Ravi bank slowly becoming green again

LAHORE: In a day and age where citizens are able to cut down trees without any remorse, there live a select few who still bleed every single time greenery is cleared to make way for urban developments.

On World Environment Day, celebrated on June 5 (today), the officials deputed at the reserve forests on the bank of River Ravi urge citizens to play their part and plant a tree.

Jamil Ahmed has dedicated his life to planting more trees. With his mere two hands, Ahmed has planted hundreds of saplings which have matured into trees. “I look after the trees as if they are my children. I weep every time one of them is cut down,” he says.

Ahmed has been working for the Punjab wildlife department as a block officer for the past 40 years. He has been working at the Shahdara Reserve Forest and Kroll area, located on the bank of River Ravi near Lahore.

Come rain or come shine, Ahmed and his three companions look after 1000 acres of land. Using his rickety old motorcycle, he travels from one edge of the forest to another, keeping an eye out for intruders.

It takes several years for a sapling to mature into a tree. But some people can waste away all this effort in a matter of minutes by cutting down trees, he says. “Kroll is an ancient forest. However, influentials had cut down many trees and also had encroached the land,” he explains.



Thankfully, in the past few years, hundreds of acres have been reclaimed, he states.

One of Ahmed’s colleagues says that they are constantly worried about the saplings. Sometimes people visit the forest to try and cut down trees to use as fuel while saplings can be damaged by animals, he says.

The forest has been divided into different blocks. Different species have been sown in each sector such as jamun trees, keekar trees, and shehtoot trees.

The purpose of restoring the forest is to encourage wildlife to once again flourish along the banks of River Ravi, says Ahmed. “In the confines of the forest, you can spot many birds which cannot be seen in the city,” he adds.

He maintains that funds for the thousands of plants which were sown under the ‘Clean and Green Pakistan’ campaign have still not been received. Yet, they still rise each day with renewed vigour to protect the trees and the plants from local residents.

Ahmed says that other than the Kroll Forest in Lahore, there are reserve forests in Jallo Forest Park and Chohung. He states that forests have been razed to the ground in the name of urbanisation in order to make way for housing schemes and to broaden roads.

Even though hundreds of saplings have been sown, the number of plants maturing and growing is lesser in comparison, he states.

According to a 2011 survey, approximately 5.1% of the country was covered by forests. However, trees on 42,000 hectares were being cut down each year.

A later report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation highlighted that forests cover 1.6 million hectares, approximately 2.2% of the total area of the country. Majority of the forests lie in Azad Kashmir, spanning 36.5% of the total area of the province. In comparison, only 2.7% of the total area of Punjab province is covered by forests.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 5^th, 2019.