A walk through Pallikaranai marsh, the city’s last wetland

The event raised awareness on the need to conserve the once 6,000-hectare marshland, a major floodwater drain for South Chennai

As one enters the ELCOT Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Sholinganallur and travels 1.5 km on the straight road and exits through its back gate, there stands a building of the Tamil Nadu Forest Department.

Early in the morning on Wednesday last week, a group of around 25 people gathered near this building for a walk organised by the Care Earth Trust (CET). The modest building, which stands in contrast to the high-rise buildings of multinational companies in the SEZ, is the office of the Conservation Authority of Pallikaranai Marshland.

The group was gearing up for a walk through the Pallikaranai marshland, or to be precise, what’s left of it after rapid urbanisation destroyed a majority of this crucial wetland system.

For instance, the 377-acre SEZ campus one has to cross to reach the Forest Department’s office was once part of the wetland. So were the Greater Chennai Corporation’s dumping yard in Perungudi, two major roads connecting Old Mahabalipuram Road and Tambaram-Velachery Road, campuses of the National Institute of Ocean Technology, the National Institute of Wind Energy and a few other buildings.

What was once believed to be a 6,000-hectare area of marshland, which acted as a floodwater drain for around 250 square kilometres of South Chennai, measures only 700 hectares now.

Just before the walk begins, Seetha Gopalakrishnan, a senior project associate with CET, distributes a sheet with illustrations of different plants and birds that thrive in the wetland.

Pointing to a bunch of tall grass-like plants, N. Muthu Karthick, a trained taxonomist, says the easiest identifiable indication of a wetland system is the presence of reeds. One of the three children in the group shout in excitement upon spotting a plant illustrated in the sheet, getting curious and questioning why the plant thrives in the marshland.