Every year July 28 is observed as World Nature Conservation Day to create awareness about the importance of protecting the environment.?
The theme of World Nature Conservation Day 2023 is "Forests and Livelihoods: Sustaining People and Planet."
The day is being marked at a time when our planet Earth is facing an ever-increasing threat due to our over-exploitation of natural resources.
Be it fossil fuels, metals, minerals, forests, or water, we humans are using it all up at an alarming pace, and we might run out of some of these natural resources in the near future.
Among these, the loss of forest cover and water resources is the most concerning and can threaten the existence of our planet as we know it.
According to The State of the World's Forests Report 2022, the world has lost 420 million hectares, approximately 10.34 per cent of its total forest area, in the last 30 years.
In 2021 alone, it is estimated that the world lost tropical forests at a rate of 40 square miles every day.
The loss of forests in India is also a matter of concern, as the country reportedly lost 668,400 ha in just five years.
According to the?Deforestation Report by Utility Bidder, which was released in March 2023, India lost 384,000 ha of forests between 1990 and 2000?and another 668,400 ha between 2015 and 2020.?
With a difference of 284,400 ha in forestry loss between 1990 and 2020, India has seen the biggest increase in deforestation, the data said.
While the loss of forests is undoubtedly a setback, across India, there have been several individual and collective efforts to reclaim at least a portion of what has been lost.
Here are some of them:
Popularly called the Forest Man of India, Jadav Payeng, a native of?Majuli in Assam, has been credited for growing a forest that is spread across 1,360 acres?all by himself.
Majuli is an island in the Brahmaputra River and was home to the indigenous Mishing tribe. It is also the world's largest inhabited river island.?
In 1979 Payeng came across several dead snakes scattered along the sandy banks of the island, which had died of exposure to excess heat.?
And while looking for what he could do to stop such deaths, some elderly tribals told him that he could plant bamboo.
Later, he started planting saplings along the coast and turned the patch of land into a?thriving forest.
Today, nearly 40 years later, the Mola'r haabi (Mola's forest), which is named after Payeng, is spread across 1,390 acres and is home to tigers, rhinos, over 100 deer and rabbits, monkeys and several varieties of birds, including a large number of vultures apart from the thousands of trees.
Pompayya Malemath is a self-taught wildlife photographer from Hospet, Karnataka.
In 2015 when Pompayya noticed a piece of land adjacent to his own property was being turned into a garbage dumping ground, he started planning tree sampling there, and in a matter of a couple of years, a thriving forest rose there.
The forest that later expanded to the nearby Tungabhadra Board's land is now home to some 800 trees, including neem, teak, silver oak, mango tree, etc. and 70 species of birds, like bulbul, Robin, and Kingfisher, as well as animals like sloth bear, leopards, jungle cat.
Popularly called the forest man of Tamil Nadu, D Saravanan turned a barren land into a self-sustaining forest spread over 100 acres. The Aranya Forest and Sanctuary in Poothurai village, Tamil Nadu, was built by Saravanan over a period of nearly 25 years.
In 1994, he started planting native tree saplings in a barren land at Auroville Green Work Resource Centre, which later became a thick forest comprising over 900 species of indigenous plants, 250 species of birds, 54 butterfly species and 20 species of snakes. The 100-acre forest also has six man-made water bodies that help sustain wildlife.
Seema Adgaonkar, a former Range Forest Officer with the Mumbai Mangrove Conservation Unit, is credited with planting over two million mangrove seedlings to restore the coast of Maharashtra. Seema was the only female officer appointed at the MMCU.?
The cell was established in 2012 following a 2005 Bombay High Court order to declare all mangroves under government land as protected forests.
in the 1970s, Abdul Kareem, a native of Kasargod in Kerala, was working in the middle east, like many others from his state at that time. It was also the time when UAE started transforming from a desert to what it is today. This included large-scale tree platings. Impressed by how the desert was transformed, Kareem, who returned to his native village in 1977, tried replicating it at home.
He started by buying 5 acres of rocky, barren land from his neighbours for Rs 3750 and started creating a forest on it.
Despite the odds, Kareem persisted with his dream project, and slowly it started showing results. Today Kareem's forest has grown to 28, with more than 5,000 tree varieties and thousands of birds and animals.
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