Saving trees from urban onslaught

With rampant concretisation all around, our city is fast losing its green soul. Unpleasant onslaught on natural eco system is straining human and animal lives. In short, it is taking a crippling effect and we are risking by turning our surroundings barren, shorn of any tree and life at all.

Amid this grim scenario, as if answering the prayers of trees with leafy arms to gods, a green endeavour by a voluntary group is spreading cheer among the ill-fated trees and their lovers. Vata Foundation trains its primary focus on saving trees from felling for raising structures.

The NGO novelty lies not just in prevailing upon all the concerned to desist from axing trees, but also in saving the trees themselves by finding a new habitat. It takes up translocation of trees and has for quite sometime been shifting them to new abodes.

Till date, the NGO has translocated more than 2,000 trees to different locations. Recently, it stepped forward to save the green cover and took a new project to translocate 80 trees from the Secretariat old building. After trimming and digging around the roots, it is translocating trees to private land in Shamshabad.

Of his experiences and joy in translocating trees, P Uday Krishna, the founder of Vata Foundation, says, "This journey started in 2010 and today slowly we could reach some expertise in this endeavour. As currently, we are working with the government to translocate the old and massive trees form Secretariat.

We thought of translocating all, but we could not get the list of trees which are affected. Approximately there are 300-400 trees, but hardly we could manage to get the permission to translocate 80 trees."

This service is offered for free of cost, as this initiative has the backing of several naturalists.

"The government departments helps us in uprooting and placing them onto trucks. I was involved in this mission, from the year 2010 when at Kukatpally around 16 yellow flame trees were getting chopped. As there was a lane closely which did not have trees we decided to relocate the trees. Out of 16 trees 13 trees survived. That's how the journey began and in 2015 this NGO started," he recalls.

"Slowly it became an eye-opener to the citizens, and many voluntarily joined us to protect the green cover. In 2015, in a major project, we translocated 300 trees near Raidurgam police station. We also shifted trees from Botanical Gardens. In this mission we have come across many hardships to get permission for translocating the trees from the government; sometimes we had to approach courts for permission," he explains.

"We also try to spread the message to the public regarding saving green cover on social media platforms. We hope to spread our operations... that we could translocate trees across the country, beginning with Goa, Maharashtra and Delhi," adds Uday.

Around 60 green warriors have joined hands and are volunteering in savings trees. Any tree that one comes across in a concrete jungle as ours seems to be, in the lines of Joyce Kilmer, "A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray"to save from green murder all around. And their prayers are being heard.