Vice-Chancellor Prof. P. Appa Rao launched a unique initiative, ‘Plant a sapling on your birthday’ a few months back. Most of parties end with a cake, party and friends. Birthdays get over with this pop culture ritual. But what does one give back to the society that raised it for long?
The WILD LENS team has come up with this plan for birthdays, a tree plantation ceremony at the University of Hyderabad (UoH).
The initiative started with the first sapling planted by with Research Scholar Maruthi of School of Life Sciences on his birthday. The initiative, which is supported by the efforts of the Horticulture department, has planted many trees till now.
The founder of WILD LENS, Ravi Jillapalli who celebrated his birthday on 10th August planted the sapling of the Telengana State Tree- Jammi Chettu (Prosopis cineraria ) and Neem.
“Planting a sapling on Birthday is like leaving something memorable for the campus community, and one can enjoy that excitement whenever they visit the campus later in life. Birthdays can be made memorable and in turn we can improve the Biodiversity of the University”, said Jillapalli.
WILD LENS works in a number of areas to enrich the wildlife in campus including, wildlife rescuing, lake clean up drives, nature walks, bird watch, arranging water tubs for wildlife, protection of flora and fauna, conducting plantation drives and action against poaching.
The team has also developed a WILD LENS Park at south campus, which they claim is the first park in the University with zero investment. The future plan of the team is to start translocating indigenous plants.
“My team would like to establish an area with all the existing herbs and rare plants at one place by translocating them from various unrecognized parts of our Forest areas which are prone to destruction in the name of development. Each time we are losing valuable medicinal plants so we think it’s better to protect them by translocation”, says Jillapalli Ravi.