They fought limestone mafia to save forest

Vijaysinh Parmar TNN Madhavpur (Porbander): They are neither conservationists nor do they know what green activism is. But they took the dangerous limestone mafia in Porbander head on to ensure that Madhavpur regains its lush green forest. They are a group of servicemen, doctors, engineers and other professionally-employed persons staying at Osho Ashram in Madhavpur who took upon themselves to conserve the fast diminishing forest, especially the rayan (khirnee, manilkara hexandra) trees that had borne the brunt of limestone mining as well severe salinity ingress. Today as one drives on the coastal highway from Porbander to Mangrol, the very sight of this forest ‘Madhuvan’ spread over 35 acres is refreshing to the eyes. “It was a matter of life and death for all of us to save the forest from the mafia. We were able to save some part of the forest that has centuries-old rayan trees,” says Govind Vekaria, an employee of State Bank of Saurashtra, living at the ashram. Nearly half of this 35-acre land belongs to the state forest department and the remaining has been purchased by some of the nature lovers in Porbander and Mangrol. “The purchased land has been donated to the ashram to maintain and conserve it as a forest by planting different species,” says Bharat Shah, who also lives at the Osho Ashram. Around six years ago, the ashram residents notice that the rayan trees were fast diminishing. So they roped in Rasik Bhatt, a botanist and retired scientist from Junagadh Agriculture University, to study its reasons. “Salinity was one of the main reason for the death of rayan trees. Moreover, there was a dense growth of gando baval (prosopis juliflora) in the area that used to consume away the nutrition from these trees,” said Bhatt. Rayan is very slow-growing tree that can survive in very harsh conditions. Of the 300 rayan trees, Madhuvan has many that are over 150 years old. “So, we recommended that the ashram give nurture these with pure water to fight salinity and give them an organic mulching,” he added. Today, gando baval has been totally eliminated and all rayan trees have been protected with a concrete wall so that water seeps in properly to its roots. People of the region are savouring the fruits of these efforts. For the first time, poor children sold Rs 50,000 worth rayan fruits collected from this forest.