Goa’s little-known rocky biodiversity hotspots need attention

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Editor's note: Francisco Rebello swings a traditional curved knife and hacks away at everything in his way—creepers, climbers and thorny shrubs—as he clears a steep path for us through the dense forest. Nearly 70 years old and wearing a pair of rubber chappals, shorts and a t-shirt, he turns around and smiles. A few paces behind, I pant in the humid air. Shafts of sunlight pierce the thick canopy of trees and create kaleidoscopic patterns on the wet, dark soil. One wrong stop would have us sliding down into a torrential stream. “Be careful and grab a branch if you need,” says Rebello. “We’re almost there.” This is not a scene from the Himalayas or an equatorial rainforest in Indonesia or the Congo; we’re standing on a tiny strip of forest, not too far from southern Goa’s Galgibaga beach. Ahead of us is a vast meadow of grass, wildflowers, springs and ponds. Twenty minutes into our hike, the wet soil gives way to a rocky surface, bronze-hued and pockmarked with tiny holes—this is laterite rock, weathered by millions of years of rain …