Lone warrior strives for making the Valley greener

Srinagar: About nine years ago, he single-handedly began planting trees on barren hillocks which, till a couple of decades ago, used to be full of beautiful clusters of deodar or Himalayan cedar and conifer trees.

Abdul Hameed Bhat, 51, a businessman, has himself planted or helped volunteers in planting as many as 1,45,000 trees, mostly pine, in different parts of the Kashmir valley spending Rs 30 lakh from his own pocket.

“I don't get any financial help from government or any other source nor do I run any NGO. It is an effort made at personal level,” he said, calling it a “heart mission” rooted in his love for environment.  

Mr Bhat’s passion began in 2009 when he started taking care of dozens of pine trees planted by the social forestry department on the pavements outside his office in Srinagar’s Barzulla area but were left unattended.

As a  promotion activity in his auto business, he started gifting saplings to clients in place of calendars, diaries and other stationery items.

Last Sunday, Mr Bhat, a school dropout who has made it big in business, was joined by a large group of volunteers, including journalists and members of a football club,  to plant over 1,000 pine trees on a knoll at Sutaharan in central district of Budgam. Sitting in the lap of Pirpanjal Range, Sutaharan like many other Valley areas has witnessed large-scale deforestation mainly during the three-decade old armed conflict in Kashmir.

 “There are many things we can do to preserve and protect our environment if we want to preserve and protect life on Earth and leave behind something good for our coming generations,” he told this correspondent after digging about 100 holes and planting saplings in them.

Mr Bhat said that it pains him to see deforestation across Kashmir and he took a “conscious decision” to do his bit to rectify the wrong.

“I know the damage done to our woods over the years is huge and no single effort is likely to have a great impact of reparation. But I thought whatever I can, I must do,” he said.

Relentlessly dedicated to restoring nature, Mr Bhat who is now known to many people in Kashmir as “Green Warrior” has not only won appreciation from all but is also enthusiastically joined by volunteers from almost every walk of life in planting trees.

Rahim Greens, a subsidiary of Rahim Motors owned by Mr Bhat, in collaboration with various organisations and the state's forest department sometime ago launched a plantation drive in Srinagar city and Rajouri district in the Jammu region and involved educational institutions. An initiative named as “The Tree of Life” was organised by it jointly with Help Voluntary Trust earlier.

“No doubt, Hameed Sahib took the initiative and continues to be at the forefront of the campaign but it now appears to be a story of Mein akela hi chala tha janib-e-manzil magar; loag saath aatey gaye aur karvan banta gaya (I set out alone for the destination but people kept joining me and it turned into a caravan),” said a volunteer.

One of the prominent faces which have ardently joined the crusade is Rifat Abdullah, a TV journalist. Apart from distributing saplings in schools and colleges, he has adopted a barren hill in Rathsun area of Budgam and taken a pledge to convert it into what he calls “First Oxygen Zone” of Jammu and Kashmir.

“Thousands of deodar trees have been planted voluntarily on the hill, so far, under ‘Mission One Crore Plants’ launched by ‘Save Environment, Save Kashmir’, a public movement,” he wrote on Facebook.

Volunteers in Sutaharan area of the Valley.

The Kashmir valley bounded on the southwest by the Pir Panjal Range and on the northeast by the main Himalayas range is blessed with exotic natural beauty of landscape and water bodies. But over the years, its water bodies, mountains and particularly forests have been vandalised and the ecological assets are fast disappearing. As per official statistics, more than 14,000 hectares of forestland, including 9,496 hectares in the Jammu region and 4,877 hectares in Kashmir, has been encroached upon by people.

The state has a total forest area of 20,230 square km, largely distributed in the Valley (8,128 sq.km) and the Jammu region (12,066 sq. km). The twin district of Leh and Kargil in Ladakh are mostly devoid of forest vegetation with only 36 sq. km forest area together.

Forest minister Choudhary Lal Singh claimed that the government retrieved from encroachers around 135,000 kanals (16,875 acres) of forestland in 2016-17 for restoration.

“I have asked divisional forest officers to gear up their men and machinery for demarcation of retrieved forests land to avoid further encroachment,” he said.

Officials claim that a slew of measures have been initiated to regenerate the degraded forests. These include planting over two crore saplings across the state — 250,000 of these along the highways.

Mr Singh, while speaking in the state Assembly recently, admitted that out of 20,230 sq km forest area, about 9,000 sq km area is degraded due to “unabated human intervention”.

He also said that 382,000 kanals (47,750 arces) of forest area was under encroachment as on April 1, 2016. “I need around Rs 10,000 crore for treating 9,00,000 hectares of degraded forest area of the state and at the rate of present funding, it will take more than 350 years to rehabilitate the degraded forest area,” he said.

As per the forest policy of the country, 33 per cent of the total area of every region in plains and 60 per cent in the Himalayan region must be under forest cover but the ground reality is that India does not have more than 22 per cent total forest area.

In Jammu and Kashmir, despite it falling in the Himalayan region, the total forest area is about 20 per cent of the total area. The Valley has been experiencing erratic snowfall and hotter summers for the last decade or so and environmentalists say that the main reason for it has been the large-scale deforestation.

Ecologists and other experts insist that restoring the state’s green cover needs the involvement of people and more importantly the spirit shown by  Mr Bhat and his partners.

Mr Bhat is hopeful of a greener future. “Our younger generation is aware of the consequences (of deforestation). I have found young boys and girls more than willing to work with me and others in our humble effort to see our  surroundings turn green again.