Giant Trees for Climate Change Mitigation in India

Dear Well wishers and supporters,

We are very glad to inform you that our field team identified and documented the giant tree -Vateria indica- which is endemic to the Western Ghats- a global biodiversity hotspot and listed in the Vulnerable category of IUCN redlist. in the unprotected forests of Dodamarg block in Sindhudurg district of Maharashtra. Fortunately, the tree is under the ownership of temple trust and interestingly the trustees have no idea about the conservation status of this tree. The Girth at Breast Height (GBH) for this tree measured 260 cms while its height is about 12 meters. 

We have observed it on many occasions that IUCN redlist is not known in public domain as something important and decisive tool for protecting tree species. Even today, the scheduled list of tree species requiring permission for felling in the state of Maharashtra where this initiative is primarily being implemented does not include this tree or any other trees that are currently figure in the IUCN redlist from the Western Ghats due to indiscriminate felling. At the same time the southern states in the Western Ghats such as Karnataka, Kerala and Tamilnadu have much larger forest areas under legal protection through protected area network in comparison to the state of Maharashtra and Goa, even then there is no significant change in the conservation status of threatened trees such as Vateria indica which is primarily found in the forests of southern Western Ghats. This ultimately hints to an important conservation strategy issue- prioritization. Majority of the long term conservation initiatives in the Western Ghats are focused on saving mega fauna / flagship species such as Elephants and Tigers which often completely ignore threatend trees as if they don't contribute much to biodiversity conservation. 

With this I wanted to set the context right and also underline the critical importance of this campaign in saving all the giant trees including threatened ones. For we strongly believe that giant trees contribute to biodiversity conservation in bigger manner than understood by the core constituency of conservation. This belief is based on our efforts and experience over the last 10 years in saving Giant trees in the Western Ghats and other parts of India. 

Coming back to conservation of the Giant specimen of Vateria Indica, we were fortunate to find the floor below this tree fully occupied with over 200 germinated seeds of this tree. With the permission of the temple trust, our team collected about 80 regenerated saplings and transported those to our dedicated nursery at Sadavali near Devrukh in Sangameshwar block in Ratnagiri district. These saplings are growing well. These saplings will be planted at safe and suitable locations in the northern Western Ghats during the monsoon period next year.

Selected photos of the tree and saplings growing at our nursery are enclosed herewith. 

I hope you will be happy with this impact and fully convinced about the importance of this initiative. 

Best regards

Jayant