Indian conservationist restores childhood playground

Flag Hill near Mussoorie had lost most of its tree cover and plant life when Sejal Worah returned after nearly 20 years.

Plant and animal life on Flag Hill, near the hill station town of Mussoorie in north India, has been restored through the efforts conservationist Sejal Worah. Sejal Worah for The National

NEW DELHI // In the fondest childhood memories of Indian conservationist Sejal Worah, Flag Hill features prominently.

Standing just outside the hill station town of Mussoorie in the lower Himalayas Flag Hill offered Dr Worah fresh air and adventure. She climbed its oak trees, explored the corners of its woods, and fell in love with nature.

But when she returned after nearly two decades to Mussoorie in the mid-1990s, she grew distressed at the state of Flag Hill, named after the Tibetan prayer flags strung up on trees by villagers. There was rubbish everywhere, much of the tree cover had vanished, and the wildlife had almost completely dwindled.

“I realised that things were getting really bad,” Dr Worah said.

Having spent the years since her childhood training and working in nature conservation, she decided to embark on a personal project — to revive Flag Hill.

Today, Dr Worah is the conservation director with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in New Delhi, managing the non-profit organisation’s portfolio of conservation programmes in the country.

Her love for nature grew during her childhood, of which Flag Hill was a significant part.

Even when she visited Mussoorie as a girl, Flag Hill was “pretty degraded”. The hill’s forests supported only one major species: oak, which could be converted into charcoal to be used by the breweries in Mussoorie. Contractors regularly came to fell the oak and cart it away.

“The hill was completely barren towards the top,” Dr Worah said. “We just thought that’s how it is.”

But upon returning to Mussoorie, she noticed the degradation had deepened.

“What started worrying me was that earlier the villagers would only lop oak,” she said, adding that now, they were taking on the rhododendron plant and other species of trees too.

“The pressure on the land was just getting worse.”

Dr Worah knew that the hundred-odd acres of Flag Hill were part of a larger, privately owned tract of a thousand acres of land.

Owners of private forests faced particular difficulties. A 1980 rule banned them from logging their timber in an organised fashion, which meant that they could no longer earn revenue from their trees.

At the same time, the forests were expensive to maintain, and it was difficult to guard against villagers and others who sneaked in and chopped down trees for domestic and small-scale purposes.

Intent on conserving Flag Hill – and perhaps even buying it – Dr Worah began to search for its owner.

She had little success until four years ago, when her sister Swati ran into Vipul Jain at a school reunion.

Mr Jain, whose family has owned Flag Hill and its neighbouring land for four generations, is a software entrepreneur based in Mumbai. He had, however, travelled to Mussoorie to participate in that particular reunion.

“We all went up to Flag Hill and had a little picnic there,” Mr Jain said. “As we were chatting, Swati said: ‘I have a sister who’s an expert in environmental issues and conservation.’”

Mr Jain was willing to sell Flag Hill to Dr Worah, but the cost — as stipulated by government-determined minimum prices for land in the area — was too steep.

So instead, about two years ago, Dr Worah decided to work with Mr Jain to bring Flag Hill back to life.

Every weekend, and on all holidays, Dr Worah travelled to Mussoorie from Delhi. “We started by cleaning up the place, getting rid of the trash, cleaning the trail, trying to negotiate with the villagers to stop lopping trees in certain areas.”

Along with a few villagers, Dr Worah also created new waterholes for any wildlife that might return.

In her first year, she planted nearly 300 new trees, but by the next season, “I realised I didn’t even need to plant, because everything had started to come back, after one rain and one season of reducing the pressure”.

Dr Worah was also pleased to discover that the greatest intervention she could make in bringing Flag Hill back to life was to remove all other human activities altogether. The earth was resilient enough to resuscitate itself.

Dr Worah and Mr Jain invest between 800,000 and a million Indian rupees (Dh45,180-Dh56,470) every year in Flag Hill. To earn some revenue, they now allow hikers on the hill’s trails, charging them 250 rupees per person. An average of 10 to 15 people show up every day.

The most encouraging visitors, however, are the wildlife.

“We’ve got pretty much everything,” Dr Worah said, before listing the species – wild boar, sambar deer, leopards, leopard cats, yellow-throated pine martens, porcupines, black bears, barking deer, flying squirrels.

“The restoration has been amazing,” she said. “The most satisfying part of the last two years has been to see how nature bounces back when you look after it.”