Srinagar , JAMMU & KASHMIR :

Businessman Bhat has spent Rs 30 lakh from his pocket to plant 1,45,000 trees; he aims to plant 20,000 trees every year.

Srinagar:

About nine years ago, he single-handedly began planting trees on barren hillocks which, till a couple of decades ago, used to be full of beautiful clusters of deodar or Himalayan cedar and conifer trees.

Abdul Hameed Bhat, 51, a businessman, has himself planted or helped volunteers in planting as many as 1,45,000 trees, mostly pine, in different parts of the Kashmir valley spending Rs 30 lakh from his own pocket.

“I don’t get any financial help from government or any other source nor do I run any NGO. It is an effort made at personal level,” he said, calling it a “heart mission” rooted in his love for environment.

Mr Bhat’s passion began in 2009 when he started taking care of dozens of pine trees planted by the social forestry department on the pavements outside his office in Srinagar’s Barzulla area but were left unattended.

As a  promotion activity in his auto business, he started gifting saplings to clients in place of calendars, diaries and other stationery items.

Last Sunday, Mr Bhat, a school dropout who has made it big in business, was joined by a large group of volunteers, including journalists and members of a football club,  to plant over 1,000 pine trees on a knoll at Sutaharan in central district of Budgam. Sitting in the lap of Pirpanjal Range, Sutaharan like many other Valley areas has witnessed large-scale deforestation mainly during the three-decade old armed conflict in Kashmir.

“There are many things we can do to preserve and protect our environment if we want to preserve and protect life on Earth and leave behind something good for our coming generations,” he told this correspondent after digging about 100 holes and planting saplings in them.

Mr Bhat said that it pains him to see deforestation across Kashmir and he took a “conscious decision” to do his bit to rectify the wrong.

“I know the damage done to our woods over the years is huge and no single effort is likely to have a great impact of reparation. But I thought whatever I can, I must do,” he said.

Relentlessly dedicated to restoring nature, Mr Bhat who is now known to many people in Kashmir as “Green Warrior” has not only won appreciation from all but is also enthusiastically joined by volunteers from almost every walk of life in planting trees.

Rahim Greens, a subsidiary of Rahim Motors owned by Mr Bhat, in collaboration with various organisations and the state’s forest department sometime ago launched a plantation drive in Srinagar city and Rajouri district in the Jammu region and involved educational institutions. An initiative named as “The Tree of Life” was organised by it jointly with Help Voluntary Trust earlier.

“No doubt, Hameed Sahib took the initiative and continues to be at the forefront of the campaign but it now appears to be a story of Mein akela hi chala tha janib-e-manzil magar; loag saath aatey gaye aur karvan banta gaya (I set out alone for the destination but people kept joining me and it turned into a caravan),” said a volunteer.

One of the prominent faces which have ardently joined the crusade is Rifat Abdullah, a TV journalist. Apart from distributing saplings in schools and colleges, he has adopted a barren hill in Rathsun area of Budgam and taken a pledge to convert it into what he calls “First Oxygen Zone” of Jammu and Kashmir.

“Thousands of deodar trees have been planted voluntarily on the hill, so far, under ‘Mission One Crore Plants’ launched by ‘Save Environment, Save Kashmir’, a public movement,” he wrote on Facebook.