Chennai Students Lead Statewide Tree Plantation Drive, Planting Over 338,000 Saplings

As she digs into the soil and gently plants the beech sapling, K Vasundhara, a Class IX govt school student, knows it will take years before it grows tall. “But I’ll keep dropping by to ‘visit’ it,” she says.

“I want to see it become a strong Thunga tree.” Vasundhara is not alone. Many of her friends and peers from nearby schools share the same excitement, thanks to eco clubs actively functioning in the state’s schools in the past few years, sensitising students to good environmental practices.

As an impetus to these clubs, the school education dept’s call for a statewide tree plantation drive wherein students have to plant a tree at their homes, schools or at a public place, take a snap and upload the same on a govt portal by Wednesday, has set the ball rolling for more eco-warriors to sprout. “In Chennai, more than 5,500 saplings have been planted by students of about 2,256 schools, including govt, aided and private schools, from June 5 to Sept 8. Even before the announcement, tree planting activities were carried out regularly by eco-clubs. The target for Chennai is 75,000 trees,” says S Shanti, district eco-coordinator. The saplings, mostly of thunga and magizh trees owing to their fast-growing nature, are usually procured through NGOs and sent to these schools by the eco-coordinators.

Saplings can also be procured from the forest department. “Schools sometimes demand fruit-bearing tree saplings such as guava and almond,” she says. School education director S Kannapan is positive that the target will be achieved soon, if not by the deadline. “In a few cases, uploading pictures on the Mission Life portal has been slow. Eco club coordinators are constantly urging school managements to encourage students to upload the same,” he says. “In most cases, school principals and teachers are doing the uploading. So, saplings planted in public places or at their homes by students are not uploaded, and such cases are not logged. We are planning to train students to upload the same,” says Shanti. A section of schools, however, have flagged space constraints. In Hastinapuram Municipality Government Higher Secondary School, for instance, headmaster J Chandran says the space around the school cannot be used to plant saplings owing to the presence of water bodies and residential settlements. “In the schools, we have already been carrying out the drive for over a year. There is hardly any space left,” he says.

As of Aug 29, 3,38,950 saplings have been planted by 16,390 schools in Tamil Nadu. Email your feedback with name and address to southpole.toi@timesofindia.com