Let us not call them "Parks" anymore, get serious and just call them forests or sanctuaries

A week ago, there was a news about connecting Borivili and Thane by a ropeway, and wait where would it rest on or go through? The hills of Sanjay Gandhi National Park. Sounds crazy and those of us who know what SGNP is have been left in a state of shock. First you have plans to cut through the “Park” for a high speed train service, next you want ropeways and what next? Open it up for “development”?

Mumbai and its ecological hotspots are under threat, constant threat and in some ways the space crunch the city faces is also due to its geography. But, the greatness of this city is also about its geography, the sea one side, the forests and the hills on the other side, bringing abundant rains, feeding many small rivers and filling up many natural and man made lakes.

There may be a million climate change naysayers, but for me having lived here for 25 years, the climate change is a reality. It doesn’t rain like that anymore …. not the predictable torrential monsoon showers anymore. Not so cool except for a hot October or a humid May.

No one seems to mind that this is happening, and worse that could happen if the western ghats are disturbed, SGNP encroached and some rivers diverted and a few hills broken.

Last year when the Save Aarey colony movement hit a high and an uproar to scrap the Mumbai Redevelopment Plan, the then Municipal Commissioner flippantly said, “what is there in Aarey, some vegetation. We will develop a garden, make it nice and usable”.

It was a shock, coming from a learned officer, a top ranking official who would think of nothing about the number of species an Aarey supports, what a buffer zone to SGNP means and why the city needs some green spaces. One does understand the city has no space to expand. That is the nature of Mumbai. That doesn’t mean concretise the city end to end, grow vertical as much as builders can scale and alter the city’s geography and may be even destroy a bit of its history.

From the Commissioner’s statement to the current proposal to carry a ropeway from SGNP, I feel we need to get serious about our forests. Let us not use this “National Park” nomenclature and just say it is a forest. It is not meant for recreation, and nothing can be built there. Just imagine that the SGNP had existed for over 2000 years (the history we gather from the Kanheri Caves it houses) with all its flora and fauna, with its caves, natural sources of water and what we see at Borivili is just tip of a sprawling forest.

The moment we use “Park” it brings with the word the connotation of man made. Once you make it a human effort the thought process is it is for “recreation”, and it has to “developed”, “maintained”. Did we get into the “National Park” business form the US National Parks system, movement? Whatever it is we should shed that. Simple, call them sanctuaries, where certain species are earmarked for protection and in other places forests.