For many years, plantation drives in India were often measured by one thing: the number of saplings planted. But ecological restoration is much more than counting trees.
The newly announced “Green Maharashtra Commission” and Maharashtra’s 300 Crore Tree Plantation Mission (2026-2047) feels important because, perhaps for the first time at this scale, the conversation is slowly shifting from plantation targets toward landscape-level restoration, long-term survival, and ecological planning.
A government resolution issued on May 7, 2026, proposes increasing Maharashtra’s forest and tree cover to 33 per cent while integrating technology, habitat-based planning, and interdepartmental coordination.
One of the most important sections explicitly mentions that grasslands and wetlands should not be indiscriminately planted with trees and instead require ecosystem-specific restoration approaches.
This recognition that ecological restoration is not only about forests, but also about protecting open natural ecosystems such as grasslands and scrublands matters deeply.
Across India, open natural ecosystems are often misinterpreted as degraded or “empty” lands awaiting plantations. In reality, these open habitats support distinct ecological communities, traditional grazing systems, seasonal grass dynamics, and species evolutionarily adapted to open-country ecosystems. Recent ecological studies increasingly recognise that Indian grasslands, savannas, scrublands, and semi-arid ecosystems are naturally occurring and ecologically important landscapes with their own biodiversity and ecological functions, rather than simply degraded areas requiring conversion into forests. However, many of these ecosystems were historically categorised as “wastelands” within land-use policies, leading to large-scale plantation programs and land-use changes that frequently overlooked their ecological significance and biodiversity value.
Open natural ecosystems such as grasslands, scrublands, savannas, and semi-arid plains support highly specialised wildlife assemblages adapted to sparse canopy cover and heterogeneous vegetation structure. Species such as the Indian wolf (Canis lupus pallipes), striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena), Indian fox (Vulpes bengalensis), Bengal fox (Vulpes bengalensis), golden jackal (Canis aureus), blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra), chinkara (Gazella bennettii), lesser florican (Sypheotides indicus), migratory harriers (Circus spp.), Ashy-crowned sparrow-lark (Eremopterix griseus), many raptors including Montagu’s harrier (Circus pygargus) and Pallid harrier (Circus macrourus), short-toed snake eagle (Circaetus gallicus) and kestrels (Falco spp.), Amur falcon (Falco Amurensis) along with reptiles, and several small mammal communities like Indian Crested Porcupine (Hystrix indica) depend on these landscapes.
Ecologically inappropriate or large-scale tree plantation within natural grasslands and open ecosystems can alter habitat structure, visibility, prey dynamics, movement ecology, nesting grounds, fire regimes, and species interactions. In many semi-arid systems, increasing woody vegetation beyond natural ecological thresholds may negatively affect species adapted to open habitats.
The policy proposes GIS-based land banks, geo-tagging, satellite monitoring, AI/ML-supported survival assessment, and third-party verification systems.
What is encouraging is the attempt to move beyond symbolic plantation numbers and focus on actual survival and long-term maintenance.
The mission proposes maintaining more than 60 per cent survival up to the fifth year.
The GR repeatedly emphasises native species selection according to agro-climatic zones, rainfall, soil conditions, and local ecological suitability while discouraging monoculture plantations.
This is critical because ecological restoration cannot follow a single template across Maharashtra’s diverse landscapes from grasslands and dry deciduous forests to wetlands, mangroves, river corridors, coastal ecosystems, and urban spaces.
One of the more significant aspects of the GR is the institutional framework proposed for interdepartmental coordination involving the forest department, gram panchayats, JFMCs, CFRMCs, urban local bodies, technical institutions, and multiple state agencies. Large-scale ecological restoration requires integration of governance, ecological planning, hydrological considerations, local community participation, and long-term monitoring across administrative and ecological boundaries.
A restoration program of this scale will require rigorous ecological ground-truthing, clear identification and protection of existing natural ecosystems, region-specific native species selection, long-term financial continuity, nursery and seed-source planning, scientifically robust monitoring protocols, and sustained post-plantation maintenance over multiple years.
Importantly, restoration success cannot be evaluated solely through plantation numbers or short-term survival percentages. Ecological restoration must ultimately be assessed through improvements in ecosystem functionality, habitat connectivity, soil and hydrological recovery, biodiversity persistence, climate resilience, and the long-term stability of ecological processes across landscapes.
Ultimately, ecological restoration is not simply about increasing tree numbers, but about restoring ecological function, biodiversity, hydrological stability, climate resilience, and landscape connectivity across diverse ecosystems.
In many landscapes, protecting and restoring existing grasslands, wetlands, scrublands, and other open natural ecosystems may be ecologically more important than introducing large-scale tree plantations, particularly where native biodiversity and ecological processes are naturally adapted to open habitat conditions.
Sometimes conservation success lies not only in planting trees, but also in understanding where they should not be planted.
Prajakta Hushangabadkar is a wildlife biologist with 14 years of experience in wildlife conservation across Central India. Her work focuses on wildlife monitoring, human–wildlife interactions, and community-based conservation