Green crusade in city chalks up success story

Green crusade in city chalks up success story
To Show How Effective Public-Private Partnerships Can Conserve The Environment
Roli Srivastava | TNN

Hyderabad: About six months ago, over 200 leaf-less, branch-less trunks of huge banyan trees were lifted from the road stretching between Tippu bridge and Andhra Pradesh Police Academy to make way for road widening. But, for a change, these trees did not add up to the growing list of the city’s disappearing patches of green cover. Instead, they now stand tall in a quaint corner of Proddatur village in Shankarpally mandal, Ranga Reddy district, many trees sporting leaves and some even bearing fruits.
The 200-odd tree stumps sprouting fresh green leaves form a green border of a huge plot in Proddatur, where they were translocated to, an exercise taken up at such a large scale for the first time in the state and possibly even the country. Boasting of an impressive 90 per cent survival rate, the re-birth of these trees is now serving as an example of how translocation can be a successful experiment but more importantly that the city’s environment can be conserved if the government and citizens work for it together.
Behind this success story is a tree-lover businessman fond of collecting exotic tree species from across the world who joined hands with the Outer Ring Road (ORR) project that was undertaking road widening work where these trees stood and the state forest department. Acting as catalyst to this green success was a persistent Times of India’s green initiative and citizen’s group Forum for a Better Hyderabad (FBH).
On Monday, when TOI visited Proddatur, the trees made the sweltering heat bearable, giving enough shade for a herd of goats to munch on the fresh grass that had cropped up under them. With each stump wearing a leafy hat of fresh green, the scene seemed all set for birds to come visiting.
Buoyed by the success of this pilot project, the forest department is insisting that all trees, not just old, historically important banyans, be translocated. “Even if a tree is eight-years-old, we are insisting it be translocated. After all, it took eight years for a tree to retain this height and we can’t let it go waste,” says M C Pargaien, conservator of forests and convener, district level tree protection committee for Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy districts.
But turning the whole conservation concept on its head is businessman with a green heart, R Ramdev, a city-based exporter of inflatables who saw the translocation exercise not only as his way of contributing to the environment but also as an opportunity to green his barren piece of land green and convert it into a resort. He installed a pipeline on his barren land to water the trees and nurtured them with fertilisers and anti-fungal treatment. Now, with the trees lining his huge plot, he plans to build a resort here, apart from starting a green crusade to inspire others to similar initiatives.
“I have spent close to Rs 36 lakh on this (translocation) and it would give my resort a green appeal,” says Ramdev, adding that his effort already bore fruit when some elderly locals came down to have their lunch under the shade of these trees.
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