South Asia still retains more than one thousand forest fragments
held sacred by village communities and religious associations.
The last paper in this special issue, by Bagwat et al.
(2014) concerns cultural drivers of reforestation in tropical forest
groves of the Western Ghats of India. Many of these sacred
forest groves are considered ancient woodlands, but there is
very little information on their origins. Based on palaeoecological
reconstruction of two such sacred forest patches, Bhagwat
and associates examine the historical literature in a search for
linkages between the ‘social’ and the ‘ecological’ systems of
sacred forest groves. They conclude that some at least of these
forest fragments transitioned from grassland to tree-covered
landscapes fairly recently in paleo-geographic time. This finding
challenges the common perception that sacred forest groves are
remnants of once-continuous aboriginal forest; indicating that
they may often instead be regenerated forest patches. This
raises questions concerning appropriate incentives for encouraging
reforestation.