I write from my personal experience about the conservation activism to save the two natural features that define our city of Delhi – the Ridge forest and the river Yamuna and its flood plains. We worked on the ground, through the courts and on the knowledge base of these evolutionary natural resources. Some of this work can be found on our website naturalheritagefirst.in.
The pioneer effort started way back in 1995 when Vikram Soni with others led a campaign to stop a road through the ridge forests in Vasant Kunj. It stopped with an immediate court order. But the DDA did not relent; it came up with a project to build 13 five star hotels on this ridge forest lying between Mahipal Pur and Vasant Vihar. It was a long battle in the field and in courts, but a successful one. For the first time in Delhi such a big project was cancelled on environmental grounds and the entire area declared a protected ridge forest in 1997.
Again, we faced an onslaught in 2004 when land in this protected area was auctioned for the construction of Malls. This is when I joined Vikram Soni who had filed a case with the Centrally Empowered Committee or the Forest Bench of the Supreme Court. We organized Delhi’s singular environmental protest which was a human chain stretching two kilometres from Vasant Vihar to Vasant Kunj on Nelson Mandela Marg. We lost some but managed to save a significant part of this ridge forest. We saved 223 hectares of this pristine wilderness which is today known as the Aravalli Biodiversity Park.
