TREASURE GROVE

Vanitha knows a jhambal tree when she sees one. After school,the seven-year-old rushes to the village grove,swings from the jhambals branches and nibbles on its bitter-sour fruits till her teeth go sour.

Vanitha knows a jhambal tree when she sees one. After school,the seven-year-old rushes to the village grove,swings from the jhambals branches and nibbles on its bitter-sour fruits till her teeth go sour. Vanitha can identify the phansade,telya and karap trees too. So can her friends and everyone else in Ahupe who spend all their time documenting the rare biodiversity of the region.

Perched on the Sahayadri ranges,Ahupe is a village that thrives on a unique man-environment relationship. People here are gatekeepers of the village devrai,six acres of dense groves that are repositories of rare medicinal plants.

For the last 15 years,the villagers have been involved in documenting the biodiversity of the region and advocating the Chipko movement to protect trees from being felled. Though they have identified about 25 species and counted nearly 1,500 trees,they still have a long way to go.

A 200-km drive from the heart of Pune city,the village is nestled between the three districts of Pune,Thane and Raigad and has a population of around 500 people,with the tribal community of Mahadev Kolis in majority.

The tribals are paddy farmers but almost all their members,from the oldest to the youngest,participate in documenting the sacred groves,with help from members of Shaswat,a social organisation that takes up environmental issues. Though most of the villagers have never been to school,they know most of the plants by their names. They report any new plant to the village sarpanch who then documents it in a book.

Besides protecting the devrai in their village,people of Ahupe have also motivated the adjoining villages,Pimpargane,Don and Aghane,to do the same for their devrais.

These jungles are as important as our own lives. We will protect them at any cost, says sarpanch Ramesh Lohokar. The village panchayat has also passed a resolution saying no one can pluck leaves or fruits from these sacred groves. Only dead wood and dry leaves can be used as fuel, says Lohokar.

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The movement started 25 years ago when a pharma company announced that it would take over the area,a repository of medicinal plants,for Rs 70,000. That is when members of Shaswat encouraged the villagers to protect the biodiversity of the area. It was a united fight to protect the sacred groves, says Kusum Karnik of Shaswat,who has since then been involved in documenting the biodiversity of the area.

The devrai is not just a protected patch of forest but a valuable gene pool. Even as the documentation is on,the team has found a 46-inch-wide climber thats at least 800 years old. We took the help of the Agharkar Research Institute in Pune to help us with the details. The climber is proof that these trees have been there for ages.

Of the 34 villages around Ahupe,only about 15 have been able to protect their devraisalmost every tribal village in the state has a devrai. With the villagers dedicating these groves to a tribal deity,a temple is constructed outside every devrai and the priest is entrusted with the task of protecting the groves. These forests are home to the giant Indian red squirrel or the shekru,besides about 25 species of trees.

So as Ahupe and nearby villages tend to their devrais,Karnik says its time the government recognised their efforts. From putting up fences around each tree and measuring it,its a time consuming activity. We spend an entire day working in the forests, says the sarpanch.

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The gram panchayats of Ahupe and its adjoining villages are meeting to draft a letter to the chief minister,asking that their preservation efforts be treated as part of the rural employment guarantee scheme.

The villagers also want the government to recognise these groves as tourist destinations for people to understand the importance of living in harmony with nature.