At first glance, Hesaraghatta looks like a stretch of empty land on Bengaluru’s outskirts. There are no towering trees or dense forests here — just grass, scrub, seasonal wetlands and the broad expanse of the lakebed.
Yet this seemingly open landscape supports more than 285 bird species, along with amphibians, butterflies and other wildlife. In winter, migratory birds arrive after journeys spanning thousands of kilometres.
The grassland also plays a role far beyond wildlife. It forms part of the Arkavathy River catchment and the catchment of Thippagondanahalli Reservoir, linking this open landscape to Bengaluru’s water system.
What looks like unused land from a distance is, in fact, a functioning ecosystem.
In February 2025, after nearly two decades of campaigns, studies, litigation and delays, the Karnataka government officially notified 5,678 acres and 32 guntas in Yelahanka taluk as the Greater Hesaraghatta Grassland Conservation Reserve (GHGCR).
The notification describes the area as ecologically, faunally, florally and geomorphologically important. It also recognises its role as a catchment and water source for Bengaluru.
The legal protection came after years of efforts to establish the value of a landscape that was often seen as little more than open land.
It was never just ‘empty land’
Grasslands are easy to overlook because much of their biodiversity is not visible from a distance.
At Hesaraghatta, researchers have been documenting that biodiversity for years.
Ornithologist S Subramanya, who studied birds in the landscape for decades, documented 133 bird species, 39 native shrub species, 10 mammals and five reptiles in an earlier biodiversity assessment. His work became part of the scientific basis for efforts to protect the landscape.
A later account recorded around 235 bird species, nearly 400 insect species and about 100 butterfly species, including the rare lilac silverline. It also noted that several insect species found there had been described as new to science.
Among the birds recorded here is the lesser florican, classified as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Raptors also use the open habitat, including species such as the greater spotted eagle. Photograph: (bangaloretourism)
The numbers cited by the Karnataka government are larger still.
The notification records more than 285 bird species, 13 amphibian species and 111 butterfly species, along with smooth-coated otters and other wildlife. The landscape is also used by thousands of migratory birds arriving from the Palearctic region, including areas around Central Asia and the Arctic.
Among the birds recorded here is the lesser florican, classified as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Raptors also use the open habitat, including species such as the greater spotted eagle.
This is why the landscape cannot be understood simply as land around a lake. It is a grassland-wetland system, with its different habitats supporting one another.
As scientist K S Gopi Sundar told Mongabay in 2021, Hesaraghatta is a freshwater wetland-grassland-marshland system that is increasingly rare around the world. Its open habitats support insects, which in turn support birds and reptiles.
The water beneath the grass
Hesaraghatta lies within the Arkavathy basin, and the larger landscape forms part of the catchment of the Arkavathy River, Hesaraghatta Lake and Thippagondanahalli Reservoir.
A 2017 study by researchers from ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research and BMS College of Engineering examined water conservation and groundwater recharge in the Arkavathy basin around Hesaraghatta.
Using hydrogeological and topographical analysis, the researchers identified areas suitable for rainwater harvesting and infiltration.
Research on the wider Arkavathy watershed has also documented long-term changes in streamflow and land use, including the expansion of groundwater-irrigated agriculture and eucalyptus plantations.
This makes the open landscape important beyond its wildlife. The grassland is part of a larger system through which rainwater moves, infiltrates and feeds the surrounding watershed.
Two decades of fighting for protection
The push to formally protect Hesaraghatta entered the courts in 2012.
That year, photographer Mahesh Bhat and the civil society group Arkavathy Mathu Kumudvathy Nadi Punaschetana Samithi, of which he was a trustee, filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Karnataka High Court seeking protection for around 5,000 acres of the grassland. Development plans had threatened parts of the landscape, which had also been associated with proposals for a film city.
By late 2012, Bhat had begun working with conservationist Ramki Sreenivasan and ecologists Dr K S Seshadri and Dr M B Krishna on a formal proposal to give the landscape legal protection.
The proposal sought to declare around 5,000 acres, including the lakebed, a Conservation Reserve under Section 36A of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.
The proposal reached the Karnataka Forest Department around 2013–14. The department surveyed the area and demarcated its boundaries.
Three years after the PIL, the Karnataka government gave an undertaking that the land would remain protected while its future was being decided. Around the same time, 345 acres that had been leased out were returned to the Department of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Services.
Then, for years, little moved.
In 2020, the Department of Animal Husbandry supported the proposal, which was placed before the State Board for Wildlife. The board rejected it.
The campaign also faced opposition on the ground. According to conservationists involved in the campaign, misinformation had spread locally that protected-area status would take away people’s rights and could even lead to animals such as lions, tigers, elephants and bears being released in the grassland.
At one point, a group surrounded Bhat’s house and demanded that he stop pursuing protected-area status. He sought police protection.
Conservation India, founded by Sreenivasan, was then used to counter the misinformation and explain what a conservation reserve would actually mean. Conservationists emphasised that such a reserve could be created only on government-owned land and that existing rights would not be infringed.
The final notification addressed that concern explicitly.
When the Greater Hesaraghatta Grassland Conservation Reserve was notified in February 2025, it stated that the rights of people would not be infringed. The Karnataka Forest Department had also expanded the proposed reserve by more than 500 acres from the original proposal.
After two decades of scientific documentation, court proceedings and public campaigning, Hesaraghatta finally had legal protection.
But the work did not end with the notification.
What protection means now
The notification does not turn Hesaraghatta into an isolated wilderness. What has changed is the legal status of the landscape.
For years, the grassland had to be documented and defended as something valuable — its birds, insects, wetlands and role in the catchment all forming part of the case for its protection.
Now, that value has formal recognition.
The larger question is how the reserve will be managed: how the grassland will be protected from encroachment and incompatible development, how fire and invasive vegetation will be handled, and how the people who have long used the landscape will be part of its future.
For two decades, Hesaraghatta’s defenders have been making the case that this open landscape is not empty land.
It is an ecosystem — and now, it is a protected one.
