sensitive to their environment in a way no outsider can be. Ignoring them will lead to social and environmental disaster. The government must take the local NGOs and people into confidence. The Nilgiris is like the golden goose, let us not kill it in greed, but use it sensibly for our common good and for the future generations."
