Eco India How a private biosphere in Uttarakhand is successfully restoring natural ecosystems

This land looks like a forest in the making, a privately owned stretch on the edge of Rajaji National Park in Uttarakhand. It is not a protected forest, not a plantation, not a tourism project either. It is an attempt to bring life back to the land that had lost its ecological memory. We are in the Rajaji Ragati biosphere, described as the first private biosphere in the country. But first, what does a biosphere really mean? A functioning biosphere is self-regulating, dependent on sunlight, water and healthy soil. Unlike plantations that prioritize rapid greening, restoration here focuses on relationships between soil and water, plants and insects, humans and restraint. Private ownership in this context implies private responsibility. So this is what your sindoor is made out of? One in this instance is being born by 53-year-old clean air activist and entrepreneur Jai Dhargupta. That's the beauty. If I just protect the land, nature will do most of the work, right? Nature will do the rest. And that's the beauty of rewilding. And, you know, that's what I did. I bought the land. But before this land, for Jai, there was Delhi. For years, Jai lived and worked in one of the world's most polluted cities, not as an observer, but as someone whose own body began to register the cost of environmental collapse. He was diagnosed with bronchial asthma. I had no respiratory problem all my life. I was a national swimmer. I mean, so I got, you know, I acquired this problem in 2013, first time. And it was a huge hit. But I think my level of consciousness completely changed once I got sick, thanks to a degradation in our nature and environment. The diagnosis pushed him into action. Jai became one of the most visible voices around Delhi's air pollution, working through public campaigns, court interventions and policy spaces. Health is totally related to good nature and good environment, right? Everything that we put into our body, whether it's food, water or air, actually directly relates to nature and environment. Then I started, you know, my wheels started turning, my neurons started firing, saying, you know, how did this happen to me? What's going wrong? And how can I be part of the solution? Rather than just problem finding, let's go after the solutions. Let's create the awareness so that we start working on this as a nation and not just me, you know, alone. In 2018, Jai had a chance meeting with Vijay Dhasmana, a rewilding expert. The flowering is over. Now the fruit has formed. You see, this is the fruit formed here. And now all this will get dispersed. A meeting that would eventually lead him to a piece of land on the edge of Rajaji National Park. Here on, the fight for clean air would move from advocacy to ground up restoration. Have you seen these parakeets? Just look at it. Beautiful. We actually started work on the land in 2022. And, you know, first there was the process of kind of removing the monoculture eucalyptus plantation that took us about a month. And then we actively and, you know, the previous owners had flattened a land, right? Because the only value in India of agricultural land, so to speak, or revenue land is if it's flat. So it took us a year to even just create the natural contours and, you know, the magic, the mystery that you would expect to experience on a wild land. Actually, this morning we have kind of spent time up here. Guiding Jay on the project is Vijay, the ecological lead here. His role is not to design a forest, he tells us, but to understand what this land once supported and what it can once again support. The principles of rewilding or ecological restorations are first identify a reference site, which would be your site, which is intact, which is ecologically functional, has integrity. And then you identify the threats to your present site, which is degraded. What were the factors that were leading to the degradation? And then you try to plug them. Those are the principles. And also bring in the flora as much you can into a landscape, mainly the framework species. To understand whether the land is responding, one only has to walk across it today. Scientist Anand Osori explains what you are likely to experience when you step into a thriving and functional biosphere from the outside world. A palpable difference. When one arrives at the biosphere, you're going through a landscape which has been completely converted for timber plantations, for agriculture. There's a lot of pesticide use and other kinds of harmful activities that are widespread in the landscape. And so when you cross over from the outside world into the biosphere, suddenly you start to see a lot of life, a lot of plant life. You start to hear the birds, see the insects and the butterflies flying around. It's a dramatic difference. I think the first ecological impact was this was a safe place for wildlife. You could see leopard pug marks. You could see elephants roaming in this landscape. You could see porcupines and civets and jungle cats in this landscape. Beyond what's visible, small sections of the biosphere are closely monitored. Tracking and tagging how trees grow, respond and change over time. Across the biosphere, camera traps record who returns and when. While marked plots on the ground track how the forest grows season by season. The biosphere is located close to the Rajaji National Park. Being close to a large protected forest makes a difference. One of the ways in which that is beneficial is because animals, birds that eat fruits and eat fruits of wild trees that are growing inside the reserve are also visiting the biosphere. And when they visit, they're carrying the fruits and the seeds, which they then drop and those plants are starting to grow naturally. For 30-year-old Nikku, the forest isn't an experiment, it's inheritance. Belonging to the one Gujjar community, the nomadic pastoralists for whom the Himalayas are home. Nikku grew up moving through the Rajaji landscape with livestock and seasons, relying on forest grasses, wild berries and water. When Rajaji was notified as a reserve forest, his family, like many others, was asked to leave. Nikku moved out and took on odd jobs, but the forest never really left him. Today, he is an integral part of the biosphere. The biosphere would not exist without the local Gujjar community. From cleaning invasive species to guarding the land, their labour sustains the ecosystem daily. They are present long after researchers leave and before monitoring reports are written. Oh, I don't think we could be where we are without them. I mean, their heart, their knowledge, their passion. I mean, literally in everything that you're seeing around here, a lot of their sweat and blood has gone into this. You know, no matter what advice we get from our ecologist Vijay and his team, you know, we are always consulting with these guys. I mean, these guys are part of this habitat, right? They're part of the network of mutuality here. They know everything about this place. For Nikku, working on the biosphere is not employment alone. It is continuity, shaped by knowledge passed down generations. Despite visible recovery, projects like these remain rare in India. This is being called the first of its kind. Although Anand points out there might have been similar projects earlier. There are examples from the country. And some of which might be older than the project we're talking about. It's just that they might not have used the name biosphere. It might be the first in Uttarakhand, for example, or it might be the first in the Rajaji landscape. Restoring degraded land demands vision and restraint, choosing recovery over immediate economic return. Planting trees is not the same as reviving an ecosystem. So this kind of effort needs to be distinguished from large-scale tree planting, which is happening in many parts of the country, which often is not beneficial for the ecosystem. At a time when conservation in India is largely confined to state-controlled forests, this experiment raises a larger question. What responsibility does private land carry in a country facing widespread ecological degradation? So there is definitely a need for, I wouldn't call it rules, but I would call it protocols and good practices for how to revive an ecosystem. Because it is partly a scientific exercise, partly a social exercise, because local communities are a crucial part of any ecosystem revival. So this is one of the plants that have come from the jungle. And birds, animals, they eat the fruit. It's called Garuga Pinata or Kekad or Kharpat. And it's carried by the animals and the birds here and dropped. Privately owned and funded by Jai, this biosphere, however, has no commercial model. Back in Delhi, Jai runs a company that offers clean air solutions for large organizations. Even now, I don't think most people understand what air pollution is. I don't think most people understand that we are creating the air pollution. This is not a natural phenomenon. And most people don't understand what actions we need to curb to reduce our emissions. I mean, there's still a huge knowledge gap. At 32 acres, the biosphere in Uttarakhand is not very big. It cannot replace protected areas or state-led conservation, but it may offer something else. I think this biosphere or this project, it can have an educational value. It can have a role model value. But in terms of scale, how it is going to be impacting overall, I think Uttarakhand is blessed with wildlife, with forests. What we need to do is to protect them. you