Shilin, a small village is situated in the stunning Sahyadri hill ranges in Maharashtra.(Image Source: Pinterest)
Shilin, a small village is situated in the stunning Sahyadri hill ranges in Maharashtra. Believe it or not, the land is a by-product of a family holiday in 1985. Gavin de Souza, currently heading Dharana at Shillim, a retreat set in the bend of the valley's arm, recounts how his father William and uncle Denzil had purchased a house in Khandala that year. The two spent many a rustic weekend there; their agendas filled to the brim with fruit picking, bird watching, and mountain trekking.
The Adivasis told the inquisitive pair that this ritual was a vital part of their culture. The burning yielded ash, which apparently gave the soil nutrients, they said. But the brothers attempted to clarify that view was overlooking the issue. The advantage to the soil was transitory. As the impact wore off, so would the weeds and bugs, returning with even greater vengeance.
But getting the tribes out of their old ways couldn't happen overnight. And so, William and Denzil concluded the only sure-shot method of saving Shillim, "a third of the valley was already burnt, and the whole forest was in danger", remembers Gavin, what his father had told him was to acquire the land.
Today, the family’s resolve to regreen an erstwhile barren piece of land is visible across 2,500 acres, with more than one million trees standing proud and tall on the Shillim estate.
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It took 25 years to acquire and conserve the valley and a decade to build the project, Gavin shares, reasoning that their driving force was their deep love for nature. This is evident in the 100-or-so villas that are powered by energy that comes from the sun. "About 70 percent of the estate's energy requirements are met by solar power by the 500 megawatt solar plant in the property. All waste is treated via an aerobic technology, while all the food waste is composted.". This keeps the food returning to our farms." Approximately 50 percent of the fruits and vegetables are from the farms in the land. Explaining how they have never strayed far from their ecological conscience, Gavin shares, “We’ve never used pesticides on the property; the soil here is pure.” He adds that they have a fleet of EVs (electric vehicles) for the pickups for their guests from both international airport hubs of Mumbai and Pune. But what is now a picture of sustainability, four decades ago, looked quite different.
It was painful to William and Denzil to see a virgin piece of green being ruined by jhum (slash and burn) farming.
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The age-old method has a price. It wears down the health of the land. In order to promote a healthy change on the land, the family commissioned horticulturist Radha Veach to install a nursery on the Pawna Lake backwaters. The method was straightforward: to gather seeds from the forest and start a planting program based on allowing native plants to develop. At the same time, attempts were being made to revive the dead forest. "We first needed to know what types of flora it had in the past, and then replant a certain type of native species to that area," Gavin explains. The family collaborated with the Savitribai Phule Pune University to learn the behavior of the land through surveys. One of the earliest things he learned was the value of checking soil erosion prior to beginning any cultivation.
"We began to seed native grasses to form water channels to flow into Pawna Lake." Years of doing so brought success. A healthy gauge of a successful rewilding process, they concluded, is when the birds such as the hornbills or the Malabar squirrel, listed as an endangered species, began to return to the land.
However, Gavin notes, the plan for their eco-restoration activities was based on a foundation of scientific data that they received from the Shillim Institute, the "conscience keeper of Shillim" as he refers to the NGO, run by his sister Karen de Souza.
By way of the ecological surveys that were carried out, she explains, the intention was to determine the habitats that these sacred groves provided in terms of the mammals, the birds and the reptiles. In addition to eco-restoration, too, Karen explains that the Shillim Institute boasts of its several programmes that are focused on leaving its mark on the lives of the locals.
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