Warje Urban Biodiversity Park — Miyawaki-Style Reforestation of a Barren Pune Hillside

A 16-hectare stretch of barren Forest Department hillside in Warje, on the outskirts of Pune, had been encroached by slum settlements and builders before 2015.
Starting in 2015, the non-profit TERRE Policy Centre partnered with Tata Motors and the Persistent Foundation as CSR funders, and with Maharashtra's Forest Department as landowner, to plant roughly 9,500 native saplings across 23 indigenous species — including banyan, peepal, neem, kanchan and golden bamboo — supported by a plant-adoption scheme and ongoing volunteer involvement.
Follow-up biodiversity surveys recorded 29 bird species, 15 butterfly species, 10 reptile species and 3 mammal species using the restored site. India's Press Information Bureau and independent reporting by Scroll.in both cite Warje as a standout success, in contrast to the national 'Nagar Van' scheme to create 200 urban forests, which the same independent reporting found had made no documented progress nationally over its first four years.
No systematic sapling-survival-rate, carbon-stock or water-retention monitoring has been published for the site, and Warje remains a single high-profile case rather than a demonstrated multi-site model — it is held up as the exception within Maharashtra's urban afforestation efforts, not the rule.

Read the full analysis: https://terrepolicycentre.com/Warje-Urban-Forestry.php