This week the completion of a project was announced that will hopefully enhance the life of both villagers and animals living in the vicinity of the wildlife corridor between Kanha and Pench wildlife sanctuaries.
The United Nation’s environment programme, Billion Tree Campaign, reported the planting of 3 lakh trees on approximately 300 hectares of forest and community land over the past three years. Aided by Grow-Trees.com and Vodafone India, this may well be one of the largest afforestation projects undertaken.
Initiated in August 2014, the Kanha-Pench afforestation project involved planting one lakh saplings on 100 hectares of forestland between Kanha Tiger Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh and Pench in Maharashtra every year for three years.
While for the telecom company it was an effort to offset 33 million kg of carbon footprint generated by its offices, the project also “created about 25,000 workdays for women and tribal communities inhabiting the area, in addition to supporting several allied livelihood generating activities such as farming, and fruit and honey gathering on a sustained basis”.