Director's Letter (2025)

Dear Friends, Supporters, and Community Members,

As I reflect on the past year, I feel immense gratitude and pride in what we have achieved together. Saryan Vigyan Foundation was officially registered on January 22, 2024, and in just one year or so, we have laid a strong foundation for meaningful ecological research and community engagement in Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh.

Kinnaur, with its ice-capped mountains, glacial streams, and rugged terrain, is undergoing rapid development with hydropower projects (according to the Directorate of Energy, Himachal Pradesh the small district of Kinnaur alone produces more than 1/4th of the 16,751 MW of total energy produced in Himachal Pradesh), concrete buildings, and increasing tourism, often without sufficient ecological research to guide sustainable growth. Our mission is to bridge this gap by conducting rigorous scientific studies while working alongside local communities to preserve biodiversity and traditional knowledge.

This journey would not have been possible without the dedication of our employees, interns, advisors, field assistants, collaborators, and the local community. I am deeply grateful for your time, expertise, and unwavering support. I believe we can achieve much more with your continued involvement in the coming years.

Our First Year: Laying Foundations and Learnings 

In April, we set up the physical office with an old donated desktop, a laptop, a table, and a chair. Our interns made excellent use of the available resources to learn the fundamentals of conducting scientific research, data analysis, and report writing. One of the best things about ecology is that it doesn’t always require expensive, complicated equipment. We acquired several essential scientific tools, including a pair of binoculars, a plant press, and herbarium sheets. Our community manager, Mr. Parmeshwar Negi, generously lent us his GPS device, a drone, and projector, which served us well throughout our first year.

This past year has also been a profound learning experience for me personally. As I spent more time with the local communities, I began to realize the scale at which traditional knowledge is being lost. For instance, in a conversation with two women from Ralli village, who have spent a large part of their lives herding sheep in the forests, I was told that they had already forgotten the local names of many plant species—plants that were once commonly used as landmarks, decoration, and for medicinal purposes just a couple of decades ago. And how over time, discussions about plants have been reduced to conversations about crops, weeds, and a handful of medicinal herbs. While I was already aware of some aspects of this knowledge loss, conversations like these make the work that we do even more personal and emotional. I hope that we can help reconnect people with nature, inspire them to cherish it, equip them with the science to protect it, and maybe one day revive these lost memories too.

Scientific Research: Protecting Biodiversity in a Changing Landscape

At SVF, we believe that conservation must be grounded in scientific understanding and community wisdom. Our collaborative research brings together experts from academic institutions, local elders, and like-minded organizations to ensure that we generate, share, and apply the acquired scientific knowledge without much delay.

In 2024, we launched two research projects: Project Jal-Jungle which focuses on studying and conserving freshwater springs, aquifers, and the biodiversity surrounding these critical water sources, and Project Ghasni, which aims to revive and protect traditional ghasni (grasslands) ecosystems by cultivating medicinal herbs in ghasnis which are usually near farmlands, reducing reliance on forest collections, and increasing economic value of grasslands for local farmers. For Project Jal-Jungle, we are collaborating with Dr. Kumar Gaurav from IISER Bhopal, who is an expert geospatial hydrologist. This project will employ an interdisciplinary approach, utilizing tools from ecology, hydrogeology, spatial analysis, and modelling. The collaboration in Project Ghasni is also interdisciplinary in nature as we combine the traditional techniques of cultivating medicinal herbs with Shri Bagi Chand ji (an 80-year-old farmer with decades of experience in growing medicinal herbs) from Uttarakhand, and principles from community ecology to sustain and regenerate grasslands. In 2025, we will visit his village as he prepares his fields for the next season, for some hands-on training sessions. You can read more about all these projects on our website soon. I believe that these projects will undoubtedly enhance the understanding of ecosystem conservation, moving from merely “protecting” it to making it “self-sufficient and regenerative”-that is, returning to its pre-agricultural state —while promoting development.

Our initial cultivation trials for Project Ghasni are taking place at a high-altitude nature reserve, which we named Saryan Vatika. This nature reserve is situated at an elevation of 3,100 meters above sea level and is located near the treeline and primary conifer forests. The landowner has offered this land for use by our foundation for ecological research. This piece of land presents a rare opportunity to study the natural colonization of native flora and fauna, as parts of it were under cultivation until approximately six years ago. This feature also provides us with the opportunity to conduct research that will offer valuable insights into land restoration efforts in the Himalayas and help policymakers draft more effective restoration and conservation legislation, grounded in data and scientific principles.

We strongly advocate for open data sharing. Just as astronomical research benefits from publicly available satellite data, we believe ecological research should be made accessible to all too. Therefore, we are making a conscious effort to make all the data that we collect freely available within a year of collection, enabling broader collaboration among scientists, local communities, and conservationists. It will be especially useful for local communities to raise awareness about their natural heritage and explore ways to protect it.

Outreach: Inspiring the Next Generation

In 2024, we initiated three outreach programs to foster environmental awareness. The first is Pehli Class, which emphasizes understanding the basics of everyday challenges of farmers and people living in the Himalayas. Topics such as climate change, water scarcity, biodiversity loss, agriculture, pesticides, and other harmful chemicals, as well as health issues, are addressed independently and discussed through blogs and offline discussions. We have also conducted surveys in collaboration with Zed.Tells (link) to understand people’s perspectives and promote pro-environmental behaviors in day-to-day life. One unexpected outcome of this exercise was a policy paper. Animakshi presented our methods for encouraging pro-environmental behaviors and some of the survey results at the 8th Global Botanic Garden Congress in Singapore (a summary of this has also been shared on our blog). Ms. Meghan Barstow from BGCI (Botanic Gardens Conservation International) appreciated Animakshi’s work and encouraged her to submit an article to IUCN’s Commission on Environment, Economic, and Social Policy (CEESP) magazine Policy Matters. While researching the article, we found that some Indian policies related to biodiversity and the environment, which may be better suited for the country as a whole, were not well-suited for the Himalayan districts. We also found some inconsistencies in state and central policies, which we started debating amongst ourselves and eventually with local farmers to understand their impact on lives and livelihoods. All these discussions led to some practical solutions that we were able to incorporate in our manuscript for CEESP. Mr. Akshansh Bhushan is a lawyer and helped us immensely in understanding some of these government policies and refining our criticisms of it. We had wanted to get into environmental policy at some point and didn’t think it would happen in the first year, but this experience definitely made us more aware of other aspects, such as policies, views, and opinions of local farmers, to take into consideration when carrying out our research as well. We are still awaiting a response from CEESP regarding our manuscript.

As an all-inclusive organization, we certainly did not want to leave out children from the discussions about local biodiversity and nature. Children in rural areas differ from those in cities; they often have a deeper understanding of the plants and animals around them. However, they are often pushed towards getting good grades in school, and due to a lack of support for acknowledging the traditional wisdom that they gain at home, they get disconnected from nature. We have launched our The Green Hour initiative to help kids and teachers reconnect with the nature around them, acknowledge their traditional wisdom, and teach them how to maintain an inquisitive mindset when learning. To foster this idea, we talk to kids about the local stories of plants and animals around them, and teach them to pay attention to their features through nature journaling, bird-watching, and biodiversity walks. In 2024, we worked with students at Government Primary School, Ralli. It was a fun experience; I loved the curiosity of the kids, which would make anyone want to learn more. We hope to include more schools and kids this year and in the future.

The third initiative is a summer internship opportunity for the rural college students where they will be conducting fieldwork in Kinnaur on state-of-the-art projects with scientists from National colleges and also get to visit their lab for carrying out some part of the study. As a student, I only studied enough to pass the exams, as reading and remembering what was in the books always seemed daunting to me. Only when I went to college did I realize that studying can be enjoyable when you learn through experiments, practical exercises, and discussions, rather than just reading books. My internships from my undergraduate years played a significant role in shaping my interest, deepening my understanding on various topics, and helping me shape my real interests. This was the case for many of my friends too. After speaking with local colleges, we realized that “internship” is still a new and unfamiliar term in rural parts of Himachal. Neither the teacher nor the students know its value, and the potential it holds in a student’s learning. In 2024 and 2025, we are only offering internships to students in colleges in Kinnaur, a rural district of Himachal Pradesh. 

Lessons from Challenges and the Way Ahead

We also experienced a few setbacks this year, but we learned from them and gained something positive from the experience. 

• We were short-listed for the Greenhub Western Himalayan grant. Although we didn’t receive the grant, I met many people who are working hard, just like us, to protect various aspects of the ecosystem in their respective capacities. We met our medicinal farming trainer, Shri Bagi Chand Ji here too. 

• For Project Ghasni, I had planned to collect seeds of 10 species to sow in ghasnis as a trial. However, I could collect and sow seeds for only three species as I didn’t know their exact fruiting months at the time and missed the collection. This year, we have planned the visit to each site within 30 days from when we find them in flowers to collect the seeds before they dehisce (i.e. to release seeds after ripening of fruit). 

• We couldn’t tag the trees to observe their phenological changes for studying the impact of climate change on native flora such as Betulia utilis, and Pinus wallichiana. We will get this done as soon as the snow melts this year so that this pending work is over before we start the next field season.

• Many herbarium specimens didn’t survive the monsoon because we lacked a proper drying setup and dehumidifier to protect the dried specimens. 
  

Our vision for the future

We have set a high bar for ourselves for the future, and keeping up with this progress is going to be a challenging, but fun endeavor. We are all pumped up and ready for it. 

This year, our primary focus is to carry out research and make internship opportunities more valuable and fruitful for students. We plan on mentoring four students this year through our internship program, and hope to raise enough money for the stipends, travel, and accommodation at our collaborator's labs. We are also seeking more active collaborations for flora and fauna studies, as well as the establishment of a climate station at Saryan Vatika, our nature reserve. 

We also plan to kick-start our heritage seed program with Zed.tells this year. The tradition of seed sharing has been an integral part of tribal culture in Kinnaur. Over time, as people have moved to more profitable vegetables and crops to cultivate, very few still have heirloom seeds, and fewer still would if they keep these native seeds to themselves. Last year, we collected seeds of various grains, millet, and cereals from farmers in Kinnaur. This year, starting in March, farmers across Kinnaur can collect traditional heirloom seeds as a step towards diverse farming practices, marking a shift away from monoculture. The seeds are available free of cost but with the hope that farmers who take these seeds will return a few seeds at the end of their first harvest season to keep the seeds available for others in coming years. Other farmers who own different heirloom seeds that are not yet with us can also deposit their seeds. 

We aim to take our Pehli Class initiative one step further by launching monthly in-person meet-ups for like-minded individuals to gather, discuss, and share solutions to environmental, ecological, economic, agricultural, educational, and sanitation-related issues. We plan to organize biodiversity walks at Saryan Vatika to raise awareness about ecology and nature. We also aim to connect more schools for our Green Hour initiative.

We will raise awareness among people about the plants in their backyards and enhance our social media presence. It is also important to communicate what we are doing with the people. Otherwise, we are no different from all the major academic and research institutions that do great work, but are unable to make their research accessible to citizens. So, we hope to include more plant information through our #SpeciesSunday reels on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Detailed information on the species covered under #SpeciesSunday is now available on our blog as well.

While this vision is ambitious, I am excited and committed to making it a reality. Needless to say, none of this would be possible without the support of each and every one of you. Whether through your time, resources, financial contributions, or simply by engaging with our work, you can help us protect the fragile ecology of the Himalayas.

Let’s keep working together for a harmonious future where nature and people thrive.

Sincerely,           

Preeti

Date: April 8, 2025