Sacred groves represent an indigenous model of biodiversity conservation predating modern environmental law. Discuss their relevance and the challenges to their survival in urbanising India.

Sacred groves are forest patches conserved by community religious taboo around a presiding deity — India's oldest form of in-situ conservation, practised centuries before statutory wildlife law. Their relevance today is simultaneously ecological, cultural and legal, even as urban expansion erodes their survival.

Ecological relevance

• Function as micro-watersheds meeting local drinking and irrigation needs, and as refuges for medicinal plants, wild crop relatives and endemic species [1].
• Serve as urban biodiversity islands: a four-acre grove at Agaramthen near Tambaram, Chennai, was documented to hold 222 species — plants, birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals and butterflies [2].
• Grove–wetland complexes aid micro-climate and hydrological regulation in built-up landscapes [2].

Socio-cultural relevance

• Deity-linked taboos (e.g. Kanni Amman at Agaramthen) and annual community festivals sustain conservation through faith rather than enforcement [1][2].
• Support adjoining forest-dependent communities such as the Irula settlement, linking biodiversity to livelihood and identity [2].

Legal-institutional relevance

• Section 37, Biological Diversity Act, 2002 lets a State Government notify such areas as Biodiversity Heritage Sites on the State Biodiversity Board's recommendation, after consulting the local body and Biodiversity Management Committee [3].
• Section 37(3) mandates schemes to compensate people economically affected, making it a rights-sensitive model [3]; the NBA anchors this three-tier framework [4].

Challenges in urbanising India

• Land-use conversion: farmland around groves is plotted for real estate, causing habitat fragmentation [2].
• Degradation: vegetation clearing, garbage and plastic dumping, pollution, grazing and invasive species like lantana and eucalyptus [1][2].
• Erosion of belief: younger generations increasingly dismiss grove taboos as superstition, weakening the enforcement mechanism [1].
• Institutional inertia: few groves are formally notified, leaving most legally unprotected [4].

Sacred groves show that conservation embedded in culture can outlast conservation imposed by statute. The way forward is to marry the two — expedited BHS notification, mapping of groves in city master plans as green buffers, and BMC-led People's Biodiversity Registers with community stewardship incentives. Recognising these groves would advance both Article 51A(g) duties and SDG 15 on life on land.