CHENNAI: Under a canopy of trees in Nageswara Rao Park, Mylapore, people from different walks of life gathered together over a game of cards — except this card game is meant to educate players about Chennai’s ecology and biodiversity. The Wilderness Game, designed by the Palluyir Trust, comes in packs of 110 cards each, further divided into ecology cards, species cards and action cards. The idea, an initiative of Madras Inherited and Palluyir Trust, was to bring together people over a game to initiate a broader conversation about Chennai’s ecology and biodiversity.
Unusual card game
The Wilderness game is devised for a team of four, hence the gathering was divided into teams of four, with a volunteer explaining the rules of the game. Each participant picked an ecology card — this could be anything from beach to marshland to coral reef — and proceeded to pick a card from the species cards. Each species card contained information about a particular species including its habitat. The ones that fit into a player’s ecosystem card are added, while the ones that don’t go into the discard heap. The player who first builds a deck of five cards conforming to a particular ecosystem wins the game.
All very well, except the evening was doused by rain, causing the game to be abandoned midway. As the participants huddled together under a shelter, the conversation took off anyway. M Yuvan, environmentalist and founder of Palluyir Trust, took centre stage and used the opportunity to educate the participants.
The Wilderness Game, he remarked, was an example of what is commonly called Biodiversity games — self-directed learning materials aimed at edification about the environment and one’s role in it. “This, apart from walks through ecological hotspots for children, are some of our programmes to instil environmental awareness among Gen-Z,” he adds. Though the focus is primarily on kids, the Trust plans to hold walks for adults in the future as well.
Eco hotspot Chennai
Very soon, the discussion moved to Chennai’s biodiversity. “Chennai was built over wetlands, which are usually biodiversity hotspots. In spite of the concrete jungle it has grown into, some of this biodiversity is still around us, even in the apartment walls where we confine ourselves,” Yuvan added. Urban encroachment has left the city with only a handful of natural wetlands like the one in Pallikaranai, he said. What is a hotspot for migratory birds like the flamingo is also host to untreated sewage and effluents from much of the city, as well as other invasive species.
Alongside the brochures and booklets detailing the city’s coastal fauna and marshland migratory birds, Yuvan closed off the evening with a positive note about the efforts taken by villagers in Chengalpattu to conserve Vedanthangal sanctuary. “In fact, there are historical records to show the bond between local farmers and the birds indigenous to the area, and its a bond that continues to this day,” he added.