How a citizen’s initiative turned a mining site in Gurgaon into an urban forest — the Aravalli Biodiversity Park

We are at the Aravalli Biodiversity Park (ABP) in Gurugram, which has gone from being a mining landscape to India’s first “Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures site, which basically means it’s a biodiversity hotspot. In over a decade, helmed by Dhasmana, the curator, the park was cured of many invasive species and in its place, one sees a flourish of native trees such as the salai, dhok, dhak, kaim, babool, hingot, ghatbor and jungli karonda.

Talking about the relevance of the Aravallis, Dhasmana says, “It’s the oldest fold mountains in the world, even older than the Himalayas. They extend all the way from Delhi to Gujarat. The park itself is mostly quartzite rock, which is possibly some 1,500 million years old. Just imagine the geological timescape.”

In over a decade, helmed by Dhasmana, the curator, the park was cured of many invasive species and in its place, one sees a flourish of native trees such as the salai, dhok, dhak, kaim, babool, hingot, ghatbor and jungli karonda.

The gravel beneath our feet crunch as we walk into the park from the parking lot. The traffic sounds from the busy Mehrauli-Gurgaon Road reminding us of the pandemonium outside.

“The city is a result of our aggression, it demands a lot from people – asserting, snatching, seizing, taking…but in the wild, I have to be nimble footed, one has to slow down, pause, because there might be a surprise waiting for me, mostly pleasant but sometimes not so pleasant too, maybe even death,” says Dhasmana, as we walk past dhak trees and dhau that hug the low-lying rocks. “I have to be respectful and mindful where I’m walking, and in doing that, it brings me to the ‘now’. These places can give you a pause and connect – we seem to have lost the connection with ourselves and nature.”

ABP is a story of how a city came together and created a place for wilderness. Citizen group iamgurgaon with ideas from then municipal commissioner Sudhir Rajpal to involve corporates led to turning a barren land into one of NCR’s most nourishing and calming spaces.

“As the place was getting restored so was the soil. There were microbes, worms, and fungi that enriched the soil and made the earth come alive,” he says. He points to the denser, more earthy brown mud that looks like the gooey death-by-chocolate dessert lava unlike the lifeless, lighter brown sandy texture at the entrance of the park. One can see, this soil is different, it feels and smells different. If you’re a good forester, you’ll look at the floor of the forest, if there are no new shoots in there, it’s not regenerating, we’re told.

ABP is a story of how a city came together and created a place for wilderness.

Dhasmana points to the perennial apamarga, with its prickly erect flowers, as he flips out his portable microscope, and shows the ‘hooks’ beneath the leaves. “A fruit will tell you how it’s going to be dispersed and therefore what kind of habitat it creates. If it is not dispersed by birds or animals, it will find ways of dispersal, wind, water or just by dropping them. The marodphali is like that, the fruit will unfold as it dries up and then will drop its seeds. In a jungle you will find colonies of this plant, it moves like an army, but with the kullu tree, the seed is round so it may fall on a rock and roll away and germinate elsewhere. Then, there are other seeds that birds pick up and poop it out kilometres away. These are different strategies that a plant adopts to survive,” says Dhasmana.

He talks about taking a group of people for a walk and they observed that some of the leaves of plants were eaten, clearly by worms and insects. They had tips on controlling the pest menace. “I had to tell them it means that something is eating it, which means something is surviving on it, which means it’s a host plant and there is a relationship, in which an entire ecosystem is dependent and thriving,” he says. We pass by iridescent green spear grass clusters and more dhau. Its tiny leaves form a brown carpet along the rocks. We are told with the rains, they will turn green and the hills will come alive again.

“When people look at parks, they want manicured spaces and everything in order. Our idea of sanitisation is weird, it emanates from our insecurities. But in the wilderness, you behave as the wild does, you have to tune in,” he says, and soon we realise we can no longer hear the traffic, the air is cleaner, the skies clearer and the temperature cooler.

The wild hibiscus plant with its snowflake-like flowers and hairy leaves makes a pretty picture in a purple-and-green speckled way. Besides its healing properties, Dhasmana also mentions that it induces sleep and cures insomnia. Who knew wild flowers could tame us! As we skim the treelines and reach the amphitheatre, he mentions the salai, the Indian frankincense, an important plant in the Aravallis; the tree, however, is exploited for its gum. “If you go to Sariska, where also, you will see quartzite, and hardly any soil, you will see a salai forest on the top layer. Here in ABP, too, there’s salai on the rocky areas. On the slopes you get dhau and in the valleys you will see kaim. Then there are grasslands. The idea at ABP was to bring the forests of the Aravallis back to the city,” says Dhasmana.

It was a tough task to get it done. They began by procuring seeds they could germinate. From around 35 species in the first year, they moved to 54, then 83, then it went all the way to 200 species. “Any restoration project should have its own nursery. Most of the plants we have on this 380 acre is from our own nursery. It’s important because, unfortunately, no one grows these wild plants, not even forest departments, so you don’t find them in nurseries,” says Dhasmana.

And then if sights and sounds aren’t textural enough on this walk, Dhasmana thrusts tiny oval leaves into our hands, which we daringly eat. For the next few minutes our tongues are numb from the bitterness of the bhui amla. He points to the various creepers in the park, including the white Shatavari flowers, the hairy dudhi and the deceptive gurmar. This time, Dhasmana asks around for chocolate as he offers leaves of the gurmar. It pretty much paralyses the tongue and chocolate tastes like mud. The “destroyer of sugar”, it’s excellent for diabetes control, we read later.

Dhasmana, who is in his late-40s, has been working in the field of ecological restoration for nearly two decades. While he stays committed to ecologically restoring damaged and fragmented landscapes of the Aravallis, his work in Thar, Rajasthan, and Uttarakhand’s Rajaji Forests continue.

We make our way deeper into ABP, we dodge the scratches and pokes of plants and trees in this urban forest, paths get narrow and canopies grow dense. It’s hard to imagine more than a decade ago, this land only had the invasive vilayati kikar, lantanas and a few hardy shrubs. Today, it’s heartening to see patches of dhok forests, salai forests, dhak forests and some remarkable native plants of the Aravallis.

“Alien invasive species do not support local ecology, wildlife, or microorganisms. We are taming the forests now, creating monocultures, where organisms are not in a healthy relationship with one another. It is detrimental for the local ecology,” he says. As we climb higher, skipping across rocks and undulating terrain, we cross gossamer-silken spider webs, ghost trees with their white trunks, and see peepal growing out of rocks. Against the skies, there are buildings in the distance, at various stages of construction, quickly reminding us that we are still in the Capital.

“Earlier, parks were manicured and feature-driven, like having rows of jacaranda, tecoma or gulmohar trees, which are pretty when they are flowering but they don’t create a holistic ecosystem. But there has to be a new thought, to create habitats for birds, bees, butterflies, and plants. As human beings, we can see these relationships and there is immense knowledge in them. That sense of wilderness is precious. They become places of learning, where you can touch, feel, live through your senses. Biodiversity allows you to learn about relationships, and it is the future of parks in the city,” says Dhasmana.

“Instead of using trees as features, we should look at urban ecologies. Create habitats for all forms of life, create urban ecologies. We need to think and plan for drainage, traffic, commercial establishments and residences, yet also have corridors where birds, animals and plants can exist. It could become a green corridor of wilderness in the mosaic of our urban megapolis. In Delhi especially, along the nallahs, the ridge, we can definitely create possibilities for wildlife. These corridors can then regenerate themselves.”