Walking the talk on biodiversity

All-women nature walks have popped up across the country to connect women with their city’s biodiversity and make citizen science more gender diverse, writes Aisiri Amin

On Feb 23, as marathon runners passed by Cubbon Park in Bengaluru, pet parents took the dogs for a walk, and picnics were laid out while three women were looking intently at cocoons of Braconid Wasps on the bark of a tree. A little further, some women were looking at trails left behind by leaf-mining insects on a leaf, and a seven-year-old girl was charmed by a jumping spider, Carrhotus Sannio. These women, part of the All Women Nature Walk (AWNW), Bengaluru, were on their monthly expedition to learn about the local biodiversity of their city.

Started in late 2023 by Mittal Gala and Misha Bansal, AWNW sprouted from a realisation that very few women lead or participate in outdoor activities such as nature walks across India. “As birdwatchers, we’ve joined many mixed-gender walks and noticed that women often hesitate to speak up, ask questions, or instinctively turn to an experienced woman for explanations,” says Mittal, project coordinator at Bird Count India, Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF).

Mittal and Misha began this initiative with a women-only bird walk in September 2023. But it soon turned into a nature walk as they realised that the 30-odd women who joined the first walk looked at everything, be it spiders, plants, or weeds.

“After the walk, even women who had attended several nature walks before, said they loved being able to ask any question or pause to observe a trail of ants without worrying about being left behind, and simply feel at ease,” says Mittal. The idea was an instant hit.

Last year, around July, bird watchers from Mumbai and Kolkata met Mittal at an event and felt inspired to start AWNW in their cities. Today, women, from diverse backgrounds and of all ages, from Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kolkata, Thiruvananthapuram, and Salem go on nature walks at least once a month, exploring flora and fauna in marshes, parks, lakes, and even cemeteries. 

The art of noticing

Many of the women who joined the nature walk last month in Bengaluru had been to Cubbon Park plenty of times but never noticed an Assassin Bug in all its glory, a Mysuru Round-eyed Gecko comfortably camouflaged on a tree, or a Magpie hidden between a curtain of branches. 

“We came across a fallen Weaver ant’s nest during the walk, and I must have seen it a thousand times but never really paid attention and assumed it was a bird’s nest. But we picked it up, examined it and learned how it’s made. It just reminded me that nature is full of surprises if you take out time to notice them,” says Srividya Sundar, a technology consultant in Bengaluru, who attended the AWNW in February.

Srividya’s seven-year-old daughter, Chetana, was also fascinated by the Weaver’s ant nest and took a piece of it home. “It’s for show and tell,” she told her mother, placing it on the overflowing pile of tree bark, figs, and leaves she had made on her mother’s palms. Throughout the walk, Chetana was curious about everything, be it a Praying Mantis or opening figs to look for wasp eggs. “These walks make you look down. Our eyes are often glued to our phones even while walking, but in a nature walk setting, you start noticing the small movements in a bush or an insect on a plant,” Mittal explains.

The art of noticing is not taught in schools or colleges, says Preanka Roy, creative director and photographer who regularly attends AWNW in Kolkata. “It’s something you pick up during the walks. You turn over a leaf and a frog happens to be sitting there, and it’s a pleasant surprise. When we visited Rabindra Sarovar, one of the participants said that she comes here almost daily for morning walks but never noticed 20 species of birds in the area,” she added.

To give a gentle nudge to the women’s interest, AWNW organises walks within specific themes occasionally. For instance, the women in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Kolkata went on a butterfly walk during the Big Butterfly Month in September and bird walks during the Great Backyard Bird Count.

A safe place to explore biodiversity

For many women, the AWNW walks have made exploring local biodiversity more accessible, notes Vrusha Patel Chokshi, one of the organisers of AWNW Mumbai. “For instance, if you want to go bird watching in Mumbai, you have to go to quite secluded places, and women often don’t feel safe to do that. The walks have created space for women to explore local biodiversity together and go to places they wouldn’t go alone,” she says. There is an environmental awareness that kicks in when you start going for nature walks, says Kumudha Kumar, one of the participants of AWNW Mumbai walks and founder of the Godhan Foundation. She tends to be inquisitive about nature, records birds using the eBird app, asks questions about a plant or animal species on the AWNW WhatsApp group or sets out to explore local biodiversity whenever she goes to a new place. “I recently went to the backwaters in Kerala and spotted a rare migratory bird, the Oriental Darter. So, I’m trying to understand what made it migrate there and figure out its connection to the season,” Kumudha says.

Moreover, women who have lived in a city for years are making surprising discoveries about it during their walks. For instance, in Kolkata, women explored life forms in the Scottish Cemetery in February. “We saw the Blue-throated flycatcher, Asian Koel and Black-rumped Flameback. We realised the cemetery was very biodiverse. There are varieties of ferns, and we came across a Simul cotton tree,” Chai Eng Law, one of the organisers of AWNW, Kolkata, recalls.

Vrusha remembers hearing howls of a pack of jackals when the group visited Mumbai’s Bhandup Pumping Station. “The participants were shocked because they didn’t know that there were jackals in Mumbai. Unfortunately, we couldn’t see them because they were hidden deep inside the mangroves,” she says.

Mittal spotted the Sholigari Narrow-mouthed frog for the first time in Bengaluru during a nature walk at Cubbon Park. “We’ve seen a Praying Mantis feeding on a Swallowtail butterfly, a Jezebel butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, a Bird’s Nest Fungi that looks like tiny nests filled with bird’s eggs, and a Rock Eagle-Owl perched on a tree,” she recounts. 

These nature walks have also sown the seeds of engagement with citizen science for many women. “Men, being comfortable in outdoor spaces, are often more involved in environmental citizen science initiatives. But with spaces like these, women are becoming birdwatchers, developing curiosity about different species of flora and fauna, and logging their discoveries on apps like iNaturalist and eBird. This is bound to expand gender diversity in the field,” Mittal says.

For announcements and links to WhatsApp groups, check out
@awnw.india on Instagram.