Field Notes: Nature Conservation Foundation

Day 1

Valparai doesn’t announce its complexity. It unfolds gradually. A quiet collision of cultivated and wild, where tea estates, eucalyptus plantations, swamps, and rainforest fragments live side by side, not quite in harmony, not entirely in conflict.

The landscape is a patchwork of cultivation and resilience: tea laid out in geometric order, swamps tucked into folds, and eucalyptus plantations-often referred to as ‘fuel clearing’-grown for firewood. While Eucalyptus grandis isn’t classified as invasive, its presence is extensive. Tea, though non-invasive, holds the land in a monoculture grip, and some varieties of coffee have proven more aggressive. Between these managed systems, rainforest fragments persist, frayed at the edges, but still holding their shape.

For us, a team grounded in technology, visiting to understand the anatomy of ecological restoration, the invitation was to listen closely.

Shankar leads us down the trail at dawn, tracing seeds, stories, and signs of unseen animals.

We began with Dr. T R Shankar Raman (Scientist, NCF), whose way of explaining things carries the patience of someone who’s spent years watching forests argue with themselves and settle. He isn’t just an ecologist. He’s part strategist, part teacher, part system debugger. His world spans both canopy cover and camera angles. Over the years, he’s worn many hats: researcher, restoration practitioner, systems thinker. It shows. His explanations are not just technical, but interlinked-how vegetation shapes recovery, how monitoring shapes understanding, how even the clunkiest tools can serve when context demands it.

Our first stop was a five-hectare restoration site-a once degraded stretch now boasting 95% vegetative cover. No soil was touched. “Soil regenerates slowly,” he told us, “and here, it’s mostly acidic. There isn’t much variation. We’d rather not interfere.” Restoration here begins instead with removing lantana camara and other invasives, followed by saplings planted in staggered phases. For 2–3 years, those saplings are weeded around with surgical attention, until they grow tall enough to block out sunlight and suppress further weed growth on their own.

“It’s not like restoring a monument,” Shankar said, watching the canopy sway. “With architecture, you piece the whole thing back together. But in nature, you only restore a part-the rest finds its way. You create the conditions, and it grows itself back.”

That framing stayed with us, the first mental bookmark of the day.

Benchmarking Against What Remains

What makes this site particularly instructive is what it stands beside: a stretch of undisturbed rainforest, part of the Aanamalai Tiger Reserve. These remnant fragments serve as benchmark sites, living models against which restoration plots are measured.

The differences are not cosmetic.

Benchmark plots show:

• Canopy cover exceeding 90%

• Rich understory with evergreen shrubs & an absence of invasive species

• Up to 83 native species per hectare, compared to just 15–40 in more degraded patches

  
  

What NCF is intervening in, ecologically speaking, is a case of arrested succession, where natural regeneration stalls due to prolonged disturbance. Restoration, then, isn’t just rehabilitation. It’s a deliberate attempt to restart the forest’s own recovery cycle.

To document progress, the team surveys 5–10 plots, each 20 by 20 meters, using pen-and-paper notes collected over about three weeks. The process is detailed and manual, yet deliberate. Among the indicators they track: number of stems, tree density, and crown health, used to estimate biomass and infer the forest’s functional maturity.

It’s a blend of field ecology and quiet forensic work. The goal isn’t just green cover, it’s structural and ecological integrity.

Nurseries & the Geometry of Growth

Collected from diverse mother trees, these seeds begin their journey here-nurtured in a shared space until they're strong enough to return to the forest.

We then moved to the nursery, and met Gopana Nanda Kumar (Nandu), Project Coordinator, NCF working in the nursery with a team of six. If the restored site was the proof, the nursery was the blueprint. Spread out under shade nets, it holds over 34,000 seedlings spanning 180 rainforest species, each grown with the calm attention of someone raising future canopies, not potted plants.

Seeds are collected from multiple mother trees to ensure genetic diversity. Most are gathered from roadsides, treated, and sown in a common space for easy tracking. Once they hit five feet in height and show sufficient girth, they’re moved for further maturation, before eventually being transplanted into the field.

The potting mix combines local forest soil with coco peat-balancing the memory of native conditions with the water retention needed for growth. What stood out most wasn’t the volume. It was the philosophy: ecological fidelity over speed.

The nursery work is also deeply intertwined with collaborative research. NCF works with NCBS to study the physiological traits of specific tree species-leaf structures, fruiting patterns, and resilience indicators. These are often measured at specific times of year, some rainfall is necessary, but peak monsoon is avoided. Data collection includes sampling leaves from mature trees to understand how different species adapt and respond to microclimates.

Photo-monitoring

In the afternoon, we met K. Srinivasan (Srini), a Senior Project Manager at NCF,  who walked us through how NCF currently monitors restoration progress. The method, while simple, is effective. And, as Shankar later noted, “clunky-but it works.”

Prashanth and Srini test the PhotoMon prototype in field conditions, thinking through what matters, and what will truly support ground realities.

Here’s how it plays out: a specific photo point is marked using ground stones and permanent landmarks. Photos are taken from the same angle, at a fixed distance, often with a person standing in the frame to provide scale. Over time, these images serve as a visual timeline-showing change not just in growth, but in structure, light, and density. Especially in comparison to the exposed sky, the human figure becomes a constant, against which the forest’s thickness slowly accumulates.

Ideally, the reference or “ghost” images used in photo monitoring are captured during the dry season, typically March, to ensure consistency in lighting and vegetation density across years. It allows more reliable visual comparison, especially when tracking subtle changes in canopy cover or understory composition.

For us, as technologists, this was a moment of recognition/validation. The method works-but it’s ripe for refinement. Whether through structured photo-monitoring protocols, automated reference-point detection, or integrated field data logging, the opportunity here isn’t to replace what exists, but to amplify what already works, with care. Structured photogrammetry, automated scale referencing, and cloud-based image storage could all enhance what’s already been designed.

As the day wound down, we returned to the field site once more, just to watch how the light filtered through the upper canopy, how the soil held moisture, how each plant occupied its niche. There was no flourish, no finale. Just the quiet, deliberate work of ecosystems rebuilding themselves.

And the quiet confidence of a team helping them along, with science, stewardship, and a steady stream of questions we’re only just beginning to ask.