Van Mahotsav — The festival of forests

'Planting a tree is much better than wearing a mask to be safe from pollution'

#GoGreen#SaveTrees#Save Lives.

Stuti Doshi, Class VIII, Manav Rachna International School, Mohali

As we all know that deforestation is spreading all over the world, in rural and urban areas. According to the Forest Survey of India (FSI) in the past 30 years two-thirds of the forests in Haryana have been lost due to encroachments. The Indian Forest Department says “for every tree cut we should plant almost ten saplings every day to cover the loss”. But the problem is that this practice is followed very rarely.

Forests and trees help us to maintain ecological balance and keep the carbon footprint low, but still trees are being felled and burnt without any concern for the ecological damage being caused and all this despite the awareness about the importance of tress and the significance of planting new trees.  

One hears about Van Mahotsav very often and can see in newspapers the pictures of prominent people, children as well as other people planting saplings. But this is not a recent thing as the drive to plant saplings started from Delhi by national leaders like Dr Rajendra Prasad and Jawaharlal Nehru. It was celebrated in other parts of India and from that time millions of saplings have been planted over the years. Celebrating the importance of trees, Van Mahotsav was initiated in 1950 to celebrate the importance of growing and saving forests and to create awareness about the bad effects of deforestation, which is a great initiative, it is observed in the first week of July each year.

Many organisations like The World Wildlife Fund and Amazon Watch are fighting  hard to prevent deforestation and to create awareness. We should all do our part. Here are some steps that you can practice to conserve deforestation:

• Plant more and more trees every day.
• Encourage your relatives to do the same.
• We should stop buying products that are made by destroying the forests and try to ban them.
• Practice the 3R rule- Reduce, Reuse and Recycle to lower the need of raw materials from trees.

“GO GREEN” by saving forests and trees. Don’t destroy the world for your needs and plant more saplings every day and help save world from global warming and other elements which is destroying the weather, nature and world.