The kan forests of Central Western Ghats of Karnataka, were most often climax evergreen forests, preserved through generations by the village communities of Malnadu regions, as sacred forests, or sacred groves, dedicated to deities and used for worship and cultural assemblage of the local communities. Various taboos and regulations on usage of the kans were self-imposed by the local communities. In the normal course trees were never to be cut, but the adjoining villagers enjoyed the privileges of taking care and gathering of wild pepper, that was abundant in the kans, and many other non-wood produce, demarcating portions of the kans informally between the different families for collection purposes.

The kans functioned as important sources of perennial streams and springs used for irrigation of crops and for domestic needs. They moderated the local microclimate favouring the spice gardens in their vicinity, and were also fire-proof being evergreen in nature.

The landscape of pre-colonial times had kans forming mosaic with secondary, timber rich forests, grassland and cultivation areas, promoting also rich wildlife.

Kans were characteristic in the traditional land use of Shimoga, Uttara Kannada and Chikmagalur districts specially, and were equivalent to the devarakadus of Kodagu region.

With the domination of Central Western Ghats region of Karnataka by the British, the State asserted its control over the kan lands, which were in thousands, each kan measuring originally from few hectares to several hundred hectares in area. The curtailment of community rights in the kans, including heavier taxation for collection of forest produce resulted in the abandonment of many of them, causing various hardships to the villagers.

Whereas most kans of Uttara Kannada got merged with the rest of the forests ensuring the conservation of rare and endemic species of Western Ghats, in Shimoga district the kans were not properly documented except in Sorab taluk and to some extent in Sagar and Thirthahalli taluks. Moreover the Shimoga kans were brought under either the forest or revenue departments. As communities lost their traditional biomass collection privileges in secondary deciduous forests, in many places they resorted to kans for fuelwood, timber and leaf manure, causing their decline.

As the kans were not of much timber value due to the growth of easily perishable softwoods in them, the British thought it suitable to keep many such under the control of the revenue department. The revenue authorities started allotting these precious watershed areas and reserves of biodiversity for expansion of cultivation, especially of coffee and garden crops, creating widespread fragmentation of the kans. The practice of allotments ranging in area per applicant, individual or organization varied from one or two acres to hundreds of acres each. As the kans under revenue department was given more importance as land resources than as forests, the forests were cleared partially or entirely for alternative land uses.

The rampant use of fire for clearing the evergreen vegetation for cultivation areas or creating grassy areas caused change of climax evergreen vegetation to savannas, scrub and secondary deciduous forests with diminished water flow in the streams and rivers, which can be detrimental to the livelihoods of people in malnadu and beyond even in the drier Deccan plains.

Large chunks of kan lands were allotted to the Mysore Paper Mills for raising of pulpwood plantations, especially in Shimoga district.

Soil erosion, consequent on the clearance of kans, has adversely affected forest regeneration and is also detrimental to cultivation as well as causing siltation of water bodies, resulting in the abandonment of many irrigation tanks adjoining the kan lands.

Expressing deep concern on such dismal state of affairs, at a time when forest conservation is of paramount need, the Vriksha-Laksha Andolan, Sagar and the Western Ghat Task Force of the Government of Karnataka assigned us with the task of making a rapid study of two of the kan forests, the Kurnimakki-Halmahishikan and Kullundikan in the Thirthahalli taluk of Shimoga district, which are facing severe threats from rampant allotments of large areas to private parties for non-forestry purposes and from conflicting claims of ownership, with the forest department not enjoying adequate power to save these kans from liquidation of their natural vegetation.

The study in the Kurnimakki-Halmahishi kan of about 1000 ha reveals the vegetation of the kan, though heavily fragmented, due to ever increasing human impacts, nevertheless, is a mosaic of various kinds of forests. The most significant is the discovery of swampy areas within this kan which have few individuals of large sized threatened tree species Syzygium travancoricum, classified in the IUCN Red List as “Critically Endangered”. The tree is on the verge of extinction, and for the Shimoga district, the only occurrence of this tree is the Kurnimakki-Halmahishi kan.

The Kullundikan of about 453 ha has a narrow belt of original tropical rainforest dominated by the tree Dipterocarpus indicus, considered ‘Endangered’by the IUCN. The revenue department in control of this kan, being totally ignorant of its vegetation richness has made several grants within the kan for cultivation of coffee and arecanut. The grantees have also done encroachments within this climax forest area of high watershed value. The cutting of the climax forest for raising coffee or any other crop is totally unjustified.

We therefore recommend that the Government of Karnataka take immediate action to arrest the degradation of kan forests on priority basis by:

• Proper survey and mapping of boundaries of all kans;
• Assign the kan forests to the Forest Department for conservation and sustainable management;
• Constituting Village Forest Committees for facilitating joint forest management of the kan forests;
• Taking speedy action on eviction of encroachers from the kans;
• Giving proper importance to the watershed value and biodiversity of the kans;
• Taking special care of threatened species and threatened micro-habitats within the kans;
• Heritage sites status to ‘kans’ under section 37(1) of Biological Diversity Act 2002, Government of India as the study affirms that kans are the repository of biological wealth of rare kind, and the need for adoption of holistic eco-system management for conservation of particularly the rare and endemic flora of the Western Ghats. The premium should be on conservation of the remaining evergreen and semi-evergreen forests, which are vital for the water security (perenniality of streams) and food security (sustenance of biodiversity). There still exists a chance to restore the lost natural evergreen to semi-evergreen forests through appropriate conservation and management practices.