July 28 is World Nature Conservation Day. This video is specially prepared for the occasion. We wish to convey a small message, and so request you to share this with as many people as possible. This is an area owned by the Forest Department in Mudikkode, close to Thrissur National Highway. People used to dump a lot of waste here. So, on an experimental basis, the Forest Department gave us permission to put up a Miyawaki forest. We – three organizations namely, Invis Multimedia, Culture Shoppe and Nature’s Green Guardians Foundation – joined hands to do it, free of cost, for the department, and the Forest Department extended all help possible. The forest is now one-year-and-ten-months old. In September this year, it will turn two.
Have a look at the sheer size of the trees here. This is to conserve Nature and the insect species that are slowly going extinct. The United Nations states that nearly 10 lakh species of insects will soon disappear from the earth due to loss of habitat. Here, as a remedy, we are preparing an environment for them. Due to the sound of passing motor vehicles, you may not be able to detect it but I can very well hear the noise of crickets in this forest. There are other insects too. Let me show you the size of the trees here. This is the leaf of Beechwood that is one-year-and-ten-months old. It has already grown so large. This is the leaf of the Burflower tree of the same age. It is also large. Let me show you the trunk of the tree. I display the leaf so that you get an idea about the tree’s growth. This one is Flame-of-the-Forest. The leaf may not be big enough for us to have lunch in but it can certainly accommodate chappatis and puris. Maybe in this one, we can have lunch. Or breakfast. This is Indian redwood.
Birds and insects have made their nests here. This is what we should do for the conservation of Nature. We can do it in our compounds too. This forest has been created in a plot of three cents. Plants and trees will grow in a very healthy manner. You can see for yourself that sunlight hardly reaches the ground. There is plenty of undergrowth. Trees are growing at a lower level too. You too can conduct similar experiments in your two- or three-cent plots. Trees will grow, and birds will come. In order to observe World Nature Conservation Day, let us pledge to create Miyawaki forests, at least before World Nature Conservation Day next year. Let us walk the talk and plant the forest. Please try to share this video with as many people as possible. This has to become a mass movement. All the guidelines you need are available at crowdforesting.org. Please visit the website.