Cauvery crying: Large-scale tree planting not the panacea

It was late in the evening. I was standing on the banks of the River Cauvery in Biligundlu, near Hogenakkal Reserve Forest. Beautiful, majestic Arjuna or Terminalia arjuna trees (Holematthi in Kannada, Neer Matthi in Tamil) adorned the banks. Rocky outcrops lined with grasses formed a small island around which water flowed glistening in the evening sun. With gentle wing beats, a river tern approached, scanning the water, its brilliant yellow beak lit by the evening sun. I followed the tern with my binoculars. The tern plunged into the river, caught a fish, and flew away. I was walking along the riverine forest to document flora and fauna along the Cauvery. That was two decades ago.

Earlier this year, our team began travelling along the Cauvery to study riverine birds, focusing on the globally threatened river tern and black-bellied tern. Our journey began near Mettur Dam and its massive Stanley reservoir. We recorded birds and habitat at every half a kilometre at the bank of Cauvery.

In contrast to my earlier experience, unpleasant scenery stretched along the river. Hardly any natural banks remained along this stretch. Natural vegetation remained in small pockets, while non-native eucalyptus, subabul, prosopis, water hyacinth, and Ipomea carnea proliferated the banks.

Sewage flowed into the river in many places, and many solid waste management units were situated along the river. Chicken wastes were generously dumped to feed the gaping hungry mouths of African catfishes in several aquaculture ponds. Numerous brick kilns, factories, burial grounds, and dumping yards thronged the banks, where electronic and plastic wastes were burned. They say, "civilisations are born at the river bank." Walking a few kilometres along the river, we can see how they were buried as well.

We mapped features within one kilometre on either side of the river using Google Earth and field survey for about 400 km in the Tamil Nadu part of the Cauvery and 150 km along the northern distributary, Kollidam. Our findings were appalling and worrying. There were 21 barrages and dams, about 95 water pumping stations, some pumping units drilled right in the middle of the river, and water siphoned off day and night through pipes to faraway places. Nearly 50 large sewage drains, about 480 brick kiln factories, 74 sand mining locations (old and active, big and small), 20 eucalyptus plantations along the banks or even in river beds (especially from Karur to Tiruchirappalli). All this in only half the length of the Cauvery River.

Recently, the Karnataka High Court dismissed the PIL against the Cauvery Calling project, even saying that "planting trees in barren land is not a crime" and going on to appreciate the effort initiated by Isha Outreach Foundation. As an ecologist working along the Cauvery, this order is more disturbing than the sights I witnessed along the river. If we want to clean and restore this river, there is a lot more to do rather than mere tree planting along the banks. We are not talking about planting a few hundred tree saplings; the target is to plant 242 crore trees in a third of the Cauvery basin. Social activist Nityanand Jayaraman has clearly articulated the detrimental impact of this kind of planting for various other habitats, such as the arid and semi-arid regions where planting trees would deplete groundwater.

A riverine ecosystem consists of trees, scrubs, grasses, sedges, marshy areas and various other microhabitats and not just trees. Studies by scientists from the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bengaluru, have already shown that tree planting along rivers will not save the river, just as tree planting in some ecosystems can have negative impacts on hydrology.

It is important to focus on stopping sand mining and deforestation in the catchment areas and on ecological restoration of the riparian and floodplain ecosystem, which includes many different components such as sandbanks, riparian grasslands and swampy vegetation, shrubby and riverine natural vegetation. Blind, large-scale tree planting along the entire river will have disastrous impacts on all these natural attributes, destroying riverside habitats of species such as terns, waders, crocodiles, and otters.

People engaged in large-scale tree planting do not understand ecological restoration. Restoration requires a clear understanding of what plant species should be planted, and where. For instance, we should not convert riverine grasslands, sandbanks, and riparian vegetation into tree plantations. Every habitat is unique.

Nature education and outreach are important for nature conservation. Scientific concepts and research outputs should be communicated to everyone - from schoolkids to policymakers - preferably in the language they understand. What the recent Karnataka HC order indicates is that it is time scientists, subject experts, and educators also seriously reach out to the members of the judiciary. We need to create awareness about the difference between mere tree planting and ecological restoration and the basic biology of wildlife like peafowl and domestic animals, such as cows. The only hope for the common citizen in a democratic country is our judiciary. It is imperative that they are well informed about our precious natural world's key issues and concepts.

Kaatrum Kadalum Punalume Nan (I am the wind, I am the sea, I am the river) sang the great Tamil poet Subramania Bharathi. To conserve and protect nature, it is important to feel oneness between us and nature. On ground nature conservation needs everyone's help, participation, and action.

Organisations such as Isha Outreach Foundation, with a spiritual bent, can sensitise the public to respect the water itself and create an emotional connection to rivers and other water bodies. The 1,900 temples and 60 major industries marked on Google Earth along the Kaveri and Kollidam rivers can be their target groups. Since Isha Foundation is a reputed organisation and people do dance to their tune, this could result in a cleaner river.

Community groups with relevant expertise can take up other aspects such as ecological restoration in catchment areas and floodplain ecosystems, integrated watershed management, sand-mining mafias, better sewage treatment, and solid waste management along the river by stronger regulations and implementation of laws in force. This may not be as easy as planting trees along the banks and returning to our homes, not bothering even to monitor whether the saplings survived or not.

Conscientious persons who care about the dying, crying Cauvery would follow sensible and scientific methods to revive it. Tree planting is easy; cleaning up the other mess is not.

(The writer is an Ecologist with Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF), Mysore, working on threatened birds and their habitats)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.