How green were Mumbai's wetlands

In the late-1960s, as soon as we had moved from the industrial sprawl of Lower Parel to the verdant spread of Kandivli in NW Mumbai, then an outlying village, a diversity of landscapes unfolded to arouse a child’s curiosity. On one side was a real jungle, with hills and streams. Stretching behind our new big home was the sheer verdure of paddy cultivation, mango, tamarind and jackfruit groves, the fertile setting intercut with a real meandering rivulet. And within a 10 minute walk westward was a peculiar, dense, almost impenetrable jungle that seemed to be perennially water-logged.

Each had its own charisma, its own nature, the waterlogged jungle even more so. There was always an element of mystery, dark and forbidding, to it. A small gang of us ‘village’ lads, all besotted by birds, frogs and lizards, soon began to explore the wilds, including these wet boondocks, the damp jungle-laden channels that would forever play with the tides, now exposed mudflats swarming with life, now drowned under water. We would even go to the edge of the dreaded creek, to the ferry jetty and across to the island of Manori and Gorai. What an abundance of life we discovered in this empire of ooze and muck, of tangled growths and mudflats. There were birds and mammals, reptiles and crustaceans and fish and frogs, and so many plants. And there were people whose entire livelihoods depended on these riches from these wetlands.

Those were glorious days … beginning late-1960s and lasting up to the late-1980s. Glorious in that I could explore this wealth of waterlogged nature before our lifestyle and ‘green’ ideas conspired to ravage much of this wealth. I saw it with hardly a flutter of unsightly plastic, not a little mound of lethal waste choking this bountiful world.
Mumbai, the sea and coast, the variegated tapestry designed by water and wind. Sandy coast, rocky water-fronts, swamps, creeks, mudflats ……. these were the most striking feature of the Mumbai landscape of barely a half a century ago. More than even the inland forests and hills.

And yet, in under half a century, the Mumbai region may have, according to some authorities, lost nearly half its original mangrove wealth.
Come to think of it, the region is perhaps the finest, easily accessible place on India’s western coast for exploring sizeable tracts of mangroves even now. The six major creeks - Vasai, Manori, Malad, Mahim, Thane and Dharamtar, as also the shelf of Elephant Island, and the several small rivers here, are highly tidal influenced – and between them harbour nearly one-third of India’s mangrove diversity. In addition, there are scores of inland freshwater bodies, including some large ones, though as with the mangrove creeks, most freshwater bodies here have been severely polluted in recent times.

Even then, our surveys in the region reveal a great wealth of biodiversity surviving on Mumbai’s varied wetlands, from mangroves to inland lakes and inundated sites. In recent years, we have tallied some 300 species of flora, over 200 of marine fauna, about 120 bird species, while at least 15 species of herpetofauna and some 40 of butterflies too have been observed.

In a milieu where the green of the tall forest is the most accepted image of nature conservation, our wetlands (and grass and scrub lands) had all but lost out to ambiguity and abuse when, the timely setting up of a Mangrove Cell has ensured a better level of protection to at least the mangrove sites. However, the menace of liquid and solid waste intruding into every sq meter of our wetlands continues to rob away the inherent charms of this waterlogged wealth even as it continues to draw a great range and number of birds and other life. 

These are crucial habitats that influence our survival at all times and while Mumbai’s planning agencies have systematically chosen to ignore the values of these habitats, with the recent devastation of the bird-haven Uran wetlands a most classic example of absolute official apathy, what is left need to be mercilessly safeguarded. Just as a sanctuary has been declared along a stretch of Thane Creek, so too, the mangrove wealth of our other surviving creeks be brought under a Protected Area umbrella before ambiguity and greed devours the last of these never-to-be-recreated marvels of life.