Series: Bengaluru’s ecosystems and biodiversity

It had been over 25 years since Neelamma N Reddy went scouring for greens in Varthur lake.   The lake was a veritable buffet of greens and fish for her. She’d find over 30 varieties of fish and small crabs that could be scooped up from its banks. “Then, there were 4-5 types of greens we’d pick up. Some herbs, like Bassale soppu (Malabar Spinach) were used to treat constipation or piles. The banks had guava, coconut and jamun trees from which children used to collect fruits,” she says.  Bengaluru’s growth turned Varthur into a part of the city’s Information Technology…

Three decades ago, 65-year-old Jayamma had an opportunity to buy a small plot of land at Hosahalli, on the fringes of Bengaluru, where she worked as a tailor in a small garment shop. The area reminded her of her village back in Holenarsipura in Hassan district: a clump of thatched-roof houses, fields of ragi and rice, and small ponds locally called gokattes and kuntes.  Much of the peri-urban life in Hosahalli revolved around the small water bodies: herders brought cattle to the banks, homemakers washed clothes, farmers cultivated lands near its outlets, children used it for their bath or a…

Flanked by the Outer Ring Road, where unceasing traffic spews noxious fumes, and a concreted canal where heaps of plastic float amid sewage, the Hennur Lake Biodiversity Park is an incongruous speck of green in a wide swath of concrete. And for a few slender loris individuals, it is an unlikely home. As implausible as it may seem, gray slender lorises (Loris lydekkerianus) have clung to life while the city’s concrete-scape has cornered them into this 34-acre park. At least 4-5 individuals of the beady-eyed, small, elusive primate species has been spotted in the canopies of the park. Surveys conducted between…

In 2008, Nandini N, professor at the Department of Environmental Science at Bangalore University, started documenting Bengaluru’s biodiversity for its first People’s Biodiversity Register (PBR). She was a member of BBMP’s Biodiversity Management Committee (BMC), which is mandated to prepare a PBR under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002. Professor Nandini inaugurated the exercise at JP Park in Mathikere where, she remembered, “very few Matti trees were surviving”. For the next two years, Professor Nandini, then the Director for Student Welfare at Bangalore University, involved approximately 20 colleges across the city to collate information on biodiversity. They first divided the city…

In 2002-03, G Krishna Prasad, weekend farmer and Director of the organic farmers' collective Sahaja Samrudha, spotted a plot growing ragi in Bengaluru’s Lavelle Road. Older Bengaluru residents like him still have a special affinity for ragi. The sight took Krishna back to the 80s when he had surveyed rural Bengaluru to document the traditional akadi system of growing multiple crops simultaneously. “The food system in Bengaluru was centred around the ragi-based cropping pattern,” Krishna says. Ragi was not grown alone, but "along with mustard, jowar, tur and castor as the intercrops. Mustard and castor (that are used to make…