Rewind: India’s natural heritage is speaking in signs and silences

Our oldest inheritances are living ecosystems that hold together ecology and economy. As World Heritage Day passes, nature’s warning lingers—if forests lose their breath, so will we

By N Shiva Kumar

There are mornings in the wild that stay with you long after the day has passed. I have often stood beneath a tall dark canopy at first light, waiting for the forest to wake. The first call is usually that of various warblers or babblers or the black drongo or a distant hornbill honking its call. This is followed by the rustle of leaves as the breeze begins to move through the trees. In those moments, one does not merely watch nature; one literally listens to its breathing in bad air and puffing out oxygen. However, I increasingly feel that breath is growing laboured as I have been visiting reserved forests, wildlife sanctuaries and national parks across India for over 30 years now.

World Heritage Day (18th April) is predictably talked about forts, temples and monuments, but my thoughts return to India’s great natural World Heritage landscapes, where forests, grasslands, wetlands, mountains and mangroves are not only sanctuaries for wildlife but also living systems that sustain human life itself. These are our oldest inheritances — actually living heritages — a hallmark of a healthy and wealthy ecology and economy. Some of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in India are the Great Himalayan National Park Conservation Area, Kaziranga National Park, Bharatpur National Park, Manas Wildlife Sanctuary, Western Ghats, and the Sundarbans National Park.

Unlike monuments carved in stone, these heritage sites are thriving. They pulse with rainfall, river flow, pollination, not pollution and profusion of greenery. They are at once archives of evolutionary history and insurance policies for our future. Yet over the past decade, India has witnessed a grim succession of environmental disasters, many of which could have been lessened, if not entirely avoided, had we treated our natural heritage with the seriousness it deserves.

Wild Landscapes Hold India Together

Whenever I think of India’s natural World Heritage sites, the mind instinctively travels to the boundless landscapes, not just like the Kaziranga or Manas. But even others such Bandipur, Periyar, Ranthambore, Kanha, Panna, Pench, the Silent Valley (Kerala) and the Valley of Flowers (Uttarakhand). These are not merely protected areas. They are India’s massive breathing chambers. The Western Ghats, for instance, are nothing less than the ecological spine of peninsular India. Their forests recharge rivers, trap monsoon moisture, cool entire landscapes and sustain a staggering diversity of life. They regulate rainfall patterns across millions of hectares of farmland and provide ecological services to multiple States.

Here, the air feels different, crisp, moist, cooler, fragrant with leaf litter and rain. These forests are, in the truest sense, green lungs for millions of Indians, which we conveniently ignore. They cleanse the air, absorb carbon, soften heatwaves, protect watersheds and replenish aquifers. Without them, our cities would choke faster, fields would dry sooner, and our climate extremes would deepen further. But who cares?

Disasters That Were Warnings

The last ten years have offered us repeated warnings. Some came as fires like the Uttarakhand forest fires of 2016, scorching thousands of hectares of forest, killing wildlife, degrading habitat and darkening Himalayan skies with smoke. Experts noted that drought, rising temperatures, poor forest-floor management and the spread of highly flammable tall trees contributed significantly to the scale of the fires. A forest does not burn in isolation. When a Himalayan forest burns, it affects soil stability, water retention and even glacier melt through black carbon deposition.

Could it have been mitigated? Surely, better fire lines, proactive forest management and ecological restoration of native broadleaf species might have reduced the devastation. Then came the Chamoli disaster of 2021, when a massive rock and ice avalanche tore through Uttarakhand, wiping out hydropower projects and claiming over 200 lives. While the trigger was geophysical, the scale of damage raised difficult questions about aggressive construction in ecologically fragile Himalayan zones. Road cutting, blasting, deforestation and infrastructure expansion in young mountains are not without consequence. Nature keeps its own ledger that leads to earthquakes.

Floods Need Not Become Catastrophes

Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than in the recurrent flood disasters across India. Assam floods, which repeatedly inundate the Brahmaputra floodplains and even engulf the Kaziranga National Park, are in part natural processes essential to the river ecosystem. But what transforms flood into catastrophe is often human interference. Wetlands are filled, floodplains are encroached, and natural drainage corridors are obstructed. The river is then left with nowhere to go except through homes, fields and wildlife habitats.

Similarly, the Kerala floods of 2018 and the subsequent landslides in the Western Ghats were widely linked not only to extreme rainfall but also to quarrying, slope destabilisation and unregulated hill development. Whenever slopes are stripped of tree cover, one is effectively loosening the mountain’s grip on itself. The landslides that followed were not merely acts of weather. They were acts of accumulated ecological negligence and imposed crude constructions in the name of development.

Slow Violence of Heat

Not all disasters arrive with noise. Some descend silently. The 2015 heatwave across Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, which claimed thousands of lives, was one of the deadliest in recent memory. This is where natural heritage sites matter profoundly. Urban forests, wetlands, mangroves and large protected green belts moderate temperatures, reducing the heat island effect and offering cooling corridors. Destroying green cover in and around cities while lamenting rising temperatures is a contradiction we can no longer afford.

Sundarbans: Our Living Shield

Of all India’s natural heritage landscapes, the Sundarbans perhaps most vividly demonstrate how nature protects people. Every cyclone that rises from the Bay of Bengal first meets this vast wall of mangroves. They absorb the brute force of storm surges, soften the wind’s fury, and stand as a living barrier for vulnerable coastal communities. The Sundarbans remain one of the greatest examples of nature’s quiet service to humanity. If these forests are degraded, millions across coastal Bengal become instantly more vulnerable.

Mangroves are not wasteland; they are defence infrastructure grown by nature herself. Forests, mangroves and grasslands are far more than sanctuaries for wildlife; they are the living lungs of India, breathing cool air into our fevered cities, feeding rivers that sustain millions, and buffering us from the manmade calamities we have too often invited upon ourselves. The ongoing sixth extinction, where species are vanishing at a rate the Earth has not seen in millions of years, and the cause is unmistakably human. Every forest razed and wetland buried becomes another obituary in this age of loss.

Each time I watch a flock of demoiselle cranes or painted storks wheel above a marsh or hear the sharp alarm call of a deer rising from the woods, I am reminded that nature’s warnings are never silent. They arrive in smoke-darkened skies, rivers in furious spate, and summers that scorch more fiercely with each passing year. To protect our World Heritage landscapes is not merely to save birds, beasts, and ancient forests, but also to preserve the very breath, balance, and future of a nation.

Wildlife Writer’s Plea

Nature Conservation is never only about animals. It is about us, as the Tiger reserve secures rivers, a mangrove forest secures coastlines, and a mountain forest secures monsoon stability. Similarly, a wetland secures groundwater, as these Natural World Heritage sites are not isolated islands of beauty. They are the systems that allow India to breathe. The disasters of the last decade, like fires, floods, landslides, and heatwaves, are certainly not disconnected events. They are urgent messages from landscapes stretched beyond resilience. This World Heritage Day, we must learn to listen because if the forests lose their breath, so will we.

Says Rajesh Bhalla, a wildlife photographer and travel consultant based at Delhi: “Preserving and Conserving World Heritage Sites is vital to the country’s well-being.” As of early 2026, India has seven natural World Heritage Sites recognised by UNESCO for their outstanding biodiversityecological significance, and natural beauty. These sites, ranging from high-altitude Himalayan parks to coastal mangrove forests, are protected for their irreplaceable value. Once destroyed, they can never ever be replaced.

(The author is a wildlife writer and photographer)