Scientists wage war on colonial Kikar, reclaim Delhi’s forest land

SUCCESS STORY The Mexican plant has killed native species and forced animals and birds out of biodiversity parks

For over a century, like an expansionist coloniser it gobbled up hundreds of acres of our land, meticulously killing one plant species after another, starving them of nutrition and water. But, not any more. Freedom is in sight.

An army of scientists, now backed by a special budgetary support of ₹50 lakh from the Delhi government, are reclaiming the land by rooting out the Vilayti Kikar from Delhi.

The Kikar (Prosopis julifora) was brought to Delhi from Mexico by the British more than a century ago. The exotic plant became invasive and wiped out most of the native plants and along with it the animals, which once used to roam in the ridges. It had also wreaked havoc on city’s groundwater.

Scientists have got initial successes in Aravalli Biodiversity Park (ABP) and in a small portion of Yamuna Biodiversity Park (YBP). Their next target is the ridge.

“You can say it is a kind of ecological succession. We are replacing the Vilayti Kikar with native plants. We are now targeting the ridge from where want to replace the Kikar from around 800 acres in a phased manner,” said CR Babu professor emeritus at Centre for Environmental Management of Degraded Ecosystems in Delhi University.

Large swathes of forests which were once monopolised by the Kikar in Arvalli and Yamuna biodiversity park a few years ago, have now been reclaimed with the help of native species.

Full grown plants of Kulu, Salai, Dhau, Dhak and Inderjau among other that had almost vanished because of the Kikar are now back in the Aravalli and Yamuna biodiversity parks. The forests now seem livelier with several canopy layers rather than just a monotonous plantation of Kikar.

“We have replaced the kikar with around 900 native species, including grasses, over 400 acres in ABP. Around 30 different forest