From ‘wasteland’ to conservation reserve: A grassland on Bengaluru’s outskirts is a biodiversity hub

On the northwestern edge of Bengaluru, beyond the buzz of the tech city, the wind whistles across the golden-green grasslands. Smooth-coated otters glide along the lakeshore, devouring fish, while raptors slice through the blue beyond. The famed grassland around Hesaraghatta lake – Bengaluru’s first planned drinking water source – got a new lease of life earlier this year when the Karnataka state government declared it a conservation reserve.

Once dismissed as wasteland and used as a film backdrop, the area now notified as the Greater Hesaraghatta Grassland Conservation Reserve protects 5,678 acres of land after more than a decade of environmental activism, ecological surveys, and bureaucratic deliberations.

It meant saving the grassland from real estate interests, a film city project, and some misplaced notions of conservation. Its notification under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, issued by the State Board for Wildlife and ratified by the state cabinet protects this niche from an unrelenting urban sprawl.

Biodiversity treasure trove

A grassland is an ecosystem of grasses and small plants, with few trees breaking its low skyline. Rain falls just enough for the grass, but not enough for the forests. The savannahs of Africa, the steppes of south-eastern Europe, the pampas of South America, all fill that ecologically unique space between forest and desert,...

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