Conservation Strategies for Urban Biodiversity: In-situ and Ex-situ Approaches

Cities are not just concrete jungles. They are home to native trees, migratory birds, pollinators, stray ecosystems clinging to lake edges, and wildlife that has learned to live alongside humans. But as Indian cities expand outwards and upwards, this fragile urban biodiversity is shrinking fast. Conservation, therefore, cannot stay confined to remote forests and tiger reserves. It has to come into our parks, wetlands, gardens, and even our balconies. Broadly, conservationists rely on two complementary strategies: in-situ (on-site, within natural habitats) and ex-situ (off-site, in controlled settings). Both matter, and both need engaged communities to actually work.

In-situ conservation: protecting biodiversity where it lives 🔗

In-situ conservation is the gold standard of biodiversity protection. It preserves species, ecosystems, and genetic resources in their natural habitats, where they have evolved and continue to interact with predators, pollinators, and the climate. The legal backbone for this approach in India is the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, supported by the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 and the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. Together, these laws enable the creation of national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, conservation reserves, and community reserves.

While protected areas are usually associated with forests far from cities, in-situ conservation is just as crucial inside and around urban regions. Many Indian cities sit next to or even contain ecologically sensitive zones – think of Sanjay Gandhi National Park within Mumbai, Guindy National Park inside Chennai, or the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary on Delhi’s southern edge. Protecting these patches is non-negotiable if we want cities to stay liveable.

Protected areas and biosphere reserves 🔗

India operates a vast network of protected areas: roughly 106 national parks, more than 550 wildlife sanctuaries, and 18 biosphere reserves covering about 4% of the country’s geographical area. Biosphere reserves are particularly interesting for urban planners because they follow a zoning model – a strictly protected core zone, a managed buffer zone, and a transition zone where sustainable human activity is allowed. This layered design is increasingly being mimicked in city planning to balance development with ecological protection.

Sacred groves are another underrated form of in-situ conservation. Found in the Khasi Hills, the Aravallis, the Western Ghats, and tribal pockets of central India, these community-protected forest patches often shelter rare and threatened species that have disappeared from surrounding landscapes.

Green infrastructure inside cities 🔗

For dense urban areas, conventional protected areas are simply not enough. This is where urban green infrastructure (UGI) comes in – a connected network of parks, urban forests, wetlands, green roofs, vertical gardens, and tree-lined corridors integrated into the city fabric. According to a review in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, UGI mimics natural ecosystems within urban areas, supports biodiversity, mitigates the urban heat island effect, manages stormwater, and improves human well-being all at once.

Delhi offers a striking example. The capital now has seven biodiversity parks, including the Yamuna, Aravalli, Neela Hauz, Northern Ridge, Tilpath Valley, Tughlaqabad and South Delhi parks, all developed on degraded land by the Delhi Development Authority in partnership with the Centre for Environmental Management of Degraded Ecosystems at Delhi University. The 457-acre Yamuna Biodiversity Park was created on barren, salt-degraded floodplains. Researchers had to first plant a specific grass species that brought the soil pH down from 10 to a near-neutral 7 before native trees, wetland communities, and grasslands could be reintroduced. Today it hosts migratory birds, native medicinal herbs, and locally extinct flora that existed there a century ago.

Other cities are catching up. Mumbai’s Climate Action Plan includes blue-green infrastructure as a core strategy. Kochi became the first city in India to adopt a scientifically informed and participatory Local Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, with support from ICLEI South Asia. Chennai’s Pallikaranai marsh, once treated as a garbage dump, has been partly restored and designated as a Ramsar site and reserved forest – a reminder that even severely degraded urban wetlands can be brought back.

Ex-situ conservation: a safety net beyond natural habitats 🔗

Ex-situ conservation literally means “off-site”. Here, species, genetic material, or entire breeding populations are maintained outside their natural habitats – in zoos, botanical gardens, seed banks, aquaria, and tissue culture labs. It is a complementary strategy, not a replacement for in-situ work. The idea is simple: if a species is wiped out in the wild, a safety net should exist somewhere to allow research, captive breeding, and eventual reintroduction.

Botanical gardens and zoological parks 🔗

Botanical gardens act as living museums of plant diversity. The Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden in Howrah, Lalbagh in Bengaluru, the gardens at Ooty and Lucknow, and the Botanical Garden of Indian Republic in Noida (established in 2002) all conserve native, rare, and threatened plants while also serving research, training, and public education. The Botanical Survey of India maintains many of these gardens and plant repositories.

Zoological parks are far more than recreational spaces. Regulated by the Central Zoo Authority, they run captive breeding programmes for species that are critically endangered in the wild. Notable Indian successes include the Manipur brow-antlered deer (sangai), the white-winged wood duck, the gangetic gharial, and the Asiatic lion bred at the National Zoological Park in Delhi. For many species that have gone locally extinct in the wild, zoos are now the only viable repository.

Seed banks, gene banks, and cryopreservation 🔗

Modern ex-situ conservation has moved well beyond cages and gardens. India hosts a major network of genetic resource centres:

The National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) in New Delhi maintains one of the largest gene banks in Asia, with over four lakh seed accessions covering cereals, pulses, oilseeds, and wild crop relatives. Parallel institutions – the National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources (NBAGR) at Karnal, the National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources (NBFGR) at Lucknow, and the National Bureau of Agriculturally Important Microorganisms (NBAIM) at Mau – conserve animal, fish, and microbial genetic diversity respectively.

Cryopreservation, which stores seeds, pollen, embryos, or tissues at temperatures as low as -196°C in liquid nitrogen, is now a routine practice for vegetatively propagated crops like potato, banana, and sugarcane. India also operates gene sanctuaries – for example, the country’s first gene sanctuary in the Garo Hills of Meghalaya protects wild relatives of citrus in their natural setting, blurring the line between in-situ and ex-situ approaches.

Limitations of ex-situ work 🔗

Ex-situ conservation is expensive. Animals in captivity may lose natural behaviours. Plant populations in gardens can experience genetic drift over generations. Released individuals sometimes fail to adapt when reintroduced because their habitats have themselves changed. These limits are exactly why ex-situ measures must always work alongside healthy in-situ habitats – never as substitutes.

Engaging communities: the missing piece 🔗

Laws, parks, and gene banks alone cannot save urban biodiversity. Without local communities, even the best-designed policies stall. Three pillars matter here: public participation, local governance, and cross-sector partnerships.

People’s biodiversity registers and BMCs 🔗

The Biological Diversity Act, 2002 created a three-tier governance structure: the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) in Chennai, State Biodiversity Boards, and – most importantly for cities – Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) at the local body level. BMCs are tasked with preparing People’s Biodiversity Registers (PBRs), which document local flora, fauna, traditional knowledge, and ecologically important sites. The framework, regulated by the National Biodiversity Authority, gives ordinary residents a legal voice in how neighbourhood ecosystems are planted, patrolled, and protected. The challenge is uneven implementation: many smaller cities still lack the funding and technical capacity to produce meaningful PBRs.

Urban forestry and citizen-led schemes 🔗

In 2020, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change launched the Nagar Van Yojana, aiming to develop 1,000 Nagar Vans (urban forests) and Nagar Vatikas (urban gardens) across the country with active involvement of municipal bodies, NGOs, educational institutions, and local residents. This dovetails with India’s climate pledge to create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3.0 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent by 2030 through expanded forest and tree cover.

Bengaluru, Mysuru, and Chandigarh are frequently cited as Indian cities that have balanced urban growth with green cover through a combination of strong municipal policy, tree census exercises, and citizen volunteers. Resident welfare associations replacing invasive Prosopis juliflora with native jamun and dhak trees, school children running butterfly counts, and birdwatching groups uploading data to platforms like eBird are all small actions that, taken together, build a city’s ecological infrastructure.

Partnerships across government, academia, and citizens 🔗

The most successful urban conservation stories share one feature: collaboration. Delhi’s biodiversity parks work because the DDA partnered with Delhi University scientists. Kochi’s biodiversity action plan worked because ICLEI South Asia brought in technical expertise while the municipal corporation handled implementation and local communities documented species. Chennai’s marsh restoration combined government action, court intervention, NGO pressure, and citizen science.

Going forward, the path is fairly clear: integrate biodiversity into city master plans, mandate native species in roadside planting and landscaping bylaws, fund BMCs adequately, incentivise green roofs and vertical gardens through building regulations, and invest in long-term ecological monitoring. None of this happens without residents who care enough to ask their municipal councillor why a wetland is being filled or why a 200-year-old banyan is being cut for a road widening project.

Why both approaches must work together 🔗

In-situ and ex-situ conservation are not competing options – they are two arms of the same effort. A city that protects its wetlands, urban forests, and remnant scrublands (in-situ) while also maintaining strong botanical gardens, zoos, and gene banks (ex-situ) builds genuine ecological resilience. Lose the wild habitats and your gene bank specimens have nowhere to go back to. Lose your ex-situ safety net and a single disease outbreak or extreme weather event can wipe out species permanently.

For Indian cities staring down rapid expansion, climate change, and habitat fragmentation, the question is no longer whether to conserve urban biodiversity but how quickly and how inclusively. The frameworks, the science, and the institutions already exist. What is mostly missing is sustained political will and engaged citizens who treat urban nature as infrastructure, not decoration.

What do you think? Does your city have a Biodiversity Management Committee or a People’s Biodiversity Register that residents can actively contribute to? If you had to choose one underused urban space near your home – a neglected park, a polluted lake, a roadside strip – and turn it into a biodiversity asset, what would you do first?

References

1. https://www.indiacode.nic.in/handle/123456789/1726
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-situ_conservation_in_India
3. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ecology-and-evolution/articles/10.3389/fevo.2024.1440477/full
4. https://india.mongabay.com/2025/03/new-delhi-invests-in-natural-capital-through-biodiversity-parks/
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamuna_biodiversity_park
6. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837722004823
7. https://kpiasacademy.com/ex-situ-conservation/
8. https://www.nbpgr.ernet.in/
9. https://nbaindia.org/
10. https://moef.gov.in/uploads/2024/04/Nagar-Van-Yojana-Guidelines-2020.pdf
11. https://www.teriin.org/article/echoes-urban-forest-reclaiming-green-indias-urban-cities