About Us
Explore the origins and efforts of the Toda Nalavaazhvu Sangam and the Edhkwehlynawd Botanical Refuge, dedicated to preserving the cultural heritage of the Toda people and restoring the unique biodiversity of the Nilgiris.
Our Team
Meet the passionate team behind our mission, working tirelessly to protect and restore the rich ecosystems of the Nilgiris. With expertise in ecology, community engagement, and cultural preservation, our team is dedicated to fostering sustainable practices and empowering local communities for a thriving future.
Ramneek Singh Pannu
Truste; a fourth-generation tea planter, an avid photographer, naturalist and a restoration ecologist. He has been working to improve the environment of the Nilgiris for over three decades. He has been involved in re-wilding areas in and around his own family tea plantation for the last 16 years.
D. Mohandass
Dr. D. Mohandass is currently working as a research consultant at WWF-India.
He was working in EBR from 2007 to 2010 and 2019 to 2022 as a full-time researcher and Project Manager for Restoration of Shola-Grassland at EBR field station. Presently, he is also providing guidance, assistance, and suggestions for the implementation of restoration work in EBR.
Tarun Chhabra
Founder, trustee and dentist, with a passion for Toda studies and social / cultural / ecological / botanical work. The author of The Toda Landscape: Explorations in Cultural Ecology (Harvard Oriental Series vol.79) and numerous other publications, book chapters and conference papers. He is a member of the IUCN-SSG Western Ghats Plant Specialist Group.
Kishor KC
Manager and Ecologist; born in Kannur district the state of Kerala, graduated from Goa University. Experienced in Plant revisionary work and plant systematics. Previously worked under multiple DST-SERB projects over five years. Passionate about plant taxonomy and restoration of natural flora and fauna.
Field Staff
Paramasivam
Rajamanickam
Chandran
Saraswathi
During the late 1990s when Tarun was introduced to the incredibly rich and unique floral biodiversity of the Upper Nilgiris, and especially the ethnobotanic relationship with traditional Toda culture, he felt the need to do more to conserve and propagate the same. At this time, both Tarun Chhabra and Ramneek Singh were actively involved in a number of environmental campaigns in the Nilgiris; the former being the editor of The Tahr newsletter. In the early 2000s, when D. Mohandass was doing his PhD in the Nilgiris, he advised Tarun to put his thoughts to practice at the earliest, as the establishment of a botanical refuge takes many years to reach fruition, with the process of ecological restoration being long-drawn. After attending international conferences, he realised that the concept of ecological restoration, or re-wilding as it came to be known, was gaining ground the world over. Upon meeting people like Douglas Tompkins who purchased and ‘rewilded’ over a million acres of ranch land in South America (Patagonia), he knew that a beginning had to be made in his beloved Nilgiris, within the Toda heartland, which housed phenomenal bio-cultural diversity—an area that is the core of the very first biosphere reserve in all of India.
Our Story & Mission
When Tarun Chhabra (a practising dentist) began his ethnographic fieldwork with the indigenous Toda people of the Nilgiris highlands in south India in 1990, he was soon requested by elders to assist them in starting an NGO dedicated to their cultural revival and welfare.
The Toda Nalavaazhvu Sangam (TNS/Toda Welfare Society) was thus founded in 1992 and Tarun continues to be the only non-Toda member; at that time, there were some issues that had brought Toda culture to a head, but the TNS assisted in handling them judiciously, keeping their ethos paramount. Over the years, a number of projects—mostly government-supported have been executed, ranging from providing traditional and modern housing to electrification of remote Toda hamlets; others focus on preserving the rich cultural heritage of the Todas, along with mundane activities like assisting numerous people in medical exigencies, education etc. These efforts resulted in a remarkable cultural resurgence: long-abandoned seasonal hamlets were reoccupied, traditional barrel-vaulted housing revived and several dairy-temples rebuilt—for example, the most sacred Konawsh conical temple in 1995.
In addition, all the endangered mammals of this area like the Asian Elephant (with perhaps the most numbers in the world), Lion-Tailed Macaque, Nilgiri Tahr, Bengal Tiger (again with the highest global concentration), Wild Dog (Dhole) and Dusky-Striped Squirrel are found in the NBR. There are also several Important Bird Areas (I.B.A.s) in the Nilgiris that contain healthy populations of most of the sixteen endangered bird species of the Western Ghats (the W. G. s have the second highest number of IBAs in the world). One resident bird species, Montecincla cachinnans (Nilgiri Laughing-thrush), is restricted to a home range of less than 1000 sq. km. Besides, even among amphibians, there are a number of species endemic to small zones. Many frog species are being discovered regularly, for example, Raorchestes ravii, in 2011. Among insects too, there are a number of endemics with a very restricted range, like the Nilgiri Clouded Yellow (Colias nilagiriensis) butterfly. At the ecosystem level, the highland shola-grassland climax ecosystem of the Western Ghats (especially in and around the Mukurti National Park where most of the Toda sacred hills are located) is recognised as globally unique. The stunted evergreen, montane shola forests that lie in the moist hollows between extensive grass-covered hills, are referred to as ‘living fossils’, as they are thought to be relics of ancient and far more extensive forests dating back to a time after the undivided mega continent, Gondwanaland, split up.
EBR Brochure
The idea being to develop a model for Ecological Restoration and botanical studies in the Upper Nilgiris, often by inspiration from traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of the indigenous Toda people. See EBR brochure for objectives and other details, including those related to the natural history of the Nilgiris.
(So, in a sense, although many TNS activities are now being undertaken under the EBR umbrella, myriad projects continue quite independently, especially for cultural conservation, education and medical assistance. For example, Tarun Chhabra on behalf of the TNS applied to the Govt of India for Geographical Indication GI registration/ patent for traditional Toda Embroidery, and it attracted national attention when this ancient art form was accorded the prestigious GI tag in 2013.)
Ecological Restoration in the upper Nilgiris is very much at a nascent stage, and for example, during the removal of tea plants, we are often left to our own instincts to determine the best methodology. Ecological Restoration has been defined as the process of assisting the recovery and management of ecological integrity, and its goal is to emulate a natural, functioning, self-regulating system that is integrated with the ecological landscape in which it occurs.
Arisaema Tuberculatum
Orchid Liparis Biloba
Satyrium Nepalense
The ecosystem of the Toda landscape forms the core of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (NBR), the first such to be recognised by UNESCO under their Man and Biosphere Programme in India (1986). This was in recognition of the outstanding bio-cultural diversity of this area, for example, there are around 150 flowering plants endemic to a small area. Recently, EBR had the honor to describe three new taxa of wild balsams from the upper Nilgiris (giving them Toda-related nomenclature), and the rediscovery of another ‘lost’ endemic cobra lily. The lost Nilgiris orchid Liparis biloba was rediscovered at Kwehh(r)shy Toda hamlet; similarly, the endemic and endangered Berberis nilghiriensis was found after a long hiatus in the EBR hinterland.
Nilgiri Tahr
Colias Nilgiriensis
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Dusky-Striped Squirrel
Edhkwehlynawd Botanical Refuge
He initially purchased an acre of land and began restoring it. When plans to expand this to adjacent areas began to unfold, Tarun realized that a single person lacks the resources to sustain it for long. That is when the concept of establishing the Edhkwehlynawd (meaning the ‘place with a great view’ in Toda) Botanical Refuge began to take shape and he invited Ramneek Singh, a tea planter from Coonoor to join this endeavor as they often visited the Nilgiri wilderness together (from childhood) and both felt strongly for its conservation.
Soon after establishing the Edhkwehlynawd Botanical Refuge (EBR) Centre Trust, we identified a stretch of tea plantation located in the Kundah RF (the initial purchase was made possible by a grant from IUCN-NL under their SPN programme) that lay at the heart of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, in a valley surrounded by pristine shola forests and grassland, although some of the grassland had been planted with exotic trees. This small valley is a watershed area from where several brooks join up and provide clean water to a number of villages downstream.
