With March almost at an end, the dog days of the Bengaluru summer are upon us. As the bright yellow copperpod blooms replace the pale pink clusters of tabebuia rosea on the skyline, it is only appropriate that we acknowledge two important March ‘days’ – March 3, World Wildlife Day, and March 21, International Day of Forests. Sethuram Gopalrao Neginhal (WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)

It is also the perfect opportunity to remember an extraordinary individual who straddled both those concerns– Sethuram Gopalrao (SG) Neginhal, an award-winning wildlife photographer, conservationist, and forest officer, who not only spent a lifetime tramping through the jungles of Karnataka but was also responsible for leading a massive tree-planting campaign in the 1980s that brought the green – and pink and yellow! – back into every concrete-choked neighbourhood of Bengaluru.

SG Neginhal (1929-2021) grew up in Belgaum and Dharwad, then part of Bombay Presidency. His father, Gopalrao, a forest officer under the British, had received his training at Rangers College, Dehradun (established in 1878), one of the world’s oldest forestry schools and the precursor to the hallowed Imperial Forest Research Institute (FRI). Gopalrao passed on his love of forests to his young son, who followed his father into the forest department of Bombay State at 22.

After the States Reorganization Act of 1956 redrew state borders, Neginhal was posted to Karnataka, where he served as a ranger in the Dandeli forest, with trees as his only focus. In 1965, mesmerised by celebrated ornithologist Salim Ali’s bestselling 1941 book, The Book of Indian Birds, he brought his attention to wildlife. A piece he subsequently wrote – Birds of the Dandeli Sanctuary – for the legendary Newsletter for Birdwatchers caught the attention of YML Sharma, a forest officer who had developed the Bannerghatta National Park. Sharma packed Neginhal off to Dehradun for training in wildlife management, and when he returned in 1972 as a newly minted officer of the Indian Forest Service, posted him to Mysore, to take charge of BR Hills, Bandipur, Nagarahole and Ranganathittu.

1972 was also a watershed year in Indian wildlife management – the Wild Life (Protection) Act, which outlawed all forms of hunting in the Indian forest— was enacted, and, to create awareness about the alarming decline in its population, the tiger replaced the Asiatic lion as the national animal of India. The very next year, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi launched Project Tiger, which behoved states to create and manage exclusive Tiger Reserves. Of the nine pilot reserves, one was to be in south India. It was Neginhal who, with his pioneering management plan for Bandipur, fought off fierce competition from Mudumalai and Wayanad to bring it home.

In 1977, Neginhal was appointed curator of the Mysore Zoo, but the sight of animals in captivity so disturbed him that he returned to the forests. In 1981, he was brought to Bengaluru for the first time, by the then chief minister of Karnataka, R Gundu Rao, and charged with bringing trees back, at speed, to a city that was rapidly losing its green cover. Realizing that earlier tree-planting drives had failed because of the height of the saplings – two feet, which meant they were well within reach of browsing cattle – Neginhal planted saplings that were at least six feet high, enclosing each in a protective enclosure of his own design, involving four poles and chicken mesh, which was far cheaper and more effective than the earlier concrete drum.

Between 1982 and 1987, when he retired as Deputy Conservator of Forests, SG Neginhal personally led the planting of no less than 15 lakh trees in the city.

Judiciously mixing exotic and native species – amaltas, gulmohar, champaka, badminton-ball, jacaranda, and yes, tabebuia – and involving residents in the decision of which trees they wanted for their street, the man from the forest brought the garden back to the city.

(Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bengaluru)