- Data from Indore, Madhya Pradesh, shows that several native tree species have declined to less than 1% of the local tree population, even as forest cover has remained stable.
- Changes in species composition are often overlooked because plantation metrics emphasise survival rates and area covered.
- A district-level intervention in Indore, focused on Rare, Endangered and Threatened (RET) species, suggests that afforestation outcomes can be strengthened by shifting from area-based targets to species-based accountability.
- The views in the commentary are that of the author.
During my tenure as Divisional Forest Officer in Dewas, Madhya Pradesh, I walked through a seven-year-old mixed plantation. According to the plantation journal maintained by the range office, 14 species had been planted at the start. On the ground, teak dominated — a few others persisted in scattered numbers, and some had disappeared entirely. Their decline was not recorded anywhere. It had been quietly absorbed into an aggregate survival statistic that still read as success.
Plantation drives in India are often measured by the number of saplings planted and their survival rates, which portray an image of progress. But do these numbers reflect genuine ecological restoration or just denser tree cover?
Indore district provides insight into this issue. Working Plan data from Indore Forest Division showed stable plantation targets, yet several native species fell to less than 1% of the tree population, a trend not captured in plantation reports or remote-sensing maps.
This decline did not stem from felling operations or from a single visible event. Instead, it developed quietly, due to selective extraction, poor regeneration, grazing pressure, and climate stress. The greater issue is a management focus on numbers rather than on which species survive.
Recognising this, the intervention emphasising Rare, Endangered and Threatened (RET) species raises a crucial question: Should forestry success be measured by total tree cover, or by the sustained presence of native biodiversity?
What ‘rare’ means on the ground
The concept of Rare, Endangered and Threatened species is based on global frameworks such as the IUCN Red List. It classifies plants and animals according to extinction risk and population trends. In Indian forestry, however, RET status can also be defined locally. Under approved Working Plans, a species may be treated as rare within a particular forest division if it forms only a very small share — often around 1% — of the local tree population, even when it is not nationally endangered.
Such a landscape-based reading of rarity matters. For example, in Madhya Pradesh, salai (Boswellia serrata) is abundant in the Burhanpur Forest Division but is considered RET in North Seoni. Achar (Buchanania cochinchinensis) is common in North Seoni yet rare in Indore. Rarity, in other words, is contextual. It depends on local ecological stability and historical trends. Therefore, it should ideally be read at the scale of a forest division rather than that of a state or country.
The invisible decline
The current Working Plan of Indore Forest Division (2016-17 to 2025-26) lists 64 tree species. Among these, 18 species each account for between 0.1 and 1% of the total tree population, while 35 species each represent less than 0.1%.
Several species, including bija (Pterocarpus marsupium), haldu (Haldina cordifolia), aschar (Buchanania cochinchinensis), arjun (Terminalia arjuna), harra (Terminalia chebula), baheda (Terminalia bellirica), dahiman (Cordia macleodii), khair (Acacia catechu), kusum (Schleichera oleosa), and kullu (Sterculia urens), have shown gradual declines in their populations over recent decades. For example, haldu, once noted in working plans two decades ago, is now nearly absent from the area.
The case of kullu’s trajectory is particularly telling. Under the second Working Plan of the Indore Forest Division, implemented from 1978-79, a dedicated Kullu Overlapping Working Circle was created for its conservation. The two subsequent Working Plans implemented between 2005-06 and 2015-16, and between 2016-17 and 2025-26, omitted this conservation circle. Over the same period, the share of kullu in the division’s tree population fell from around 0.24% to under 0.03% .
Such shifts are rarely captured by afforestation metrics. When aggregate survival rates and area planted dominate assessments, species decline goes unnoticed. Field visits across divisions confirm that while several species are planted, after a few years, only one or two – mainly teak and its associates – survive in significant numbers. RET species quietly drop out, their mortality hidden in overall statistics.
Why a few rare trees matter
RET species matter not simply because they are few in numbers. Their ecological roles often exceed their numerical share in the forest. Many species grow slowly, form deep roots, and live long lives. These species recharge groundwater, stabilise soil, cycle nutrients, regulate microclimates, and support specialised insects, birds, and mammals. Several also carry medicinal and cultural value.
Plantations in Madhya Pradesh, as in much of India, favour resilient species — teak (Tectona grandis), khamer (Gmelina arborea), amla (Phyllanthus emblica), bamboo (Dendrocalamus strictus), the species common in Madhya Pradesh plantations), sisoo (Dalbergia sissoo), and Ficus species such as Ficus religiosa and Ficus benghalensis. These improve canopy cover but cannot replace slow-growing native trees that stabilise ecosystems over decades. As RET species decline, forests may look green but have weakened resilience.
A landscape divided into three
Recognising that species decline does not occur uniformly across a district, Indore’s approach — developed in early 2025 — began by assessing local conditions. Forest interiors, rural commons, and urban areas face very different pressures. Treating the district as a single unit would have produced general solutions with limited results. The approach has since drawn interest from neighbouring divisions — Ujjain, Dhar, and Dewas have begun exploring similar species-wise monitoring and nursery reforms, suggesting the model may travel beyond Indore.
The landscape was divided into three management zones—notified forest, rural non-forest, and urban non-forest—each with a distinct approach, enabling managers to create more tailored interventions.
Within notified forests, the focus shifted from area-based targets to tracking and accountability for specific species. Existing guidelines expect that at least 2% of planted trees are RET species, which are harder to regenerate. By mapping, monitoring, and replacing RET saplings individually, management shifted from merely expanding canopy cover toward genuinely rebuilding forest composition — a distinction central to meaningful afforestation.
In rural non-forest areas, the pressures are different — fuelwood collection, grazing and the steady expansion of cultivation. Rare species disappear quietly from village commons and farm boundaries, and departmental plantations alone cannot reverse this. Joint Forest Management Committees were brought in as conservation partners. Members were trained in RET seed collection and nursery practices, and micro-nurseries were set up to supply locally suited saplings. Funds from the Madhya Pradesh State Biodiversity Board supported the work, and committees were allowed to sell surplus plants, linking biodiversity restoration to local livelihoods rather than treating it as a one-time activity.
Urban plantations in India often focus on ornamental and fast-growing trees, which enhance aesthetics but offer little benefit to native biodiversity. In Indore, managers changed this approach by introducing RET species in schools, hospitals, campuses, and parks. In 2025, at Government Holkar Science College, staff and students planted about 5,000 RET saplings and actively monitored their growth. This led to the creation of a nursery, “RET Vanika,” where students learned to raise plants themselves. The initiative later expanded to Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya, Indore. These campuses became living classrooms, showing that urban spaces can support real ecological restoration — not just decorative planting.
No conservation effort can be successful without a reliable supply of planting material. In Indore, nurseries initially focused on hardy species, while RET species remained limited due to propagation difficulties and low priority. To address this gap, Residency Nursery was redesigned into a dedicated RET nursery, with improvements in production, seed treatment, and documentation. Other nurseries in Indore and Dewas were also directed to maintain minimum RET stocks. A Biodiversity Nursery and Paudha Vikrya Kendra (Plant Sales Centre) were set up and handed over to a nearby JFMC to support decentralised management. Tissue culture efforts showed partial success, and further technical support can be sought from the Tropical Forest Research Institute, Jabalpur — a regional institute of the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) whose mandate includes developing tissue-culture protocols for difficult species of central Indian forests. These steps highlight that conservation intent must be supported by strong nursery capacity.
What the policy misses
India’s afforestation programmes witness millions of saplings planted annually under several centre and states’ schemes. But increasing green cover alone cannot ensure ecological stability. The Supreme Court of India, in Naveen Solanki v. Rail Land Development Authority (March 2026), observed that the mere presence of vegetation or tree cover cannot by itself be equated with the existence of a natural forest ecosystem, and emphasised that ecological restoration must prioritise the planting of native species.
Indore’s experience exposes gaps in current afforestation design and assessment. Most evaluations ignore which species survive, focusing instead on quantity. Nurseries prioritise mass production, not rare natives. Monitoring hides species decline within aggregate survival statistics. Urban plantings and conservation education rarely prioritise native biodiversity. To truly restore forests, we must redefine success as the return and persistence of key local species, not just more trees.
The principle of species-specific legal protection is not new — the United States codified it in 1973. What India needs is not a new law but a sharper question embedded in existing ones: not how many trees survived, but which ones. This can be done by introducing minimum RET species targets, conducting species-wise survival audits, strengthening nursery capacity for rare species, and building structured partnerships with educational and research institutions.
Indore shows plantations are not failing, but their success is incomplete. Forests are complex systems, and real resilience depends not just on numbers but on their composition — on which species survive, regenerate, or disappear.
An honest assessment of India’s afforestation effort would begin with a simple question for plantation blocks of every forest division across India: which species have we lost, and what would it take to bring them back? It is a question that cannot be answered solely by annual targets. But it is the question on which the long-term ecological integrity of India’s forests now depends.
Banner image: An aerial view of an early plantation site in Jhabua Forest Division, Madhya Pradesh, showcasing large-scale ecological restoration. Image by Pushpendra Vidya.
The author is an Indian Forest Service officer working in Madhya Pradesh.