Lantana ‘Living Labs’ in the Nilgiris: First of its Kind Attempt to Restore Forests
Living labs are open innovation ecosystems in real-life environments that use iterative feedback processes to grow and evolve. We’re trying out this approach to tackle the spread of lantana in the Nilgiris.
This project was carried out by senior researchers and staff at ATREE, The Shola Trust, The Real Elephant Collective and CSEI, with the support of the forest department.
On the outskirts of Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu, not far from the Kerala and Karnataka state borders, is a ‘living lab’. It’s a far cry from what is conventionally regarded as a laboratory — a closed, sterile room with glassware and scientists in lab coats — but rather a multistakeholder, boots-on-the-ground, evolving project that aims to tackle a very dire problem differently.
The problem is the Lantana camara. This invasive weed grows in dense thickets deep in eco-sensitive forests like the Western Ghats — choking native flora, altering forest structures and supplanting nutrient sources of herbivores. It affects forest-dependent communities by diminishing the income they get from non-timber forest produce, hamper movement through forest and increase incidence of human-wildlife conflict.
A study by Mungi et. al says that lantana has invaded 15.5 million hectares (Mha) of the surveyed area of 20 MHa and is likely to take over 30 MHa of forests, which amounts to 44% of forestland in India.
We must get rid of it, but there is less clarity on how.
There is a consensus that we need to get rid of it among ecologists, practitioners and state actors like forest officials. But it gets complicated around ‘the how’. To get a clearer understanding of some of the key points of contention and explore ways for stakeholders to collaboratively work together, CSEI-ATREE, along with the Biodiversity Collaborative, organised a two-day consensus-building workshop in July 2022 called ‘The Future of our Forests’.
These wide-ranging discussions clarified the need to follow a ‘living labs’ model that enables us to create robust plans based on the most up-to-date data but is flexible enough for course corrections. We learn as we do. As a first step, we put together a protocol document — A Science-Based Approach to Restoration of Lantana-Invaded Landscapes.
We need to look at novel approaches to scale up removal and restoration
Even as scientific research follows its own path of rigorous data collection, there is an urgent need to also set up ‘quick and dirty’ data collection associated with large-scale restoration efforts that are already underway. To ensure the validity of data collected from these, we suggest a ‘hypothesis-driven approach to intervention design’, setting up collaborations between researchers, practitioners and forest departments.
We hypothesised how a solution would be expected to work based on the ‘best available science’, then set up clear monitoring protocols to assess whether and how the solution is working.
Between August and November 2022, this concept came to life in the Nilgiris.
ATREE and CSEI along with The Real Elephant Collective (TREC) conducted a pilot that could be called the first of its kind attempt at ‘lantana living labs’.
TREC is a not-for-profit socio-environmental enterprise backed by The Shola Trust, working at the interface of people and nature. The project was funded by Oracle India.
We tested different methods within our living lab in the Nilgiris
The project involved restoration of eight hectares (nearly 20 acres) of moderately-dense lantana-invaded land in Nilgiris. Given that this was our first attempt, we chose a section that had a path lining the edge of it, which qualifies it as an area ‘with least likelihood of harm and greatest likelihood of success’. This is because, for one, the path isolates the cleared area from other lantana-invaded areas; second, it benefits local communities and wildlife as it allows for more safe travel; and third, it’s easier to take vehicles to and fro for lantana removal and restoration purposes (with necessary permissions).
The eight hectares were split into one-hectare plots for experiments that involved different combinations of removal methods and restoration steps — entirely manual, semi-mechanised methods of pulling the plant with a winch and an entirely mechanised method of using a mini-excavator, followed by a decision to either leave the biomass at the site or cart them away.
We wanted to understand the ecological impact of both decisions for each removal method. We also wanted to assess the economic cost.
Throughout, it was also vital for us to stick to some thumb rules — no native species must be uprooted, community members part of the process must be comfortable and follow all safety precautions, local stakeholders such as forest guards must be closely involved, and monitoring and periodic removal must be carried out in all plots uniformly.
Measuring baseline parameters key part of monitoring process
Baseline parameters related to biodiversity, soil health and hydrology were measured by community members before starting restoration-related activities. The living labs approach emphasises replicability; it is not possible to have experts conduct the detailed baseline study directly as it would slow down any efforts at scaling. Therefore, community members were trained to do the baseline study themselves without the direct involvement of researchers, though remote support provided.
Future training sessions are planned for a larger audience of forest department staff, local community members involved in such restoration activities on easy-to-adopt monitoring and evaluation (M&E) techniques that could be part of any future forest restoration project, and not necessarily the living labs model alone.
It was challenging to combine research and practice as the characteristics are fundamentally different.
Research is often a long-term process which lasts years and is conducted in smaller plot scales, whereas restoration efforts are short-term projects meant to be completed in a few months and conducted in larger scales. Apart from the differences in time and scale, researchers had to consider real-life constraints in site identification, designing the project and setting up monitoring and evaluation protocols.
While these were expected challenges, there were a few surprises as well.
Initially, the idea was to identify two four-hectare plots of different densities to compare ecological and economic impacts based on lantana density. But due to heavy rains and the nature of the terrain in one of the sites, we were forced to identify eight hectares of a contiguous area of uniform density.
There were also some unexpected last-minute changes in the plot-wise removal methods due to technical issues.
These are bound to happen as part of a living lab approach, especially in its first attempt. The idea is to iteratively improve the design and ensure control and monitoring mechanisms are in place so that the objectives of the living labs are best achieved for all the stakeholders.
There are still clear successes — coming up with an easily scalable M&E protocol, community members carrying out the baseline study themselves without much expert involvement, and cost analysis of three different methods of lantana removal. It also resulted in Rs. 3,21,315 additional income to the communities in 33 days (in wages earned through removal and restoration work). Other bonuses include the creation of a handy tool as an asset owned by the community organisation to remove the lantana efficiently.
This effort doesn’t stop with a single pilot
The vision is to have a network of restoration sites following similar protocols that make their data and restoration case study lessons publicly available. For this, it is important to create a network of practitioners and restoration organisations who adhere to certain checklists while they follow their own site-specific methodologies for restoration.
The common body of knowledge generated as part of these multiple restoration living labs would significantly improve the current state of knowledge on such a complex issue and facilitate cross-learning.
