Scattered groves of native trees, flowers and the occasional prehistoric burial ground... are squeezed between hundreds of thousands of tea shrubs in southern India's Nilgiris region, a gateway to a time before colonisation.
The teams bringing back the forests home to more than 600 native plants and 150 animal species found only here... know that they still need to work around their neighbours.
Environmentalists say industrial-scale tea farming has destroyed the soil's nutrients and led to conflict with animals like elephants and gaur, or Indian bison, that have little forest left to live in.
Gokul Halan, a Nilgiris-based water expert, said of the tea farms, 'It doesn't support the local fauna nor is it a food source.'
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