Exactly how many sacred groves exist in India today?
There is no agreement amongst ecologists about the number of groves in India. One collation, based on studies done in different states, records about 13,720. But rough guesstimates put the real number anywhere between 100,000 to 150,000. Why this large variation? A plausible reason might be that the skewed priorities of the forestry sector have ensured that only a few ecologists have unravelled mysteries of only a few hundred sacred groves. The fact is that while the estimate is based on such limited experience, new groves get discovered, constantly.
The area under sacred groves is also a figure in flux. One compilation shows that 4,415 reported groves together cover about 42,278 hectares (ha), or about 9.58 ha per sacred grove. But let us be conservative and presume that the average size of a sacred grove is only three ha. Let us also assume the number of groves to be 100,000 (the lower range). This gives us the following figure: 300,000 ha of Indian land is sacred today (hopefully, most of it is also forested).
This is about 0.09 per cent of India's landmass, protected solely by people. An amazing achievement, especially if one thinks of all the effort the government has put into the protected area style of official conservation.
| Uncertain state: area under sacred groves, as estimated by different state-based studies | | State | Number of
groves | Area (in
hectares) | | Karnataka | 1,214 | 5,947 | | Kerala | 2,000 | 500 | | Maharashtra | 483 | 3,570 | | Meghalaya | 79 | 26,326 | | Orissa | 322 | 50 | | Rajasthan | 9 | 241 | | Tamil Nadu | 10 | 127 | | Uttaranchal | 1 | 5,500 | | West Bengal | 297 | 17 | | Total | 4,415 | 42,278 | |
