What will Project 35 Trees talk to students about?

Planting trees is fun. It is fun to dig holes in damp soil with a heavy instrument. It is nice to get hands dirty in a childish sort of way. It is an ice-breaker. It gets people to talk, smile, open-up and share.

While planting trees in urban areas is a necessity, it is various other issues that consume the attention of many wildlife conservationists in the country today. These must be gradually instilled among young students so that they do not repeat mistakes the earlier generations have done.

CATCH THEM YOUNG | They must be weaned away from the lavish use of plastic. It is not easy. But they must be told of its dangers.  Tell them while they are in school. Let them learn about this while they learn what’s in their schoolbooks.

You might tell them to save power; to switch off the lights and the fans when you don’t need them. They might not really care for it because they haven’t been told why to switch off the lights and fans…why it is important to save electricity…how precious this power is.  

But tell them about their favourite animal – the tiger, the fastest animal – the cheetah and beautiful national bird. Tell them about the homes of these gorgeous animals – the forests. Then tell them how these forests are being cut down to make coal mines. Where does all this coal go? This coal is used to generate the electricity that comes to all of our homes. The tiger, the cheetah, the peacock…they all sacrificed their homes, their lives for this electricity. Grim…but the young ones must understand this.

In Kashmir, rich kids probably have a Shahtoosh carpet at home or their mothers might have a family heirloom of a shawl of the finest quality of silk, the kind that exploited the Chiru (Tibetan Antelope) to extinction.  

Jeans? The denim dyeing industry is known to be a major polluter of the Ulhas river in Thane District.

Millions of families that flock to sea-shores and beaches for vacations return with painted sea-shells and decorative pieces of corals- souvenirs. Little do these innocent souls know that the creatures are collected from the sea and boiled alive. The dead remains are scraped out, the shells are washed in detergent, polished, painted and sold to you for twenty rupees. Is that the cost of a sea creature’s life? And how do you expect to hold out a tsunami when you have been breaking pieces of the boundary wall – the coral reefs?

Who will tell them all this?

I will.

Why?

Because this is the knowledge growing children must be equipped with in order to make clear choices while they grow up to be responsible citizens.

If there are a few changed minds, if students learn to turn off the lights before nodding off to sleep or return home from vacations with tribal art items instead, Project 35 Trees will consider its job done.