PUNE, India — On a quiet Saturday morning, away from the usual urban rush of Pune, citizens gather at the Madhavrao Scindia Garden along the banks of the Mula River. Out on the water, two fishers quietly navigate their boat surrounding a dense forested area on the other side of the river; the cooling shade and chirping birds feel like a natural alarm that you would want to listen to every day. Such a setting is increasingly rare in a bustling metropolis like Pune, where the population is estimated at 7.9 million, yet these volunteers arrive every weekend equipped with measuring tapes, smartphones and a keen curiosity to explore and document the trees in the city’s riparian zones. On this particular Saturday, a group of seven visits a city park along a riverbank, where trees stand tall against the sky. The volunteers belong to Pune River Revival, a grassroots movement formed in response to the Pune Riverfront Development Project, a large urban redevelopment plan along the Mula-Mutha rivers aimed at creating promenades, recreational spaces and infrastructure along the riverbanks. The total estimated cost of the project is around 4,727 crore rupees (about $500 million). “We started organizing the tree mapping exercise systematically in 2024,” explains Raghunandan Patil, a volunteer with the group. “While our volunteers used to do tree mapping earlier manually, at that time, the group was not well-versed in the technical details of how to map a tree properly and create thorough documentation.” Patil adds that now they…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Every year between February and May, when mahua flowers begin to fall, Mamta Tigga collects them. Mamta comes from a village in Gumla in the Indian state of Jharkhand and has been collecting mahua (a flower from Madhuca longifolia), gethi kanda (or air potato, Dioscorea bulbifera) and tendu leaves from the Indian ebony tree (Diospyros melanoxylon) for the past three years. All of these plants are important sources of food, medicine and other traditional uses in her culture. Mamta is not just a tribal gatherer, but a homemaker and a mother of two children. Over the years, she has noticed a change in what the forest gives her. “There is less mahua than before,” she says, and the amount changes with the weather. When there is more heat, more mahua falls and when it rains, the mahua flower sheds off. “This year there was less mahua, between March to April we usually collect around 4-5 quintal [100 kilograms or 220 pounds] but this time due to excessive rain we got around 25 kg of mahua.” Forest produce is an essential source of income for families like Mamta’s. Her husband is a driver, and often, when they are short on money, the funds collected by selling mahua help them survive. But what happens when the resources people depend on begin to change, while the demand for those products continues to grow? A recent review in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems examines this question in the Indian states of Jharkhand…This article was originally published on Mongabay