Chennai: With rains lashing Tiruvannamalai and Vellore district foresters on Friday kickstarted dispersing of seed balls and started distributing saplings to enhance green cover along the boundary lines of reserve forests in northern districts. The afforestation projects which were put on hold due to dry weather conditions in Tiruvannamalai will now be taken up in full swing and the district collector Prashant Wadnere started the project on Friday, Tiruvannamalai district forest officer Archana Kalyani said. School and college children will be roped in for the massive exercise to disperse seeds for next two weeks and the department has prepared more than one lakh seed balls packed with manure, the DFO said.
"In Vellore, VIT in co-ordination with the forest department had also reached out to schools and nearby colleges and have a fixed two weeks as deadline to complete the project," said professor Sai Saraswathy, Nature Club co-ordinator, VIT. Flowering plants, including Jasmine and Nandia Vattam have been donated by Biodiversity Conservation Foundation (BCF), Trichy and they have been roped in for technical assistance on the project, the professor added. The programme, a brainchild of our VIT vice president G. V. Selvam is focused more on children, where the kids will select the type of plants they want to plant, Saraswathy said.
For the afforestation project indigenous wooden tree species like Pterocarpus santalinus (Red Sanders-Civappu sandal), Madhuca Longifolia (Illupai Maram), Dalbergia latifolia (Rose Wood Tree- Roja maram) Terminalia elliptica (neermathi Maram) Swietenia macrocorpa - (Mahagoni Maram-Mahokani) have been selected, said K. Brinda, conservationist, BCF. Other fruit bearing tress species like Punica granatum (Pomegranate Tree- Maathulai), Atrocarpus integrifolia- (Jack fruit tree- Pala maram), Psidium guajava - (Guava Maram), Annona squamosa - (Custard apple tree- Seethapazham), Syzygium cumini - (Naval pazham maram) are also selected for the green drive in Vellore, she added.
